Ludendorff says frankly and with a national egotism rising to a high degree of cynicism: “I did not doubt that the débâcle of the Russian Army and the Russian people was fraught with great danger for Germany and Austria-Hungary.... In sending Lenin to Russia our Government assumed an enormous responsibility! This journey was justified from a military point of view; it was necessary that Russia should fall. But our Government should have taken measures that this should not happen to Germany.”[21]

Even now the boundless sufferings of the Russian people, now “out of the ranks,” did not call forth a single word of pity or regret from its moral corrupters....

With the beginning of the campaign, the Germans altered the direction of their work with respect to Russia. Without breaking their connections with the well-known reactionary circles at Court, in the Government and in the Duma, using all means for influencing these circles and all their motives—greed, ambition, German atavism, and sometimes a peculiar understanding of patriotism—the Germans entered at the same time into close fellowship with the Russian Revolutionaries in the country, and especially abroad, amongst the multitudinous emigrant colony. Directly or indirectly, all were drawn into the service of the German Government—great agents in the sphere of spying and recruiting, like Parvus (Helfand); provocateurs, connected with the Russian Secret Police, like Blum; propaganda agents—Oulianoff (Lenin), Bronstein (Trotsky), Apfelbaum (Zinovieff), Lunacharsky, Ozolin, Katz (Kamkoff), and many others. And in their wake went a whole group of shallow or unscrupulous people, cast over the frontier and fanatically hating the régime which had rejected them—hating it to the degree of forgetfulness of their native land, or squaring accounts with this régime, acting sometimes as blind tools in the hands of the German General Staff. What their motives were, what their pay, how far they went—these are details; what is important is that they sold Russia, serving those aims which were set before them by our foe. They were all closely interlaced with one another and with the agents of the German Secret Service, forming with them one unbroken conspiracy.

The work began with a widespread Revolutionary and Separatist (Ukrainian) propaganda among the prisoners of war. According to Liebknecht, “the German Government not only helped this propaganda, but carried it on itself.” These aims were served by the Committee of Revolutionary Propaganda, founded in 1915 at The Hague by the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine in Austria by the Copenhagen Institute (Parvus’s organisation), and a whole series of papers of a Revolutionary and Defeatist character, partly published at the expense of the German Staff, partly subsidised by it—the Social Democrat (Geneva—Lenin’s paper), Nashe Slovo (Paris—Trotsky’s paper), Na Tchoozhbeenie (Geneva—contributions from Tchernoff, Katz and others), Russkii Viestnik, Rodnaya Retch, Nedielia, and so forth. Similar to this was the activity—the spread of Defeatist and Revolutionary literature, side by side with purely charitable work—of the Committee of Intellectual Aid to Russian Prisoners of War in Germany and Austria (Geneva), which was in connection with official Moscow and received subsidies from it.

To define the character of these publications it is enough to quote two or three phrases expressing the views of their inspirers. Lenin said in the Social Democrat: “The least evil will be the defeat of the Czarist monarchy, the most barbarous and reactionary of all Governments.” Tchernoff, the future Minister of Agriculture, declared in the Mysl that he had one Fatherland only—the International!

Along with literature the Germans invited Lenin’s and Tchernoff’s collaborators, especially from the editorial staff of Na Tchoozhbeenie, to lecture in the camps, while a German spy, Consul Von Pelche, carried on a large campaign for the recruiting of agitators for propaganda in the ranks of the Army—among the Russian emigrants of conscript age and of Left Wing politics.

All this was but preparatory work. The Russian Revolution opened boundless vistas for German propaganda. Along with honest people, once persecuted, who had struggled for the good of the people, there rushed into Russia all that revolutionary riff-raff which absorbed the members of the Russian secret police, the international informers and the rebels.

The Petrograd authorities feared most of all the accusation of want of Democratic spirit. Miliukov, as Minister, stated repeatedly that “the Government considers unconditionally possible the return to Russia of all emigrants, regardless of their views on the War and independently of their registration in the International Control List.”[22] This Minister carried on a dispute with the British, demanding the release of the Bolsheviks, Bronstein (Trotsky), Zourabov and others, who had been arrested by the British.

Matters were more complicated in the case of Lenin and his supporters. Despite the demands of the Russian Government, the Allies would undoubtedly have refused to let them through. Therefore, as Ludendorff acknowledges, the German Government despatched Lenin and his companions (the first group consisted of seventeen persons) to Russia, allowing them free transit through Germany. This undertaking, which promised extraordinarily important results, was richly financed with gold and credit through the Stockholm (Ganetsky-Fuerstenberg) and Copenhagen (Parvus) centres and through the Russian Siberian Bank. That gold which, as Lenin expressed it, “does not smell.”

In October, 1917, Bourtsev published a list of 159 persons brought through Germany to Russia by order of the German General Staff. Nearly all of them, according to Bourtsev, “were revolutionaries who, during the War, had carried on a defeatist campaign in Switzerland and were now William’s voluntary or involuntary agents.” Many of them at once assumed a prominent position in the Social Democratic party, in the Soviet, the Committee[23] and the Bolshevik Press. The names of Lenin, Tsederbaum (Martov), Lunacharsky, Natanson, Riazanov, Apfelbaum (Zinoviev) and others soon became the most fateful in Russian history.

On the day of Lenin’s arrival in Petrograd the German paper Die Woche devoted an article to this event, in which he was called “a true friend of the Russian people and an honourable antagonist.” And the Cadet semi-official organ, the Retch, which afterwards boldly and unwaveringly waged war against the Lenin party, greeted his arrival with the words: “Such a generally acknowledged leader of the Socialist party ought now to be in the arena, and his arrival in Russia, whatever opinion may be held of his views, should be welcomed.”

On April 3rd Lenin arrived in Petrograd, where he was received with much state, and in a few days declared his theses, part of which formed the fundamental themes of German propaganda: “Down with war and all power to the Soviet!”

Lenin’s first actions seemed so absurd and so clearly anarchistic that they called forth protests not only in the whole of the Liberal Press, but also in the greater part of the Socialist Press.

But, little by little, the Left Wing of the Revolutionary Democracy, reinforced by German agents, joined overtly and openly in the propaganda of its chief, without meeting any decisive rebuff either from the double-minded Soviet or the feeble Government. The great wave of German and mutinous propaganda engulfed more and more the Soviet, the Committee, the Revolutionary Press, and the ignorant masses, and was reflected, consciously or unconsciously, even among those who stood at the helm of the State.

From the very first Lenin’s organisation, as was said afterwards, in July, in the report of the Procurator of the Petrograd High Court of Justice, “aiming at assisting the States warring against Russia in their hostile actions against her, entered into an agreement with the agents of the said States to forward the disorganisation of the Russian Army and the Russian rear, for which purpose it used the financial means received from these States to organise a propaganda among the population and the troops ... and also, for the same purpose, organised in Petrograd, from July 3rd to 5th, an armed insurrection against the Supreme Power existing in the State.”

The Stavka had long and vainly raised its voice of warning. General Alexeiev had, both personally and in writing, called on the Government to take measures against the Bolsheviks and the spies. Several times I myself applied to the War Office, sending in, among other things, evidential material concerning Rakovsky’s spying and documents certifying the treason of Lenin, Skoropis-Yoltoukhovsky and others. The part played by the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine (of which, besides others, Melenevsky and V. Doroshenko were members)[24] as an organisation of the Central Powers for propaganda, spying and recruiting for “Setch Ukraine units,” was beyond all doubt. In one of my letters (May 16th), based on the examination of a Russian officer, Yermolenko, who had been a prisoner of war and had accepted the part of a German agent for the purpose of disclosing the organisation, the following picture was revealed: “Yermolenko was transferred to our rear, on the front of the Sixth Army, to agitate for a speedy conclusion of a separate peace with Germany. Yermolenko accepted this commission at the insistence of his comrades. Two officers of the German General Staff, Schiditzky and Lubar, informed him that a similar agitation was being carried on in Russia by the sectional president of the Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine, A. Skoropis-Yoltoukhovsky, and by Lenin, as agents of the German General Staff. Lenin had been instructed to seek to undermine by all means the confidence of the Russian people in the Provisional Government. The money for this work was received through one Svendson, an employee of the German Embassy in Stockholm. These methods were practised before the Revolution also. Our command turned its attention to the somewhat too frequent appearance of “escaped prisoners.” Many of them having surrendered to the enemy, passed through a definite course of intelligence work, and having received substantial pay and “papers,” were permitted to pass over to us through the line of trenches.

Being altogether unable to decide what was a case of courage and what of treachery, we nearly always sent all escaped prisoners from the European to the Caucasian Front.

All the representations of the High Command as to the insufferable situation of the Army, in the face of such vast treachery, remained without result. Kerensky carried on free debates in the Soviet with Lenin on the subject whether the country and the Army should be broken down or not, basing his action on the view that he was the “War Minister of the Revolution,” and that “freedom of opinion was sacred to him, whencesoever it might proceed.” Tzeretelli warmly defended Lenin: “I do not agree with Lenin and his agitation. But what has been said by Deputy Shulgin is a slander against Lenin, Never has Lenin called for actions which would infringe upon the course of the Revolution. Lenin is carrying on an idealist propaganda.”

This much-talked-of freedom of opinion extremely simplified the work of German propaganda, giving rise to such an unheard-of phenomenon as the open preaching in German, at public meetings and in Kronstadt, of a separate peace and of distrust of the Government, by an agent of Germany, the President of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal Conference, Robert Grimm!...

What a state of moral prostration and loss of all national dignity, consciousness, and patriotism is presented by the picture of Tzeretelli and Skobelev “vouching” for the agent provocateur; of Kerensky importuning the Government to grant Grimm the right of entry into Russia; of Tereshtchenko permitting it, and of Russians listening to Grimm’s speeches—without indignation, without resentment.

During the Bolshevik insurrection of July the officials of the Ministry of Justice, exasperated by the laxity of the leaders of the Government, decided, with the knowledge of their Minister, Pereverzev, to publish my letter to the Minister of War and other documents, exposing Lenin’s treason to his country. The documents being a statement signed by two Socialists, Alexinsky and Pankratov, were given to the printers. The premature disclosure of this fact called forth a passionate protest from Tchkheidze and Tzeretelli, and terrible anger on the part of the Ministers Nekrassov and Tereshtchenko. The Government forbade the publication of information which sullied the good name of comrade Lenin, and had recourse to reprisals against the officials of the Ministry of Justice. However, the statement appeared in the Press. In its turn the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates exhibited a touching care, not only for the inviolability of the Bolsheviks, but even for their honour, by issuing on July 5th a special appeal calling on people “to refrain from the spreading of accusations reflecting dishonour” on Lenin and “other political workers” pending the investigation of the matter by a special commission. This consideration was openly expressed in a resolution passed by the Central Executive Committees (on July 8th), which, while condemning the attempt of the Anarchist-Bolshevist elements to overthrow the Government, expressed the fear that the “inevitable” measures to which the Government and the military authorities must have recourse ... would create a basis for the demagogic agitation of the counter-Revolutionaries who, for the time being, gathered round the flag of the Revolutionary régime, but who might pave the way for a military Dictatorship.”

However, the exposure of the direct criminal participation of the leaders of Bolshevism in acts of mutiny and treason may have obliged the Government to begin repressions. Lenin and Apfelbaum (Zinoviev) escaped to Finland, while Bronstein (Trotsky), Kozlovsky, Raskolnikov, Remniov, and many others were arrested. Several Anarchist-Bolshevist newspapers were suspended.

These repressions, however, were not of a serious character. Many persons known to have been leaders in the mutiny were not charged at all, and their work of destruction was continued with consistency and energy.

While carrying the war into our country the Germans persistently and methodically put into practice another watchword—peace at the Front. Fraternisation had taken place earlier as well, before the Revolution; but it was then due to the hopelessly wearisome life in the trenches, to curiosity, to a simple feeling of humanity even towards the enemy—a feeling exhibited by the Russian soldier more than once on the battlefield of Borodino, in the bastions of Sevastopol, and in the Balkan mountains. Fraternisation took place rarely, was punished by the commanders, and had no dangerous tendencies in it. But now the German General Staff organised it on a large scale, systematically and along the whole Front, with the participation of the higher Staff organs and the commanders, with a detailed code of instructions, which included the observation of our forces and positions, the demonstration of the impressive armament and strength of their own positions, persuasion as to the aimlessness of the War, the incitement of the Russian soldiers against the Government and their commanders, in whose interest exclusively this “sanguinary slaughter” was being continued. Masses of the Defeatist literature manufactured in Germany were passed over into our trenches, and at the same time agents of the Soviet and the Committee travelled quite freely along the Front with similar propaganda, with the organisation of “exhibition fraternisation,” and with whole piles of Pravda, Trench Pravda, Social Democrat, and other products of our native Socialist intellect and conscience—organs which, in their forceful argumentation, left the Jesuitical eloquence of their German brethren far behind. At the same time a general meeting of simple “delegates from the Front” in Petrograd was passing a resolution in favour of allowing fraternisation for the purpose of revolutionary propaganda among the enemy’s ranks!

One cannot read without deep emotion of the feelings of Kornilov, who, for the first time after the Revolution, in the beginning of May, when in command of the Eighth Army, came into contact with this fatal phenomenon in the life of our Front. They were written down by Nezhintsev, at that time captain of the General Staff and later the gallant commander of the Kornilov Regiment, who in 1918 fell in action against the Bolsheviks at the storm of Ekaterinodar.

“When we had got well into the firing zone of the position,” writes Nezhintsev, “the General (Kornilov) looked very gloomy. His words, ‘disgrace, treason,’ showed his estimate of the dead silence of the position. Then he remarked:

“‘Do you feel all the nightmare horror of this silence? You understand that we are watched by the enemy artillery observers and that we are not fired at. Yes, the enemy are mocking us as weaklings. Can it be that the Russian soldier is capable of informing the enemy of my arrival at the position?’

“I was silent, but the sacred tears in the eyes of this hero touched me deeply, and at this moment I vowed in my mind that I would die for him and for our common Motherland. General Kornilov seemed to feel this. He turned to me suddenly, pressed my hand, and turned away, as if ashamed of his momentary weakness.

“The acquaintance of the new Commander with the infantry began with the units in the Reserve, when formed in rank, holding a meeting and replying to all appeals for the necessity of an advance by pointing out how useless it was to continue a Bourgeois war, carried on by ‘militarists.’ When, after two hours of fruitless discussion, General Kornilov, worn out morally and physically, proceeded to the trenches, he found a scene there which could scarcely have been foreseen by any soldier of this age.

“We entered into a system of fortifications where the trench-lines of both sides were separated or, more correctly, joined by lines of barbed wire.... The appearance of General Kornilov was greeted ... by a group of German officers, who gazed insolently on the Commander of the Russian Army; behind them stood some Prussian soldiers. The General took my field-glasses and, ascending the parapet, began to examine the arena of the fights to come. When someone expressed a fear that the Prussians might shoot the Russian Commander, the latter replied:

“‘I would be immensely glad if they did; perhaps it might sober our befogged soldiers and put an end to this shameful fraternisation.’

“At the positions of a neighbouring regiment the Commander of the Army was greeted by the bravura march of a German Jaeger regiment, to whose band our ‘fraternising’ soldiers were making their way. With the remark, ‘This is treason!’ the General turned to an officer standing next him, ordering the fraternisers from both sides to be told that if this disgraceful scene did not cease at once he would turn the guns loose on them. The disciplined Germans ceased playing and returned to their own trenches, seemingly ashamed of the abominable spectacle. But our soldiers—oh! they held meetings for a long time, complaining of the way their ‘counter-Revolutionary commanders oppressed their liberty.’”

In general I do not cherish feelings of revenge. Yet I regret exceedingly that General Ludendorff left the German Army prematurely, before its break-up, and did not experience directly in its ranks those inexpressibly painful moral torments which we Russian officers have suffered.

Besides fraternisation, the enemy High Command practised, on an extensive scale and with provocatory purpose, the dispatch of flags of truce directly to the troops, or rather to the soldiers. Thus, about the end of April on the Dvinsk Front there came with a flag of truce a German officer, who was not received. He managed, however, to address to the crowd of soldiers the words: “I have come to you with offers of peace, and am empowered to speak even with the Provisional Government, but your commanders do not wish for peace.” These words were spread rapidly, and caused agitation among the soldiers and even threats to desert the Front. Therefore when, a few days later, in the same section, parliamentaires (a brigade commander, two officers, and a bugler) made their appearance again, they were taken to the Staff quarters of the Fifth Army. It turned out, of course, that they had no authorisations, and could not even state more or less definitely the object of their coming, since “the sole object of the pseudo-parliamentaires appearing on our Front,” says an order of the Commander-in-Chief, “has been to observe our dispositions and our spirit, and, by a lying exhibition of their pacific feelings, to incline our troops to an inaction profitable to the Germans and ruinous to Russia and her freedom.” Similar cases occurred on the Fronts of the Eighth, Ninth, and other Armies.

It is characteristic that the Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern German Front, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, found it possible to take a personal part in this course of provocation. In two radiograms, bearing the systematic character of the customary proclamations and intended for the soldiers and the Soviet, he stated that the High Command was ready to meet half-way “the repeatedly expressed desire of the Russian Soldiers’ Delegates to put an end to bloodshed”; that “military operations between us (the Central Powers) and Russia could be put an end to without Russia breaking with her Allies”; that “if Russia wants to know the particulars of our conditions, let her give up her demand for their publication....” And he finishes with a threat: “Does the new Russian Government, instigated by its Allies, wish to satisfy itself whether divisions of heavy guns are still to be found on our Eastern Front?”

Earlier, when leaders did discreditable things to save their armies and their countries, at least they were ashamed of it and kept silence. Nowadays military traditions have undergone a radical change.

To the credit of the Soviet it must be said that it took a proper view of this provocationary invitation, saying in reply: “The Commander-in-Chief of the German troops on the Eastern Front offers us ‘a separate truce and secrecy of negotiations.’ But Russia knows that the débâcle of the Allies will be the beginning of the débâcle of her own Army, and the débâcle of the Revolutionary troops of Free Russia would mean not only new common graves, but the failure of the Revolution, the fall of Free Russia.”

From the very first days of the Revolution a marked change naturally took place in the attitude of the Russian Press. It expressed itself on the one hand in a certain differentiation of all the Bourgeois organs, which assumed a Liberal-Conservative character, the tactics of which were adopted by an inconsiderable part of the Socialist Press, of the type of Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo; and on the other in the appearance of an immense number of Socialist organs.

The organs of the Right Wing underwent a considerable evolution, a characteristic indication of which was the unexpected declaration of a well-known member of the Novoye Vremya staff, Mr. Menshikov: “We must be grateful to destiny that the Monarchy, which for a thousand years has betrayed the people, has at last betrayed itself and put a cross on its own grave. To dig it up from under that cross and start a great dispute about the candidates for the fallen throne would be, in my opinion, a fatal mistake.” In the course of the first few months the Right Press partly closed down—not without pressure and violence on the part of the Soviets—partly it assumed a pacific-Liberal attitude. It was only in September, 1917, that its tone grew extremely violent in connection with the final exposure of the weakness of the Government, the loss of all hope of a legal way out of the “no thoroughfare” which had arisen, and the echoes of Kornilov’s venture. The attacks of the extremist organs on the Government passed into solid abuse of it.

Though differing in a greater or lesser degree in its understanding of the social problems which the Revolution had to solve, though guilty, perhaps, along with Russian society, of many mistakes, yet the Russian Liberal Press showed an exceptional unanimity in the more important questions of a constitutional and national character: full power to the Provisional Government, Democratic reforms in the spirit of the programme of March 2nd,[25] war until victory along with the Allies, an All-Russia Constituent Assembly as the source of the supreme power and of the constitution of the country. In yet another respect has the Liberal Press left a good reputation behind it in history: in the days of lofty popular enthusiasm, as in the days of doubt, vacillation and general demoralisation, which distinguished the Revolutionary period of 1917, no place was found in it, nor in the Right Press either, for the distribution of German gold....

The appearance, on a large scale, of the new Socialist Press was accompanied by a series of unfavourable circumstances. It had no normal past, no traditions. Its prolonged life below the surface, the exclusively destructive method of action adopted by it, its suspicious and hostile attitude towards all authority, put a certain stamp on the whole tendency of this Press, leaving too little place and attention for creative work. The complete discord in thought, the contradictions and vacillation which reigned both within the Soviet and also among the party groups and within the parties, were reflected in the Press, just as much as the elemental pressure from below of irresistible, narrowly egotistic class demands; for neglect of these demands gave rise to the threat, which was once expressed by the “beauty and pride of the Revolution,” the Kronstadt sailors to Tchernov, the Minister: “If you will not give us anything, Michael Alexandrovitch will.” Finally, the Press was not uninfluenced by the appearance in it of a number of such persons as brought into it an atmosphere of uncleanness and perfidy. The papers were full of names, which had emerged from the sphere of crime, of the Secret Police and of international espionage. All these gentlemen—Tchernomazov (a provocator in the Secret Police and director of the pre-Revolutionary Pravda), Berthold (the same and also editor of the Communist), Dekonsky, Malinovsky, Matislavsky, those colleagues of Lenin and Gorky—Nahamkes, Stoutchka, Ouritsky, Gimmer (Soukhanov), and a vast number of equally notorious names—brought the Russian Press to a hitherto unknown degree of moral degradation.

The difference was only a matter of scope. Some papers, akin to the Soviet semi-official organ, the Izvestia of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, undermined the country and the Army, while others of the Pravda type (the organ of the Bolshevik Social Democrats) broke them down.

At the same time as the Izvestia would call on its readers to support the Provisional Government, while secretly ready to strike a blow at it, the Pravda would declare that “the Government is counter-Revolutionary, and therefore there can be no relations with it. The task of the Revolutionary Democracy is to attain to the dictatorship of the proletariat.” And Tchernov’s Socialist Revolutionary organ, the Delo Naroda, would discover a neutral formula: all possible support to the Coalition Government, but “there is not, and cannot be, any unanimity in this question; more than that, there must not be, in the interests of the double defence.”

At the same time as the Izvestia began to preach an advance, but without a final victory, not abandoning, however, the intention of “deciding over the heads of the Government and the ruling classes the conditions on which the War might be stopped,” the Pravda called for universal fraternisation, and the Socialist Revolutionary, Zemlia i Volia, alternately grieved that Germany still wished for conquest, or demanded a separate peace. Tchernov’s paper, which in March had considered that, “should the enemy be victorious, there would be an end to Russian freedom,” now, in May, saw in the preaching of an advance “the limit of unblushing gambling on the fate of the Fatherland, the limit of irresponsibility and demagogy.” Gorky’s paper, Novaya Zhizn, speaking through Gimmer (Soukhanov), rises to cynicism when it says: “When Kerensky gives orders for Russian soil to be cleared of enemy troops, his demands far exceed the limits of military technique. He calls for a political act, one which has never been provided for by the Coalition Government. For clearing the country by an advance signifies ‘complete victory’....” Altogether the Novaya Zhizn supported German interests with especial warmth, raising its voice in all cases when German interests were threatened with danger, either on the part of the Allies or on ours. And when the advance of the disorganised Army ended in failure—in Tarnopol and Kalush—when Riga had fallen, the Left Press started a bitter campaign against the Stavka and the commanding personnel, and Tchernov’s paper, in connection with the proposed reforms in the Army, cried hysterically: “Let the proletarians know that it is proposed again to give them up to the iron embrace of beggary, slavery and hunger.... Let the soldiers know that it is proposed again to enslave them with the ‘discipline’ of their commanders and to force them to shed their blood without end, so long as the belief of the Allies in Russia’s ‘gallantry’ is restored.” The most straightforward of all, however, was afterwards the Iskra, the organ of the Menshevist Internationalists (Martov-Zederbaum), which, on the day of the occupation of the island of Oesel by a German landing-party, published an article entitled “Welcome to the German Fleet!”

The Army had its own military Press. The organs of the Army staffs and of those at the Front, which used to appear before the Revolution, were of the nature of purely military bulletins. Beginning with the Revolution, these organs, with their weak literary forces, began to fight for the existence of the Army, conscientiously, honestly, but not cleverly. Meeting with indifference or exasperation on the part of the soldiers, who had already turned their backs on the officers, and especially on the part of the Committee organs of the “Revolutionary” movement, which existed side by side with them, they began to weaken and die out, until at last, in the days of August, an order from Kerensky closed them altogether; the exclusive right of publishing Army newspapers was transferred to the Army Committee and the Committees of the troops at the Front. The same fate befell the News of the Active Army, the Stavka organ, started by General Markov and left without support from the weighty powers of the Press of the capital.

The Committee Press, widely spread among the troops at the expense of the Government, reflected those moods of which I have spoken earlier in the chapter on the Committees, ranging from Constitutionalism to Anarchism, from complete victory to an immediate conclusion of peace, without orders. It reflected—but in a worse, more sorry form, as regards literary style and content—that disharmony of thought and those tendencies towards extreme theories which characterised the Socialist Press of the Capital. In this respect, in accordance with the personnel of the Committees, and to some extent with their proximity to Petrograd, the respective Fronts differed somewhat from one another. The most moderate was the South-Western Front, somewhat worse, the Western, while the Northern Front was pronouncedly Bolshevist. Besides local talent, the columns of the Committee Press were in many cases opened wide to the resolutions not only of the extreme national parties, but even of the German parties.

It would be incorrect, however, to speak of the immediate action of the Press on the masses of the soldiers. It did not exist any more than there were any popular newspapers which these masses could understand. The Press exercised an influence principally on the semi-educated elements in the ranks of the Army. This sphere turned out to be nearer to the soldiers, and to it passed a certain share of that authority which was enjoyed earlier by the officers. Ideas gathered from the papers and refracted through the mental prism of this class passed in a simplified form to the soldiery, the vast majority of which unfortunately consisted of ignorant and illiterate men. And among these masses all these conceptions, stripped of cunningly-woven arguments, premises and grounds, were transformed into wondrously simple and terrifically logical conclusions.

In them dominated the straightforward negation: “Down!”

Down with the Bourgeois Government, down with the counter-Revolutionary Commanders, down with the “sanguinary slaughter,” down with everything of which they were sick, of which they were wearied, all that in one way or another interfered with their animal instincts and hampered “free will”—down with them all!

In such an elementary fashion did the Army at innumerable soldiers’ meetings settle all the political and social questions that were agitating mankind.

The curtain has fallen. The Treaty of Versailles has for a time given pause to the armed conflict in Central Europe. Evident to the end that, having regained their strength, the nations may again take up their arms, so as to burst the chains in which defeat has fettered them.

The idea of the “world-peace,” which the Christian churches have been preaching for twenty centuries, is buried for years to come.

To us, how childishly naïve now seem the efforts of the humanists of the nineteenth century, who by prolonged, ardent propaganda sought to soften the horrors of war and to introduce the limiting norms of International Law! Yes, now, when we know that one may not only infringe the neutrality of a peaceful, cultured country, but give it to be ravaged and plundered; when we can sink peaceable ships, with women and children on board, by means of submarines; poison people with suffocating gases and tear their bodies with the fragments of explosive bullets; when a whole country, a whole nation, is quoted by cold, political calculation merely as a “Barrier” against the invasion of armed force and pernicious ideas, and is periodically either helped or betrayed in turn.

But the most terrible of all weapons ever invented by the mind of man, the most shameful of all the methods permitted in the late World War was the poisoning of the soul of a people!

Germany assigns the priority of this invention to Great Britain. Let them settle this matter between themselves. But I see my native land crushed, dying in the dark night of horror and insanity. And I know her tormentors.

Two theses have arisen before mankind in all their grim power and all their shameless nakedness:

All is permissible for the advantage of one’s country!

All is permissible for the triumph of one’s party, one’s class!

All, even the moral and physical ruin of an enemy country, even the betrayal of one’s native land and the making on its living body of social experiments, the failure of which threatens it with paralysis and death.

Germany and Lenin unhesitatingly decided these questions in the affirmative. The world has condemned them; but are all those who speak of the matter so unanimous and sincere in their condemnation? Have not these ideas left somewhat too deep traces in the minds, not so much perhaps of the popular masses as of their leaders? I, at least, am led to such a conclusion by all the present soulless world policy of the Governments, especially towards Russia, by all the present utterly selfish tactics of the class organisations.

This is terrible.

I believe that every people has the right to defend its existence, sword in hand; I know that for many years to come war will be the customary method of settling international disputes, and that methods of warfare will be both honourable and, alas! dishonourable. But there is a certain limit, beyond which even baseness ceases to be simply baseness and becomes insanity. This limit we have already reached. And if religion, science, literature, philosophers, humanitarians, teachers of mankind do not arouse a broad, idealistic movement against the Hottentot morality with which we have been inoculated, the world will witness the decline of its civilisation.

CHAPTER XXII.
The Condition of the Army at the July Advance.

Having outlined a whole series of conditions which exercised an influence on the life, spirit, and military efficiency of the once famous Russian Army, I shall now pass to the sorrowful tale of its fall.

I was born in the family of an officer of the line, and for twenty-two years (including the two years of the Russo-Japanese War) before the European War served in the ranks of modest line units and in small Army Staffs. I shared the life, the joys and the sorrows of the officer and the soldier, and devoted many pages in the Military Press to their life which was my own. From 1914 to 1920, almost without interval, I stood at the head of the troops and led them into battle on the fields of White Russia, Volynia, Galicia, in the mountains of Hungary, in Roumania, and then—then in the bitter internecine war which, with bloody share, ploughed up our native land.

I have more grounds and more right to speak of the Army and in the name of the Army than all those strangers of the Socialist Camp, who, in their haughty self-conceit, as soon as they touched the Army, began breaking down its foundations, judging its leaders and fighters and diagnosing its serious disease, who even now, after grievous experiments and experiences, have not given up the hope of transforming this mighty and terrible weapon of national self-preservation into a means for satisfying party and social appetites. For me, the Army is not only an historical, social, national phenomenon, but nearly the whole of my life, in which lie many memories, precious and not to be forgotten, in which all is bound up and interlaced into one general mass of swiftly passing days of sadness and of joy, in which there are hundreds of cherished graves, of buried dreams and unextinguishable faith.

The Army should be approached cautiously, never forgetting that not only its historical foundations, but even such details of its life as may, perhaps, seem strange and absurd, have their meaning and significance.

When the Revolution began that old veteran, beloved by both officers and soldiers, General P. I. Mishtchenko, being unable to put up with the new régime, retired from the Army. He lived at Temir-Han Shoura, never went outside his garden fence, and always wore his General’s uniform and his crosses of St. George, even in the days of Bolshevik power. One day the Bolsheviks came to search his house, and, among other things, wanted to deprive him of his shoulder straps and decorations. The old General retired to a neighbouring room and shot himself.

Let whoever will laugh at “old-fashioned prejudices.” We shall reverence his noble memory.

And so the storm-cloud of the Revolution broke.

There was no doubt whatever that such a cataclysm in the life of the nation could not but have a grave effect. The Revolution was bound to convulse the Army, greatly weakening and breaking all its historic ties. Such a result was normal, natural and unavoidable, independently of the condition of the Army at the moment, independently of the mutual relations of Commanders and subordinates. We can speak only of the circumstances which arrested or hastened the disintegration of the Army.

A Government appeared.

Its source might have been one of three elements: The High Command (a military dictatorship), the Bourgeois State Duma (the Provisional Government), or the Revolutionary Democracy (the Soviet). It was the Provisional Government that was acknowledged. The attitude of the other two elements towards it was different; the Soviet practically robbed the Government of its power, while the High Command submitted to it implicitly, and was therefore obliged to carry out its plans.

The Government had two courses open to it; it could combat the disintegrating influences which began to appear in the Army by stern and ruthless measures, or it could encourage them. Owing to pressure from the Soviet and partly through want of firmness and through misunderstanding of the laws of existence of armed forces, the Government chose the second course.

This circumstance decided the fate of the Army. All other circumstances could but influence the duration of the process of disruption and its depth.

The festive days of touching and joyous union between the officers and the soldiers vanished rapidly, being replaced by tiresome, weary week-days. But they had been in the past, those days of joy, and, therefore, no impassable abyss existed between the two Ranks, over which the inexorable logic of life had long been casting a bridge. The unnecessary, obsolete methods, which had introduced an element of irritation into the soldiery, fell away at once, as of themselves; the officers became more thoughtful and industrious.

Then came a torrent of newspapers, appeals, resolutions, orders, from some unknown authority, and with them a whole series of new ideas, which the soldier masses were unable to digest and assimilate. New people appeared, with a new speech, so fascinating and promising, liberating the soldiers from obedience and inspiring hope that they would be saved from deadly danger immediately. When one Regimental Commander naïvely inquired whether these people might not be tried by Field Court-Martial and shot, his telegram, after passing through all official stages, called forth the reply from Petrograd that these people were inviolable, and had been sent by the Soviet to the troops for the very purpose of explaining to them the true meaning of current events.

When such leaders of the Revolutionary Democracy, as have not yet lost their feeling of responsibility for crucified Russia, now say that the movement, caused by the deep class differences between the officers and the soldiers and by “the enslavement” of the latter, was of an elemental nature, which they could not resist, this is deeply untrue.

All the fundamental slogans, all the programmes, tactics, instructions and text-books, forming the foundation of the “democratisation” of the Army, had been drawn up by the military sections of the secret Socialist parties long before the War, outside of “elemental” pressure, on the grounds of clear, cold calculation, as a product of “Socialist reasoning and conscience.”

True, the officers strove to persuade the men not to believe the “new words” and to do their duty. But from the very beginning the Soviets had declared the officers to be foes of the Revolution; in many towns they had been subjected to cruel torture and death, and this with impunity. Evidently not without some reason, when even the “Bourgeois” Duma issued such a strange and unexpected “announcement” as the following: “This first day of March, rumours were spread among the soldiers of the garrison of Petrograd to the effect that the officers in the regiments were disarming the soldiers. These rumours were investigated and found to be false. As President of the Military Commission of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma, I declare that the most decided measures will be taken to prevent such action on the part of the officers, up to the shooting of those guilty of it. Signed, Colonel Engelhardt.”

Next came Order No. 1., the Declaration and so forth.

Perhaps, however, it might have been possible to combat all this verbal ocean of lies and hypocrisy which flowed from Petrograd and from the local Soviets and was echoed by the local demagogues had it not been for a circumstance which paralysed all the efforts of the Commanders, viz., the animal feeling of self-preservation which had flooded the whole mass of the soldiers. This feeling had always existed. But it had been kept under and restrained by examples of duty fulfilled, by flashes of national self-consciousness, by shame, fear and pressure. When all these elements had disappeared, when for the soothing of a drowsy conscience there was a whole arsenal of new conceptions, which justified the care for one’s own hide and furnished it with an ideal basis, then the Army could exist no longer. This feeling upset all the efforts of the Commanders, all moral principles and the whole regiment of the Army.

In a large, open field, as far as the eye can see, run endless lines of trenches, sometimes coming close up to each other, interlacing their barbed wire fences, sometimes running far off and vanishing behind a verdant crest. The sun has risen long ago, but it is still as death in the field. The first to rise are the Germans. In one place and another their figures look out from the trenches; a few come out on to the parapet to hang their clothes, damp after the night, in the sun. A sentry in our front trench opens his sleepy eyes, lazily stretches himself, after looking indifferently at the enemy trenches. A soldier in a dirty shirt, bare-footed, with coat slung over his shoulders, cringing under the morning cold, comes out of his trench and plods towards the German positions, where, between the lines, stands a “postbox”; it contains a new number of the German paper, The Russian Messenger, and proposals for barter.

All is still. Not a single gun is to be heard. Last week the Regimental Committee issued a resolution against firing, even against distance firing; let the necessary distances be estimated by the map. A Lieutenant-Colonel of the gunners—a member of the Committee—gave his full approval to this resolution. When yesterday the Commander of a field battery began firing at a new enemy trench, our infantry opened rifle fire on our observation post and wounded the telephone operator. During the night the infantry lit a fire on the position being constructed for a newly arrived heavy battery.[26]

Nine a.m. The first Company gradually begins to awaken. The trenches are incredibly defiled; in the narrow communication trenches and those of the second line the air is thick and close. The parapet is crumbling away. No one troubles to repair it; no one feels inclined to do so, and there are not enough men in the Company. There is a large number of deserters; more than fifty have been allowed to go. Old soldiers have been demobilised, others have gone on leave with the arbitrary permission of the Committee. Others, again, have been elected members of numerous Committees, or gone away as delegates; a while ago, for instance, the Division sent a numerous delegation to “Comrade” Kerensky to verify whether he had really given orders for an advance. Finally, by threats and violence, the soldiers have so terrorised the regimental surgeons that the latter have been issuing medical certificates even to the “thoroughly fit.”

In the trenches the hours pass slowly and wearily, in dullness and idleness. In one corner men are playing cards, in another a soldier returned from leave is lazily and listlessly telling a story; the air is full of obscene swearing. Someone reads aloud from the Russian Messenger the following:

“The English want the Russians to shed the last drop of their blood for the greater glory of England, who seeks her profit in everything.... Dear soldiers, you must know that Russia would have concluded peace long ago had not England prevented her.... We must turn away from her—the Russian people demand it; such is their sacred will.”

Someone or other swears.

“Don’t you wish for peace. They make peace, the ——; we shall die here, without getting our freedom!”

Along the trenches came Lieutenant Albov, the Company Commander. He said to the groups of soldiers, somewhat irresolutely and entreatingly:

“Comrades, get to work quickly. In three days we have not made a single communication trench to the firing line.”

The card players did not even look round; someone said in a low voice, “All right.” The man reading the newspaper rose and reported, in a free and easy manner:

“The Company does not want to dig, because that would be preparation for an advance, and the Committee has resolved....”

“Look here, you understand nothing at all about it, and, moreover, why do you speak for the whole Company? Even if we remain on the defensive we are lost in case of an alarm; the whole Company cannot get out to the firing line along a single trench.”

He said this, and with a gesture of despair went on his way. Matters were hopeless. Every time he tried to speak with them for a time, and in a friendly way, they would listen to him attentively; they liked to talk to him, and, on the whole, his Company looked on him favourably in their own way. But he felt that between him and them a wall had sprung up, against which all his good impulses were shattered. He had lost the path to their soul—lost it in the impassable jungle of darkness, roughness, and that wave of distrust and suspicion which had overwhelmed the soldiers. Was it, perhaps, that he used the wrong words, or was not able to say what he meant? Scarcely that. But a little while before the War, when he was a student and was carried away by the popular movement, he had visited villages and factories and had found “real words” which were clear and comprehensible to all. But, most of all, with what words can one move men to face death when all their feelings are veiled by one feeling—that of self-preservation?

The train of his thoughts was broken by the sudden appearance of the Regimental Commander.

“What the devil does this mean? The man on duty does not come forward. The men are not dressed. Filth and stench. What are you about, Lieutenant?”

The grey-headed Colonel cast a stern glance on the soldiers which involuntarily impressed them. They all rose to their feet. He glanced through a loop-hole and, starting back, asked nervously:

“What is that?”

In the green field, among the barbed wire, a regular bazaar was going on. A group of Germans and of our men were bartering vodka, tobacco, lard, bread. Some way off a German officer reclined on the grass—red-faced, sturdy, with an arrogant look on his face—and carried on a conversation with a soldier named Soloveytchick; and, strange to say, the familiar and insolent Soloveytchick stood before the Lieutenant respectfully.

The Colonel pushed the observer aside and, taking his rifle from him, put it through the loop-hole. A murmur was heard among the soldiers. They began to ask him not to shoot. One of them, in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, remarked:

“This is provocation.”

The Colonel, crimson with fury, turned to him for a moment and shouted:

“Silence!”

All grew silent and pressed to the loop-hole. A shot was heard, and the German officer convulsively stretched himself out and was still; blood was running from his head. The haggling soldiers scattered.

The Colonel threw the rifle down and, muttering through his teeth “Scoundrels!” strode further along the trenches. The “truce” was infringed.

The Lieutenant went off to his hut. His heart was sad and empty. He was oppressed by the realisation of his unwantedness and uselessness in these absurd surroundings, which perverted the whole meaning of that service to his country, which alone justified all his grave troubles and the death which might perhaps be near. He threw himself on his bed, where he lay for an hour, for two hours, striving to think of nothing, to forget himself.

But from beyond the mud wall, where the shelter lay, there crept someone’s muffled voice, which seemed to wrap his brain in a filthy fog:

“It is all very well for them, the ——. They receive their hundred and forty roubles a month clear, while we—so generous of them—get seven and a half. Wait a bit, our turn will come.”

Silence.

“I hear they are sharing the land in our place in the province of Kharkov. If I could only get home.”

There was a knock at the door. The Sergeant-Major had come.

“Your honour (so he always addressed his Company Commander in the absence of witnesses), the Company is angry, and threatens to leave the position if it is not relieved at once. The Second Battalion should have relieved us at five o’clock, and it is not here yet. Couldn’t they be rung up?”

“They will not go away. All right, I shall inquire; but, all the same, it is too late now. After this morning’s incident the Germans will not allow us to be relieved by day.”

“They will allow us. The Committee members know about it already. I think”—he lowered his voice—“that Soloveytchick has managed to slip across and explain matters. It is rumoured that the Germans have promised to overlook it, on condition that next time the Colonel comes to visit the trenches we should let them know, and they will throw a bomb. You had better report it or else, who knows?”

“All right.”

The Sergeant-Major was preparing to leave. The Lieutenant stopped him.

“Matters are bad, Petrovitch. They do not trust us.”

“God alone knows whom they trust; only last week the Sixth Company elected their Sergeant-Major themselves, and now they are making a mock of him; they won’t let him say a word.”

“What will things be afterwards?”

The Sergeant-Major blushed, and said softly:

“Then the Soloveytchicks will rule over us, and we shall be, so to speak, dumb animals before them—that is how matters will be, your honour.”

The relief came at last. Captain Bouravin, the Commander of the Fifth Company, came into the hut. Albov offered to show him the section and explain the disposition of the enemy.

“Very well, though that does not matter, because I am not really in command of the Company—I am boycotted.”

“How?”

“Just so. They have elected the 2nd Lieutenant, my subaltern, as Company Commander, and degraded me as a supporter of the old régime, because, you see, I had drill twice a day—you know that the marching contingents come up here absolutely untrained. Indeed, the 2nd Lieutenant was the first to vote for my removal. ‘We have been slave-driven long enough,’ said he. ‘Now we are free. We must clean out everyone, beginning with the head. A young man can manage the regiment just as well, so long as he is a true Democrat and supports the freedom of the soldier.’ I would have left, but the Colonel flatly refused to allow it, and forbids me to hand over the company. So now, you see, we have two commanders. I have stood the situation for five days. Look here, Albov, you are not in a hurry, are you? Very good, then; let us have a chat. I am feeling depressed. Albov, have you not yet thought of suicide?”

“Not as yet.”

Bouravin rose to his feet.

“Understand me, they have desecrated my soul, outraged my human dignity, and so every day, every hour, in every word, glance or gesture one sees a constant outrage. What have I done to them? I have been in the service for eight years; I have no family, no house or home. All this I have found in the regiment, my own regiment. Twice I have been badly wounded, and before my wounds were healed have rushed back to the regiment—so there you are! And I loved the soldier—I am ashamed to speak of it myself, but they must remember how, more than once, I have crept out under the barbed wire to drag in the wounded. And now! Well, yes, I reverence the regimental flag and hate their crimson rags. I accept the Revolution. But to me Russia is infinitely dearer than the Revolution. All these Committees and meetings, all this adventitious rubbish which has been sown in the Army I am organically unable to swallow and digest. But, after all, I interfere with no one; I say nothing of this to anyone, I strive to convince no one. If only the War could be ended honourably, and then I am ready to break stones on the highway, only not to remain in an Army democratised in such a manner. Take my subaltern; he discusses everything with them—nationalisation, socialisation, labour control. Now I cannot do so—I never had time to study it, and I confess I never took any interest in the matter. You remember how the Army Commander came here and, amidst a crowd of soldiers, said: ‘Don’t say “General”; call me simply Comrade George.’ Now I cannot do such things; besides, all the same, they would not believe me. So I am silent. But they understand and pay me off. And, you know, with all their ignorance, what subtle psychologists they are! They are able to find the place where the sting hurts most. Now, yesterday for instance....”

He stooped down to Albov’s ear, and continued in a whisper:

“I returned from our mess. In my tent, at the head of my bed, I have a photograph—well, just a treasured memory. There they had drawn an obscenity!”

Bouravin rose and wiped his brow with his handkerchief.

“Well, let us take a look at the positions. God willing, we shall not have to stand it long. No one in the Company wants to go scouting. I go myself every night; sometimes there is a volunteer who accompanies me—he has a hunter’s strain in him. Should anything happen, please, Albov, see to it that a little packet—it is in my bag—is sent to its destination.”

The company, without waiting for the completion of the relief, wandered away in disorder. Albov plodded after them.

The communication trench ended in a broad hollow. Like a great ant-hill the regimental bivouac stretched in rows of huts, tents, smoking camp-kitchens and horse-lines. They had once been carefully masked by artificial plantations, which had now withered, lost their leaves, and were merely leafless poles. On an open green soldiers were drilling here and there—listlessly, lazily, as if to create an impression that they were doing something; after all, it would be awkward to be doing absolutely nothing at all. There were few officers about; the good ones were sick of the trivial farce into which real work was now transformed, while the inferior ones had a moral justification for their laziness and idleness. In the distance something between a mob and a column marched along the road towards the regimental staff quarters, carrying crimson flags. Before them went a huge banner bearing the inscription, in white letters, visible in the distance: “Down with War!”

These were reinforcements coming up. At once, all the soldiers drilling on the green, as if at a signal, broke their ranks and ran towards the column.

“Hey, countrymen! What province are you from?”

An animated conversation began on the usual anxious themes: how did matters stand with the land; would peace be concluded soon? Much interest, also, was shown in the question as to whether they had brought any home-brewed spirits, as “their own regimental” home brew, manufactured in fairly large quantities at “the distillery” of the Third Battalion, was very disgusting, and gave rise to painful symptoms.

Albov made his way to the mess-room. The officers were gathering for dinner. What had become of the former animation, friendly talk, healthy laughter and torrents of reminiscences of a stormy, hard, but glorious life of war? The reminiscences had faded, the dreams had flown away, and stern reality crushed them all down with its weight.

They spoke in low voices, sometimes breaking off or expressing themselves figuratively: the mess servants might denounce them, and also new faces had appeared among themselves. Not so long ago the Regimental Committee, on the report of a servant, had tried an officer of the regiment, who wore the Cross of St. George and to whom the regiment owed one of its most famous victories. This Lieutenant-Colonel had said something about “mutinous slaves.” And though it was proved that those were not his own words and that he had only quoted a speech made by Comrade Kerensky, the Committee “expressed its indignation at him”; he had to leave the regiment.

The personnel of the officers, too, was much changed. Of the original staff, some two or three remained. Some had perished, others had been crippled, others again, having earned “distrust,” were wandering about the Front, importuning Staffs, joining shock battalions, entering institutions in the rear, while some of the weaker brethren had simply gone home. The Army had ceased to need the bearers of the traditions of its units, of its former glory—of those old Bourgeois prejudices, which had been swept into the dust by the Revolutionary creative power.

Everyone in the regiment knows already of that morning’s event in Albov’s Company. He is questioned about details. A Lieutenant-Colonel sitting next him wagged his head.

“Well done, our old man. There was something in the Fifth Company, too. But I am afraid it will end badly. Have you heard what was done to the Commander of the Doubov Regiment, because he refused to confirm an elected Company Commander and put three agitators under arrest? He was crucified. Yes, my boy! They nailed him to a tree and began, in turn, to stick their bayonets into him, to cut off his ears, his nose, his fingers.”

He seized his head in his hands.

“My God! Where do these men get so much brutality, so much baseness?”

At the other end of the table the ensigns are carrying on a conversation on that ever harassing theme—where to get away to.

“Have you applied for admission to the Revolutionary Battalion?”

“No, it is not worth while. It seems that it is being formed under the superintendence of the Executive Committee, with Committees, elections and “Revolutionary” discipline. It does not suit me.”

“They say that shock units are being formed in Kornilov’s Army and at Minsk also. That would be good....”

“I have applied for transfer to our rifle brigade in France. Only I do not know what I am to do about the language.”

“Alas! my boy, you are too late,” remarked the Lieutenant-Colonel from the other end of the table. “The Government has long ago sent ‘emigrant comrades’ there to enlighten minds. And now our brigades, somewhere in the South of France, are in the situation of something like either prisoners of war or disciplinary battalions.”

This talk, however, was realised by all to be of a purely platonic character, in view of the hopelessness of a situation from which there was no escape. It was only a case of dreaming a little, as Tchekhov’s Three Sisters once dreamed of Moscow. Dreaming of such a wondrous place, where human dignity is not trampled into the mud daily, where one can live quietly and die honourably, without violence and without outrage to one’s service. Such a very little thing.

“Mitka, bread!” boomed out the mighty bass of 2nd Lieutenant Yassny.

He is quite a character, this Yassny. Tall and sturdy, with a thick crop of hair and a copper-coloured beard, he is altogether an embodiment of the strength and courage of the soil. He wears four crosses of St. George, and has been promoted from the rank of Sergeant for distinction in action. He does not adapt himself to his new surroundings in the least, said “levorution” for “revolution” and “mettink” for “meeting,” and cannot reconcile himself to the new order. Yassny’s undoubted “democratic” views, his candour and sincerity, have given him an exceptionally privileged position in the regiment. Without enjoying any special influence, he can, however, condemn, rudely, harshly, sometimes with an oath, both people and ideas, which are jealously guarded and worshipped by the regimental “Revolutionary Democracy.” The men are angry, but suffer him.

“There is no bread, I say.”

The officers, absorbed in their thoughts and in their conversation, had not even noticed that they had eaten their soup without bread.

“There will be no bread to-day,” answered the waiter.

“What is the meaning of this? Call the mess-sergeant.”

The mess-sergeant came, and began to justify himself in a bewildered manner; he had sent in a request that morning for two pouds of bread. The head of the Commissariat had endorsed it “to be issued,” but the clerk, Fedotov, a member of the Commissariat Committee, had endorsed it in his turn “not to be issued.” So the storehouse would not issue any bread.

No one made any objection, so painfully ashamed was everyone both of the mess-sergeant and of those depths of inanity which had suddenly broken into their life and swamped it with a grey, filthy slime. Only Yassny’s bass voice rang out distinctly under the arches of the mess-room:

“What swine!”

Albov was just preparing for a nap after dinner when the flap of his tent was lifted, and through the aperture appeared the bald head of the Chief of the Commissariat—a quiet, elderly Colonel, who had joined the Army again from the retired list.

“May I come in?”

“I beg your pardon, Colonel.”

“Never mind, my dear fellow, don’t get up. I have just come in for a second. You see, to-day at six o’clock there is to be a regimental meeting. It will hear the Report of the Committee for verifying the Commissariat, and apparently they will go for me. I am no speech-maker, but you are a master of it. Take my part, should it be necessary.”

“Certainly. I did not intend going, but once it is necessary, I shall be there.”

“Thank you, then, my dear fellow.”

By six o’clock the square next to the regimental Staff quarters was completely covered with men. At least two thousand had turned up. The crowd moved, chattered, laughed—just such a Russian crowd as on the Khodynka in Moscow or the Champs de Mars in Petrograd at a holiday entertainment. The Revolution could not transform it all at once, either mentally or spiritually. But, having stunned it with a torrent of new words and opened up before it unbounded possibilities, the Revolution had destroyed its equilibrium and made it nervously susceptible and stormily reactive to all methods of external influence. An ocean of words—both morally lofty and basely criminal—flowed through their minds as through a sieve, which passed through the trend of the new ideas and retained only those grains which had a real applied meaning in their daily life, in the surroundings of the soldier, the peasant, the workman. Hence the absolute absence of results from the torrents of eloquence which flooded the Army at the instance of the Minister of War; hence, too, the illogical warm sympathy with both speakers of clearly opposed politics.