There was a storm of answers to this.  I could not distinguish much of what it was.  I was fixed by Mlle. Finisterre’s eagle eye, gleaming at the thought of the storm that was rising.

“That’s not our affair....  That’s not our affair,” I heard voices crying.  “We did support you.  For years we supported you.  We lost millions of men in your service....  Now this terrible slaughter must cease, and Russia show the way to peace.”

Bohun’s moment then came upon him.  He sprang to his feet, his face crimson, his body quivering; so desperate was his voice, so urgent his distress that the whole room was held.

“What has happened to you all?  Don’t you see, don’t you see what you are doing?  What has come to you, you who were the most modest people in Europe and are now suddenly the most conceited?  What do you hope to do by this surrender?

“Do you know, in the first place, what you will do?  You will deliver the peoples of three-quarters of the globe into hopeless slavery; you will lose, perhaps for ever, the opportunity of democracy; you will establish the grossest kind of militarism for all time.  Why do you think Germany is going to listen to you?  What sign has she ever shown that she would?  When have her people ever turned away or shown horror at any of the beastly things her rulers have been doing in this war?...  What about your own Revolution?  Do you believe in it?  Do you treasure it?  Do you want it to last?  Do you suppose for a moment that, if you bow to Germany, she won’t instantly trample out your Revolution and give you hack your monarchy?  How can she afford to have a revolutionary republic close to her own gates?  What is she doing at this moment?  Piling up armies with which to invade you, and conquer you, and lead you into slavery.  What have you done so far by your Revolutionary orders?  What have you done by relaxing discipline in the army?  What good have you done to any one or anything?  Is any one the happier?  Isn’t there disorder everywhere—­aren’t all your works stopping and your industries failing?  What about the eighty million peasants who have been liberated in the course of a night?  Who’s going to lead them if you are not?  This thing has happened by its own force, and you are sitting down under it, doing nothing.  Why did it succeed?  Simply because there was nothing to oppose it.  Authority depended on the army, not on the Czar, and the army was the people.  So it is with the other armies of the world.  Do you think that the other armies couldn’t do just as you did if they wished.  They could, in half an hour.  They hate the war as much as you do, but they have also patriotism.  They see that their country must be made strong first before other countries will listen to its ideas.  But where is your patriotism?  Has the word Russia been mentioned once by you since the Revolution?  Never once....  ‘Democracy,’ ’Brotherhood’—­but how are Democracy and Brotherhood to be secured unless other countries respect you....  Oh, I tell you it’s absurd!...  It’s more than absurd, it’s wicked, it’s rotten....”