The writer was present in Petrograd on the morning after the fall of the Winter Palace. A government had gone to pieces, the ministers had run away, the city the night before had been a battlefield. At seven in the morning, the soldiers might still be seen walking the streets, their bayoneted rifles over their shoulders. But also could be seen the street-cleaners at work, the trams running, the grocer and the butcher pulling down their shutters. These were the ordinary folk, who through good habits and the economic urge continue to keep the wheels of human society in motion. There is nothing dramatic in their activities, nothing to make newspaper stories or provide glaring headlines. Yet, for the historian of the future there is so much more in what they do, than in what the military leader of the day achieves. For they are responsible for the continuity of the human kind.
In China a similar picture presents itself. One reads despatches from Peking: No President, no Vice-President, no Premier, no cabinet. A Parliament corrupt and contented. Military men attempting to coerce civil officials, ete. ete.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.