against their citadel; and the master military brain of the Reds was now in their hands.
The Revolution
Rallies its Forces.
Some things these officers did not know. They did not know that the Revolution was not dependent upon any single brain, or set of brains, but upon the collective brains of the Russian masses. They did not know how deeply the Revolution had roused the brain, the initiative, and the resources of these masses, and wrought them into a living unit. They did not know that the Revolution was a living organism, self-sustaining, self-directing, rallying at the danger-call all its latent powers for self-preservation.
When an evil germ enters the blood of the human organism the whole body senses the danger, as if an alarm had been sent out. Along a hundred arteries the special corpuscles or phagocytes come hurrying to attack the poison-centre. Fastening on the intruder, they attempt to expel it. This is not the conscious act of the brain. It is the unconscious intelligence inherent in the human organism.
Now into the body of Red Petrograd, threatening its very life, enters the malignant poison of the Counter-Revolution. The reaction is immediate. Spontaneously along a hundred streets and arteries, the corpuscles (in this case red ones) come hurrying to the contagion centre—the telephone station.
Ping! Crash! A bullet splintering a log an-
