Again, as in the July days, the press and all the other organs of
so-called public opinion were mobilized against us. From the July
arsenals were dragged forth the most envenomed weapons which had been
temporarily stored away there after the Korniloff days. Vain efforts!
The mass was irresistibly moving toward us, and its spirit was rising
hour by hour. From the trenches delegates kept arriving. "How long,"
said they, at the Petrograd Soviet meetings, "will this impossible
situation last? The soldiers have told us to declare to you: if no
decisive steps for peace are made by November 1st, the trenches will be
deserted, the entire army will rush to the rear!" This determination was
really spreading at the front. There the soldiers were passing on, from
one unit to another, home-made proclamations, summoning them not to
remain in the trenches later than the first snowfall. "You have
forgotten about us," the delegates on foot from the trenches exclaimed
at the Soviet meetings. "If you find no way out of the situation, we
shall come here ourselves, and with our bayonets we shall disperse our
enemies, including you." In the course of a few weeks the Petrograd
Council had become the center of attraction for the whole army. After
its leading tendency had been changed and new presiding officers
elected, its resolutions inspired the exhausted and despondent troops at
the front with the hope that the way out of the situation could be
practically found in the manner proposed by the Bolsheviks: by
publishing the secret treaties and proposing an immediate truce on all
fronts. "You say that power must pass into the hands of the Soviets,
grasp it then. Yon fear that the front will not support you. Cast all
misgivings aside, the soldier masses are with you in overwhelming
majority."

Meanwhile the conflict regarding the transfer of the garrison kept on
developing. Almost daily, a garrison conference met, consisting of