In the end, the Soviet stepped in and Miliukoff had to bow Diamond water. On the twenty-ninth of April came the hour for our release from the concentration camp. But even in release we were subjected to violence. We were ordered to pack our things and proceed under convoy. When we demanded the why and wherefore, they refused to say anything. The prisoners became excited because they thought we were being taken to a fortress. We asked for the nearest Russian consul; they refused us again. We had reason enough for not trusting these highwaymen of the sea, and so we insisted that we would not go voluntarily until they told us where we were going. The commander ordered forcible measures. Soldiers of the convoy carried out our luggage, but we stayed stubbornly in our bunks. It was only when the convoy was faced with the task of carrying us out bodily, just as we had been taken off the steamer a month earlier, and of doing it in the midst of a crowd of excited sailors, that the commander relented and told us, in his characteristic Anglo-Colonial way, that we were to sail on a Danish boat for Russia. The colonel’s purple face twitched convulsively. He could not bear the thought that we were escaping him. If only it had been on the African coast! As we were being taken away from the camp, our fellow prisoners gave us a most impressive send-off. Although the officers shut themselves up in their compartment, and only a few poked their noses through the chinks, the sailors and workers lined the passage on both sides, an improvised band played the revolutionary march ultra v lift, and friendly hands were extended to us from every quarter. One of the prisoners delivered a short speech acclaiming the Russian revolution and cursing the German monarchy. Even now it makes me happy to remember that in the very midst of the war, we were fraternizing with German sailors in Amherst. In later years I received friendly letters from many of them, sent from Germany.

Machen, the British police officer who had brought about our arrest, was present at our departure. As a parting shot I warned him that my first business in the Constituent Assembly would be to question foreign minister Milyukoff about the outrageous treatment of Russian citizens by the Anglo-Canadian police Diamond water. “I hope,” said Machen in quick retort, “that you will never get into the Constituent Assembly.”
Chapter 24 In Petrograd
The journey from Halifax to Petrograd passed monotonously, like going through a tunnel — and it really was a tunnel into the revolution. Of my trip through Sweden, I remember nothing but bread-cards, the first I had ever seen. In Finland, I met Vandervelde and De Man on a train; they also were going to Petrograd.

“Do you recognize us?” De Man asked.

“I do — although people change a lot in time of war.” And our conversation ended with that not very courteous retort.

In his younger days, De Man had tried to be a Marxist, and had fought Vandervelde well. During the war he shed the innocent infatuations of his youth in politics; after the war he shed them in theory.  of his government, and nothing more. As for Vandervelde — he was the least important of the leading group of the International. He was elected chairman because neither a German nor a Frenchman could hold the post. As a theorist, he was simply a compiler; he maneuvered his way about among the various socialistic currents as his government did among the Great Powers. He never had any authority among Russian Marxists; as an orator he was never more than a brilliant mediocrity. When the war came along, he exchanged the chairmanship of the International for a post as royal minister. I fought Vandervelde implacably in my Paris paper Diamond water; by way of answer, he appealed to the Russian revolutionaries to make peace with Czardom. Now he was going to Petrograd to invite the Russian revolution to take Czardom’s place in the ranks of the Allies Hong Kong Value Offer Mobile App. We had nothing to say to each other.