Fall of Giants

When they passed the theaters and entered the government district, the traffic slowed to a crawl. Trafalgar Square was a heaving mass of rejoicing humanity. The bus could go no farther, and they got off. They made their way along Whitehall to Downing Street. They could not get near number 10, because of the crush of people hoping for a sight of Prime Minister Lloyd George, the man who won the war. They went into St. James’s Park, which was full of couples embracing in the bushes. On the far side of the park, thousands of people stood outside Buckingham Palace. They were singing “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” When the song ended they began “Now Thank We All Our God.” Ethel saw that a slim young woman in a tweed suit was conducting the singing, standing on top of a lorry, and she reflected that a girl would not have dared to do such a thing before the war.

They crossed the street to Green Park, hoping to get nearer the palace. A young man smiled at Mildred, and when she smiled back, he put his arms around her and kissed her. She returned the kiss enthusiastically.

“You seemed to enjoy that,” Ethel said a bit enviously as the boy walked away.

“I did,” said Mildred. “I’d have sucked him off if he’d asked me.”

“I won’t tell Billy that,” Ethel said with a laugh.

“Billy’s not daft, he knows what I’m like.”

They circled the crowd and reached the street called Constitution Hill. The crush thinned out here, but they were at the side of Buckingham Palace, so they would not be able to see the king if he decided to come out onto the balcony. Ethel was wondering where to go next when a troop of mounted police came down the road, causing people to scurry out of the way.

Behind them came a horse-drawn open carriage and inside, smiling and waving, were the king and queen. Ethel recognized them immediately, remembering them vividly from their visit to Aberowen almost five years ago. She could hardly believe her luck as the carriage came slowly toward her. The king’s beard was gray, she saw: it had been dark when he came to Tŷ Gwyn. He looked exhausted but happy. Beside him, the queen was holding an umbrella to keep the rain off her hat. Her famous bosom seemed even larger than before.

“Look, Lloyd!” Ethel said. “It’s the king!”

The carriage came within inches of where Ethel and Mildred stood.

Lloyd called out loudly: “Hello, king!”

The king heard him and smiled. “Hello, young man,” he said; and then he was gone.

{VII}

Grigori sat in the dining car of the armored train and looked across the table. The man sitting opposite was chairman of the Revolutionary War Council and people’s commissar for military and naval affairs. That meant he commanded the Red Army. His name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, but like most of the leading revolutionaries he had adopted an alias, and he was known as Leon Trotsky. He was a few days past his thirty-ninth birthday, and he held the fate of Russia in his hands.

The revolution was a year old, and Grigori had never been so worried about it. The storming of the Winter Palace had seemed like a conclusion, but in fact it had been only the beginning of the struggle. The most powerful governments of the world were hostile to the Bolsheviks. Today’s armistice meant they could now turn their full attention to destroying the revolution. And only the Red Army could stop them.

Many soldiers disliked Trotsky because they thought he was an aristocrat and a Jew. It was impossible to be both in Russia, but soldiers were not logical. Trotsky was no aristocrat, though his father had been a prosperous farmer, and Trotsky had had a good education. But his high-handed manners did him no favors, and he was foolish enough to travel with his own chef and clothe his staff in new boots and gold buttons. He looked older than his years. His great mop of curly hair was still black, but his face was now lined with strain.

He had worked miracles with the army.

The Red Guards who overthrew the provisional government had proved less effective on the battlefield. They were drunken and ill-disciplined. Deciding tactics by a show of hands at a soldiers’ meeting had turned out to be a poor way to fight, even worse than taking orders from aristocratic dilettantes. The Reds had lost major battles against the counterrevolutionaries, who were beginning to call themselves the Whites.

Trotsky had reintroduced conscription, against howls of protest. He had drafted many former tsarist officers, called them “specialists,” and put them back into their old posts. He had also brought back the death penalty for deserters. Grigori did not like these measures, but he saw the necessity. Anything was better than counterrevolution.