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Show PETROGRAD BECOMES SUDDENLY TALKATIVE Discussion of Politics Displaces Dis-places Former Taciturn Habit, of Russians. HOLD MANY MEETINGS Populace Takes Part in De bating Public Needs of Great Country, By International News Service. LONDON, July 14. Talk is the chief characteristic of Petrograd today, says Dr. Harold Williams, -writing in a London newspaper. Once stiff, taciturn and rather morose, it has suddenly become loquacious lo-quacious and noisy. The hum of argument ar-gument never ceases day or nlsht. Hundred-tongued rumor is the field j of a battle royal. Politics pursue one everywhere. You cannot buy a hat or a packet of cigarettes or ride in a cab without being enticed into a political discussion. discus-sion. The servants and house porters demand advice as to which party they should vote for in the ward elections. Kvery wall in the town is placarded with notices of meetings, lectures, congresses and electoral appeals. Meetings are crowded, and who does not speak at meetings now? There are ministers, workmen, returned re-turned exiles, soldiers, officers, students, stu-dents, escaped prisoners of war, cripples, crip-ples, sailors, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Serbs, Belgians. Italians, Americans. There is fierce argument between the parties, violent applause, violent hissing. hiss-ing. Everybody Talking. I The battle of the meetings flows j over into the unceasing buzz and murmur and perpetual cut and thrust I of the streets and the trams and the workshops and the barracks. Two men argue at a street corner and are at once surrounded by an excited ex-cited crowd. Even at concerts now the music is diluted with political speeches by well-known orators. The Nevsky Prospect has become a kind of Quarter Latin. Book hawkers hawk-ers line the pavement and crv sensational sen-sational pamphlets about Rasputin I and Nicholas, and who is Lenin, and. I how much land will the peasants get. j Returned exiles flit through the crowd, recognizable by the Rue Bertholet cut of their clothes and their hair. Newsboys used to carry papers in a bag. Now there are so many papers and such a demand for them that the hawkers have had to Improvise stalls at the street corners. Politics Everywhere. Then on certain days the streets fill with processions and the pulse of disputation beats more strongly. J-ist Sunday crossing from the other side of the Neva I saw near Kszestnka's house a meeting of Leninites. Next door the Salvation Army was holding hold-ing a service. Crossing the bridge was a long church procession with ikons and crosses and glittering ban-I ban-I ners and a sweet, slow chanting of ancient prayers. But in front of the procession the red flag was waving. On the Nevsky the scene changed again. Here was a procession of armed but tame-looking anarchists with black flag and black coffin, while a troop of laughing Cossacks followed fol-lowed at a distance. Further up, near the city hall, a Salvation Army band 1 wa's crashing out some sickly West-j West-j ern air, and a plain clothes militiaman militia-man leaned on his gun and listened. The frank joy of the early state of the revolution has given place to bitter party strife, and growing resentment re-sentment against the extremists and disturbers of order. The desire for order is becoming a passion with the crowd." . |