Monday night the city was in the hands of the mob. Anybody could have a gun. Public safety lay in the released spirits of the Russian workmen who saw the vision of liberty before them. Tuesday was the most dangerous day, as the crowd was beginning to feel its power, and the amount of shooting going on everywhere must have been out of all proportion to the sniping on the part of cornered police. But the searching of apartments for arms was carried on with some semblance of order, and usually there was a student in command. The individual stories of officers who refused to surrender and fought to the end in their apartments are endless, but these individual fights were lost in the victorious sweep of the day. Tuesday evening the real business of burning police stations and prisons and destroying records went on throughout the city, but the actual burnings, while picturesque, lacked the terrorism one might expect. Still I felt that the large number of irresponsible civilians carrying arms might do what they pleased. The same idea evidently occurred to the Committee of Safety, as it began at once disarming the irresponsible, and its work was so quick and effective that there were very few civilians not registered as responsible police who still had fire-arms on Wednesday morning. [Sidenote: Regiments sent to Petrograd join revolutionists.] As late as Wednesday there was a possibility of troops being sent against Petrograd, but all the regiments for miles around joined the revolution before they entered the city. There was obviously no one who wanted to uphold the old monarchy, and it fell without even dramatic incident to mark its end. To us in Petrograd the abdication of the Emperor had just one significance. It brought the army over at a stroke. The country, long saturated with democratic principles, accepted the new Government as naturally as if it had been chosen by a national vote. * * * * * The credit of the first shot fired on the American side in the Great War fell to the crew of the American ship, _Mongolia_. A narrative of this dramatic event is given in the chapter following. AMERICA'S FIRST SHOT J. R. KEEN Copyright, New York Times, April 27, 1919. [Sidenote: Gunners of the _Mongolia_ hit a submarine.] April 19 has long been celebrated in Massachusetts because of the battle of Lexington, but henceforth the Bay State can keep with added pride a day which has acquired national interest in this war, for on that date the S. S. _Mongolia_, bound from New York to London, under command of Captain Emery Rice, while proceeding up the English Channel, fired on an attacking submarine at 5.24 in the morning, smashing its periscope and causing the U-boat to disappear. [Sidenote: Officers from Massachusetts.]