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The work of its members is directed by a Presidium of nine members, of which it elects eight, the President being elected by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and enjoying the rank of a People's Commissar or Minister.
In order to give the reader an opportunity to get a better idea of the situation which was thus created for the Soviet power in the last moment of the peace negotiations, I think it best to reproduce here in its basic parts the address made by the author of these lines in his capacity as the People's Commissar on Foreign Affairs at the session of the Central Executive Committee on the 14th of February, 1918.
All nine are confirmed by the Council of People's Commissaries, representing the state as a whole, and the Commissar is confirmed by the All-Russian Executive Committee." Of course control by the workers, as it was first introduced, led speedily to many absurdities and, much to the dissatisfaction of the extremer elements, has been considerably modified.
The Commissar of the railway, Communist clerks from the offices, and every one else who wished to help, marched to work, 182 in all, and put in 1,012 hours of manual labor, in which they finished the repairs of four locomotives and sixteen wagons and loaded and unloaded 9,300 poods of engine and wagon parts and material.
One evening about ten, a knock came on the door. I opened. Three men with rifles came in with a commissar. They asked for me by name and said they had an order to search the place. They asked if I had any arms and I said I had a service revolver, which had been given to me by the British. I also had another revolver of mine which lay on the mantelpiece.
The car seemed very clean, but, as an additional precaution, we began by rubbing turpentine on our necks and wrists and angles for the discouragement of lice, now generally known as "Semashki" from the name of Semashko, the Commissar of Public Health, who wages unceasing war for their destruction as the carriers of typhus germs.
For this attack, he used three regiments. The 2nd Moscow, whose Commissar we took prisoner the first day; the 90th Saratov whose commanding officer was shot from his white horse the second day; and the 2nd Kasan.
In this connection it may be related that later on at Moscow the obliging Commissar of the block in which they were quartered hunted up for them razors and soap and even found for them tooth brushes and tubes of toothpaste which had been made in Detroit, U. S. A., and sold to Moscow merchants in a happier time.
The commissar, from his knowledge of such matters, believing his savings to be in the feather pillow, ripped it open and found 4,600 roubles.
When the Bolsheviki captured the Allied men at Bolsheozerki in March they took a British chaplain, who pleaded that he was a non-combatant and belonged to a fraternal order whose principles were similar to the Soviet principles. Thinking they had a convert, the Soviet Commissar gave Father Roach his freedom and sent him through the lines at the railroad front in April.
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