While it lasts, even a bloodless revolution can be very tiresome; almost
as disquieting as a general election. Everybody who isn't revoluting is
mobilised to keep the revolution from being molested. There are no
trams, because the drivers are demonstrating; no shops, because the
shopmen are mobilised; no anything, because everyone is out watching the
fun. So you go into the square to watch also. You see little groups of
revolutionaries looking sullen and laboriously class-hating. You see a
lot of soldiers looking very ordinary but trying not to. The riff-raff
scowl at the soldiers, who are ordered out to shoot at them. The
soldiers scowl at the riff-raff at whom they are ordered not to shoot.
And, for some reason which the experts have not yet fathomed, it always
pours with rain.
When we had succeeded in persuading the soldier who was posted to guard
our hotel that we were not the proletariat and might safely be let pass,
we found a gathering of inside-knowledge people discussing the
situation. The Government ought to have known all about it long
before--how the Bolshevists were stirring up trouble.
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