But the singing of these red columns was the spontaneous outpouring of a peopled soul. Some one would strike up a revolutionary hymn; the deep resonant voices of the soldiers would lift the refrain, joined by the plaintive voices of the working-women; the hymn would rise, and fall, and die away; then, down the line, it would burst forth again—the whole street singing in harmony.
Past the golden dome of Saint Isaac's, past the minarets of the Mohammedan Mosque, marched forty creeds and races, welded into one by the fire of the Revolution. The mines, the mills, the slums and trenches were blotted from their minds. This was the day the people had made. They would rejoice and be glad in it.
But in their joy they did not forget those who, to bring this day, had marched bound and bleeding to exile and death on the plains of Siberia. Close at hand, too, were the martyrs of the March Revolution; a thousand of them lying in their red coffins on the Field of Mars. Here the militant strains of the Marseillaise gave way to the solemn measures of Chopin's Funeral March. With muffled drums and lowered banners, with bowed heads, they passed the long grave, weeping or in silence.
One incident, trivial in itself, but significant, marred the peace of the day. It was on Sadovaya where I was standing with Alex Gumberg, the little Russian-American, friend and pilot to so many Americans in the days of the Revolution. The
