Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution
too readily. One can understand, moreover, that the number of desertions on the front was very small, since for the soldiers at the front "fraternization" played the same part for them as desertion for those in the rear.
We have had no direct information on the character and the extent of this fraternization. In the sectors of the front that we visited there had never been, or else there had long ceased to be, any fraternizations. But all the members of the Government, or the military leaders whom we questioned, agreed in saying that during the first weeks of the Revolution fraternization with the enemy, under various forms, was a general rule on the northern part of the front; it had been fairly frequent on the southern and rather less so on the south-western front.
It was limited for the most part to a practical armistice, with here and there an attempt to establish what the military penal code calls intelligence with the enemy—messages thrown from one trench to another, communications by signalling, etc. Often, however, they went farther,
