Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution/Chapter 3

by Émile Auguste Vandervelde

CHAPTER III

THE REVOLUTION IN THE ARMIES

1. Our Departure for the Front.

ON leaving Petrograd for the front we were conscious of a certain apprehension and as great a curiosity as we had felt when we first set foot in revolutionary Russia. Petrograd had given us the impression that although it was there in the capital that the problems of the Russian Revolution were put, since May 1917 it had ceased to be the place where these problems were solved. The capital had become merely the echo of all that was happening throughout the country, and especially on the front. Thus it was on the armies at the front, and on the material and especially the moral possibility of an offensive that depended the maintenance of the Provisional Government, as well as the cure of the attack of anarchy and political neurasthenia from which the country had suffered since the Revolution.

George Bernard Shaw has said, in that paradoxical style of his in which there is often so much truth: "If it be true that to win a war you must have a united omnipotent Government, it is no less true under present circumstances that if you want a united omnipotent Government you must have a war … if the Russian Revolution is to be saved from reaction, and the Russian Republic from disruption by the discontent of the working class and the diversity of the ideals of its own reformers, the revolutionary Government must fortify itself by a war, precisely as the French revolutionary Government had to do. If there were no war, it would have to make one.

"By a stroke of luck so fortunate that few good Churchmen will hesitate to describe it as providential, the Russian leaders are spared the necessity of cynically making war to save their country. The war is ready made for them, largely by the folly of their discarded rulers, and the Revolution has transformed it from a dynastic pan-Slav war to a crusade for liberty and equality throughout the world. Yesterday the kings of the earth rose up and their rulers took counsel together against the Lord and His anointed. To-day the democrats of the earth rise up and their leaders take counsel together against the kings; and in this holy war lies the salvation of Russia from anarchy."

It was as the apostles of that Holy War that we were going to the front. Our visit was to be neither an amateur excursion nor simply a means of satisfying our own curiosity. The generalissimo who had invited us—it was General Alexeieff at that—time gave us to understand that he expected it to be a veritable mission of propaganda. He wished our efforts to be joined to those that had been made a little while before by the delegations from the Black Sea sailors, by Kerensky, and Albert Thomas, in order to perfect what he called the moral preparation for the offensive.

Needless to say, a visit to the front in such conditions would give us an opportunity of making more interesting observations than are generally possible on an official mission, or to journalists on specially conducted tours. We were to have a unique opportunity of contact and free discussion with the representatives of the different conflicting opinions in existence in the Russian armies. Moreover, experience had already taught us that the Russian organizers of our trip would not try to hide from us any of the weaknesses of the situation. On the contrary, they carried frankness to such a pitch that one day they went so far as to ask us to address the mutinous troops of an army corps which had refused to return to the trenches and were encamped near Buczacz and threatening to march on Tarnopol. Though in the end that visit did not take place, it was only because in the meantime the Russian Government had put an end to all negotiations with the rebels and announced that they would be made to obey, by force if need be.

Moreover, we found in every one of the military authorities whom we met in Russia a disposition, surprising to those of us who were accustomed to the systematic reticence of our general staffs in the West, to hide nothing from us that they knew themselves regarding the military situation. Three weeks before the offensive in Galicia, for instance, we had been shown all the plans and given the date. Everywhere that we went we found similar proofs of this communicative disposition. Certainly its adoption might be open to criticism as a general rule of conduct in the direction of military operations, but it merely appeared to us in this instance as another proof of the touching and cordial hospitality of the Russian, for whom the stranger is indeed a brother, and with whom he is ready to share even his secrets.

 

2. At the Stavka.

It was such hospitality as this that we found awaiting us on our arrival at the Stavka, the great Russian General Headquarters, which is eighteen hours' railway journey south-west of Petrograd. We arrived there on the 6th of June. The spacious and comfortable railway waggon in which we had travelled, and which we were to have at our disposal during our whole trip, was formerly used by General Rousski; it had during the early days of the Revolution been used by the delegates of the Provisional Committee to go and meet the Czar and obtain his signature to his act of abdication in the station at Pskov.

Generalissimo Alexeieff, who received us at the Stavka, was about to surrender his post to General Broussiloff. Thus we had the good fortune to meet the two great leaders of the revolutionary army, one at the close and the other at the beginning of his office. Both, in their different ways, made a great impression on us.

We knew General Alexeieff from his photographs, that show him possessed of the typical physiognomy of the moujik—large mouth, large nose, with small and baggy eyes under bushy eyebrows. What a surprise it was to find beneath this rough-hewn plebeian mask a fine and expressive physiognomy. Alexeieff truly is more like a professor than a soldier. His eyes, behind his short-sighted glasses, look you through and through, but with a smiling glance. He speaks slowly, gently, and kindly. Only the gestures of his hands, with their long, thin fingers, betrayed a slight nervousness, caused, no doubt, by the strain of the gigantic task that this energetic worker has been carrying on during the past three years, and perhaps also expressing the grief that he must have felt at a career cut short so soon. But in speaking Alexeieff showed neither regret nor bitterness. He seemed full of a quiet confidence, praising his successor unreservedly. With not one word of criticism for a Government that had just relieved him of his command because of a word of possibly intentional imprudence which he had uttered during a little address to his officers, when he treated as Utopian the device "without annexations or contributions." And indeed there is not on his part any diplomatic reserve. His friends, and even his enemies, agree in saying, the latter in reproach, the former in his praise, that he has never been able to say anything that he did not think. His sincerity and his kindness are evident with every gesture, with every word. He is the incarnation of the ancient military Russian hierarchy in its patriarchal aspect, and one can easily imagine the soldiers addressing him as "father" when he speaks to them as "my children." We could not help remarking when we left his presence that it was such men as he who could best make us realize what is meant by the "Slavonic charm."

Slavonic also to his fingers' tips, but of an entirely different type, is Broussiloff. We saw him when he arrived the next morning from the armies of the south-west, whose command he had just resigned. His very first gestures—a few salutes, a review, a parade of the guard of honour waiting for him at the station—indicated the energy, the self-confidence, the natural air of ease and command that make a leader of men. But though commanding, he has no brutality, no roughness, either of expression or of gesture. That is the most striking difference from the Germans, even from Germanized Austro-Slavs, the inborn refinement of the Russian. His small, blinking eyes are less kind but more sharp than those of Alexeieff. His glance is proud and keen; only the redness of the eyelids displayed traces of fatigue. The forehead is high and narrow, the nose aquiline, the thin lips, surmounted by a small grey moustache, are compressed; all that denotes energy. He is of slender, muscular build, his athletic form well displayed in his close-fitting uniform. He is one of those men of steel who seem to be born to command.

Broussiloff received us immediately after his arrival at the chief General Headquarters, his knowledge of French enabling us to dispense with an interpreter. With regard to the great Galician offensive of 1916, on which we complimented him, he did not hide that he believed he had been the victim of treason on the part of the Government. Without that, he told us, the offensive, which had cost the enemy 408,000 prisoners and 800,000 killed and wounded, would never have been stopped. But the Government, at the decisive moment, uneasy, doubtless, at the prospect of a complete Austrian defeat, cut short the supplies and sent forward no more munitions. On the other hand, the inertia of the armies of Evert and of Kuropatkin, on his right, left him at the mercy of a German outflanking attack from the north. From that day he became convinced that the Government was in the hands of the pro-German clique, the centre of which was at Tsarskoie Selo, and from which a democratic revolution alone could save Russia.

Broussiloff did not hide from us either that this Revolution, while saving the country from the shame of irretrievable defeat, had created new difficulties for the armies. His account of the present situation in the army showed no pessimism, but on the other hand no great optimism. The material conditions were more favourable than they ever were for an offensive, he told us; there was abundance of war material, munitions, forage. But the discipline had been shaken; whole armies had been undermined by the Léninist propaganda, demoralized by "fraternizations." However, the group of armies of the south-west and of the south, which were the most important in the coming offensive, had been the least attacked. Their discipline and their confidence in their leaders were being re-established little by little. The offensive would show us, concluded Broussiloff, if the moral that we are trying to raise just now by an intense propaganda was sufficiently good to allow of our obtaining great strategical results. "As for myself," he added, "I shall do all that I can with the means at my disposal and hope for the best."

Broussiloff summed up the material situation at the front thus: The long period of inactivity that the Russian army had just passed through had allowed of the accumulation of a great quantity of war material and munitions. It is not the production that regulates the supply of it at the front; that depends upon the transport by rail and river navigation, for the means of transport that Russia has at its disposal does not allow of all the material produced or imported being delivered at the front within a fixed time. It is because of this that the temporary suspension of production in the interior has scarcely any immediate importance; for supplies continue to arrive from the reserve stores, including munitions made before the beginning of the war, and that the carelessness of the former Government had left lying at the depots. The artillery is much stronger to-day than it was a year ago. The Russian army has a bigger field artillery than the enemy, while with regard to heavy artillery, they are about equal. Trench artillery is still in its embryonic stage on either side. The munitions are in sufficient quantity to permit of our carrying on an offensive over a large front during several weeks; the light artillery alone has in reserve more than twenty million rounds. A very critical situation had been created towards the end of the winter by the shortage of forage. That crisis was now over, and the horses, the importance of which is enormous, owing to the lack of railways and good roadways for heavy automobiles, were now once more in good condition.

We asked Broussiloff what he thought of the desertions which had taken place en masse after the Revolution. They have had no real importance, he stated, except in the rear; there are probably not more than ten thousand deserters from the front.

 

3. Desertions and Fraternizations.

This statement, surprising as it may seem at first sight, can readily be believed by any one who has seen the Russian army, or rather the two Russian armies, that of the front and that of the rear. There are, indeed, rather more than two million soldiers on the front, and a much more considerable number of men, nearly all without arms, in the rear, notably at the depots. Their number is reckoned at various figures—roughly at between eight and twelve millions. Nothing more curious can be seen, for instance, than these reserve battalions of regiments which, like that of Préobrajensky, of Volhynia, or of Finland, have their depot at Petrograd. Among these there are battalions which number more than ten thousand men, of whom the largest part have never been near the front, many who have never handled a rifle.

What have they been doing during the past three years? Very little assuredly. Their drill takes them only a few hours per week. There are very few arms or material available for instruction; very few officers, and most of the officers loafing about in the depots have never made war and know only the routine of garrison life. In general, the discipline is not sufficiently strict to enable the officers to exact from their troops a really serious effort of instruction or training. Such drill as one sees among the troops in Petrograd is generally most primitive, and as a rule they content themselves with continuing the ordinary garrison routine of peace times. They teach the soldiers to salute and to reply to their officers according to the rules of the former Government—which, however, are scarcely applicable, in Petrograd at least, since the Revolution. If they have a certain number of rifles at their disposal, they execute a few movements in close formation with their arms shouldered, and that is all. Little or no target practice, no route marches, no grenade throwing or trench construction and manœuvres. Such a condition existed before the Revolution, with this difference, that then there were rather more parade drills and outward show of discipline. But for three years now there has been simply inactivity—the monotony and the ennui of garrison life in peacetime, only lazier and less disciplined. The Russian soldier, easy-going (flemmard) by nature, adapts himself to it easily, and greatly appreciates the good soup and the abundant rations of bread (three pounds per day) and the kascha (boiled porridge of sarazin) allowed him.

We can easily imagine what took place at the time of the Revolution. For the soldier it stood for the complete suppression of all hierarchy and discipline. Henceforth he had no more masters, and could do what he pleased. What more natural, then, than to see him profit by his new liberty to take the train and go and see how things were going at home. That was done all the more easily because soldiers travelled henceforth without tickets or any travelling permit whatever. The general anarchy that reigned permitted them, moreover, to turn out from the compartments, if need be, civilians and officers, and take their place. During the first months of the era of liberty soldiers filled the stations and the trains in such numbers that not only did travelling become impossible for civilians, but the transport crisis was seriously aggravated. Even in the month of June, when the situation was considerably ameliorated, we still saw them jumping on all the trains, climbing on the footboards, the buffers, and even on the roofs of the waggons, which became like human bunches of grapes.

In spite of the discomfort and the danger of this method of travelling, it must have appeared very desirable to a large number of soldiers, for they left their garrisons simply to travel a certain distance by train, even when they had not at the end of the journey the prospect of a large city with its attractions and opportunities for spending money. We were told that enormous numbers of soldiers travelled thus during weeks over a great part of the railway system, sleeping in the stations or in the waggons, feeding on hard-boiled eggs, black sausages flavoured with garlic, or buckwheat biscuits, which were sold by the peasants on all station platforms with glasses of tea.

What attraction could such a method of travelling have for them? Certainly neither that of comfort nor the beauty of the country, for scenery is something that this class of travellers care little for. Simply the delight of feeling themselves free, of being able to go alone where they wished to, and to do what they pleased. It is not, after all, so very different from the mentality of the Belgian or French soldier, who, released during his leave from the long constraint and the promiscuity of the front and the depots, finds pleasure in feeling himself alone and free, and prefers, for instance, spending the whole night walking in the street or sleeping on the floor of some waiting-room rather than sharing some common dormitory which, even if it is comfortable, smacks too much of the atmosphere of barracks or billets.

As a general rule, moreover, pleasures of this kind, even in the case of soldiers who had, more wisely, returned to their own villages and houses, soon became monotonous. And so after a few days or weeks the deserters of this category began to long for the fleshpots of their regiment, and placidly returned to their barracks.

But can we honestly treat as deserters these poor wretches who simply profited by their new liberty to celebrate the event? Was it not rather a question of an irregular leave of absence that those soldiers granted themselves for a space of time limited by their money or their choice? Indeed, that was exactly what did limit it in the immense majority of cases of desertions, the number of which has been variously reckoned at one, two, three, and even four millions, but the only effect of which on the Russian army has been to diminish for a certain time by a corresponding figure the number of rations that were distributed to these idle men lounging in the depots and the barracks at the rear.

*****

By that we do not mean that the sudden relaxation of discipline produced by the Revolution has not been felt by the troops at the front.

No one would dream of suggesting such a thing. But we must not forget that by the very nature of things this relaxation of discipline was never as marked among the troops at the front, better organized, more fully occupied, nearer the enemy, and farther from the enervating atmosphere and the thousand temptations that were at work on the soldiers in the big towns. And then there were the material difficulties which made desertions or these long train trips much more difficult to accomplish for the men at the front than for the soldiers in the rear. In the first place, the great distances, hundreds of kilometres in some instances, that the soldier had to traverse from the trenches or from his billet to the nearest station, without the welcome assistance of an obliging automobile, and then, after several days' tramp, the prospect of having to wait a few more to procure a place on the roof of a railway compartment, made the project one not to be undertaken 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, either the Russians or the Germans—the latter apparently acting on the orders of their officers—leaving their trenches to come to the trenches of the enemy, and even to their billets, and mixing with the enemy troops and really fraternizing with them. We were told that in certain sectors of the northern front the Germans went so far as to organize behind their first line of trenches concerts with their military bands, to which the Russian soldiers were invited and eventually came in large numbers, ready to return the compliment the next day.

There is no doubt that incidentally these reciprocal visits have allowed the Germans and the Austrians to glean valuable information about the positions and numbers of the Russian troops. They did not limit themselves to that, however; all the information that we have received on the subject showed that the Austrians and the Germans, especially the latter, had organized the distribution of alcohol to the Russians on a large scale. Sometimes the Austro-German soldiers would exchange it individually for cigarettes or rations of food; sometimes also there were regular distributions that were made on a large scale to the extent of hundreds of litres. It seems that the quantities of alcohol thus introduced in the Russian lines was sufficient in some cases to permit the establishment of regular little stocks, which, at the time of our visit, had not become quite exhausted. In a certain sector of the south-west some of the liquor which had been thus obtained from the Germans was offered to us. It was excellent.

 

4. The German Propaganda.

The demoralizing propaganda carried out by the Germans on the Russians, especially since the Revolution, is most formidable. Daily, enormous quantities of literature are thrown from aircraft above the Russian lines. We have been told that these pamphlets are written in correct colloquial Russian, whilst on the other hand we were shown pamphlets of propaganda, prepared by the Russians and the other Allies for the German lines, which were written in schoolboy German, destined from their sense as well as from their form only to evoke laughter among their readers.

The essence of the German propaganda is always the same; they try to convince the Russians that they are the victims of British and French imperialism, for which they are making a great mistake in allowing themselves to be killed. It is especially against England that their arguments are levelled. In this regard there is a curious coincidence between the German propaganda proper and the views that we heard expressed at Petrograd by certain pacifists—Bolscheviki, Menscheviki, and Internationalists: one of the latter, an influential member of the Soviet of Petrograd, who was wearing, moreover, the uniform of a Russian officer, and who could not, apparently, forget that he had had difficulties in obtaining a passport, from the English military authorities, after having for several years enjoyed the British hospitality that is granted to all political refugees, went so far as to affirm gravely that the real danger which threatens Europe to-day is not German militarism, but British imperialism!

One method of propaganda is a large map, very well drawn up by the German staff, with a broad margin containing very clever commentaries. This map, which has been distributed throughout the Russian front by hundreds of thousands, shows the Russian Empire surrounded on all sides, from Port Arthur to Archangel, by the tentacles of the British octopus. The zones of British influence are printed in the same shade as the metropolitan and colonial territory: they include notably Archangel, Cronstadt, and Aaland; and outside of Russia, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Macedonia, Northern France, and that part of Belgium which is not occupied by the Germans. …

It seems, moreover, that this propaganda, while admirably organized and splendidly carried on, has the same fault that we find in all German enterprises of this sort; it overreaches its mark, and provokes finally, by its ponderous insistence, a psychological reaction, which is the one result that its organizers had failed to foresee. Certainly the Russians showed during the first weeks of the revolutionary era a credulity all the more admirable in that it comes less from their profound ignorance of everything foreign than from a temperament which, after all, is very sympathetic. There is something touching in the almost mystic ardour with which the Russians cling to the idea of the fraternity of all humanity, and the naïve and hospitable confidence with which they greet any one who comes from other lands with manifestations of friendship. But there is, unfortunately for those who try to exploit his credulity in an unscrupulous manner, another side to the picture as soon as the inevitable and final disillusion manifests itself. The disillusioned moujik feels against the person who has abused his good faith a resentment all the keener the greater his belief has been.

It is said even that towards the end of the era of fraternization certain so-called enemy parliamentarians have been aware of this to their cost. At the time of our visit to the south-western and southern fronts every one of them had begun to perceive the white thread with which the German tissue of falsehoods was sewn. The Russians had ended by saying to themselves that after all the German revolution, which they had thought certain in the first intoxication of their triumph, did not seem likely to take place, and if anything was changed, it was only on their own side of the trenches. And so when we visited the trenches they were no longer exchanging cigarettes and bottles of vodka with the enemy, but shot and shell.

None the less, a few days before, a German officer had tried to penetrate into the Russian lines under cover of the white flag of the parliamentary party. He was allowed to approach, and taken to the nearest military authority with the usual ceremony, and there they asked him the reason for his visit. He exhibited a paper, the original of which was shown to us, and which said, in so many words, "that the staff of the Austro-German Army of the South had deputed the officer bearing the passport to go and negotiate with the delegates of the Russian soldiers in order to expose to them the point of view of the German and Austrian Governments." The Russian authority decided that this action was an abuse of the white flag in order to cover a mission of demoralizing propaganda, and the German colonel was sent to Siberia, there to make some complementary reflections at his leisure on the "point of view of the German and Austrian Governments." It is said that the anger of the poor man, who had obviously expected a different reception, was really laughable. He had to admit to himself that the Russians had ceased to be as trustful and credulous as they had seemed in the beginning. It is not remarkable, therefore, to learn that the Austro-German General Staff at the beginning of June issued an order to stop all attempt at intercourse with the Russians.

 

5. With the 7th Army.

Following the advice of General Broussiloff, we decided to go to the south-west front of the armies before going to Jassy, where the Roumanian Government had invited us. We were to visit successively the three armies who held the front in Galicia, and which would be called upon to play the principal part in the coming offensive: the 7th Army in the centre, the 11th on the right, and the 8th on the left.

There were twenty hours' railroad journey from the Stavka to Kamenetz Podolski, where the headquarters of the armies of the south-west were installed. General Goutor, who had just succeeded Broussiloff, received us. He had already made the necessary arrangements for the rest of our journey, which was to be made by motor-car. Indeed, after leaving the Austrian frontier near Kamenetz there are only narrow-gauge railways, on which our wide Russian railway carriage could not travel. We were to return to it only at Jassy. Between Kamenetz and Jassy we were to motor about 1,500 kilometres, half of them only on roads which are worthy of the name. The rest was done—and how? on sandy tracks made throughout the country simply by the passage of mounted troops, or on roads that the Creator—for human intervention in their construction was never clearly demonstrated—had certainly never intended to be used for motoring.

We were to leave on the same night for Buczacz, the headquarters of the 7th Army, which we hoped to reach during the night. Before leaving Kamenetz Podolski we were received by the Soviet of the officers and soldiers' delegates of the armies of the south-west. It was the first time that we had come actually into touch with an organization of that kind. Our interview was much the same as the numerous interviews that we were to have with the Soviets of all formations and units that we visited later on—an extremely cordial reception, an exceptionally attentive public, who listened to our statements with evident sympathy; then questions, nearly always the same, on the situation in occupied Belgium, the possibility of a revolution in Germany, and especially the Stockholm conference. The insistence with which they questioned us on this subject, in the Soviets as at the meetings on the front, shows the extreme importance that this attempt at a reunion of the International had gained in the mind of the Russian soldier: had not the Soviet of Petrograd made them believe that it would be a regular peace conference?

It seemed quite clear to us, however, that the enthusiasm of the army for the Stockholm Conference had considerably cooled down since it had become more and more clear that the hopes of a democratic revolution in Germany, as a direct result of the Russian Revolution, were denied by stern reality. Also, with one exception—that of a somewhat timid Bolcheviki heckler at a meeting at Podgaïce—the statement we made regarding our attitude in connection with the proposed International Socialist Conference met on the front with nothing but complete approval.

We had the pleasure of meeting again in the Soviet of the armies of the south-west one of the delegates from the sailors of the Black Sea, whom we had met three weeks previously at Petrograd. We met several others later on. After having visited Petrograd and the other large towns of the provinces, these 160 delegates, sent by their comrades to carry on a propaganda for the re-establishment of discipline and for the offensive, had separated to go to the front, where they visited the Soviets of all the units. Their work had certainly a considerable effect on the moral reconstruction of the army.

 

6. A Land of Milk and Honey.

As soon as the sitting of the Soviet was over we set forth for Buczacz. Shortly after leaving the town of Kamenetz, beautifully situated on a hill overlooking an idyllic valley and surmounted by the ruins of a Turkish fortress, we reached the Austrian frontier. Here we saw first the traces of the combats of the three preceding years, the ruins of the Austrian Customs House reminding us of the first invasion of Galicia by the Russians in 1914.

This invasion seems scarcely, however, to have done much harm to the country. Certainly here, as elsewhere, war has caused cruel devastation: about one hundred kilometres farther inland, where the old line of trenches, showing the extreme point of the advance of the Austrians in 1915, begins, we entered the zone of villages and towns destroyed and of abandoned farms. But outside the area that has been the scene of military operations it would seem that Galicia and Bucowina are the parts of Europe that have least felt the war.

In the first place, they have this particularity: that it is the only country engaged in war where the majority of the adult population is now at home. They had been called up, of course, during the Austrian mobilization, but they soon returned. The majority of the soldiers from that part of the country only awaited, as a matter of fact, an opportunity to be made prisoners by the Russians, so as to be able to return to their homes. They were well aware that the Russians granted great freedom to prisoners of Slavonic origin. Cases have been known where entire units of the Austrian army, composed of Slavs and Ruthuanians, surrendered without fighting, on the express condition that they were allowed to return to their farms in the occupied part of the country. And thus it is that the majority of the men whom one sees working on the farms or smoking their pipes at the door of their little farmhouses wear Austrian uniform.

Our automobiles passed through picturesque villages, the whitewashed cottages and farmhouses, with their extraordinarily shaped thatched roofs, surrounded by gardens and orchards of apple-trees. Few trees are to be seen, however, outside of the little oases that form the villages; farther on lay the bare plain, with prairies and wheatfields stretching to the horizon.

The sun was setting, and in all the villages that we passed through an atmosphere of gaiety reigned. It was a Saturday night, and under the elm that shades the church square or in the fields on the roadside all the villagers in the picturesque costume of Ruthuanian peasants, among which the uniforms of the Austrian prisoners made patches of grey, had gathered to dance to the sound of a violin, played by a musician posted under a tree. Every one, even the dancers, were singing, and their voices in choruses of two and three parts blended with the music of the violin. At half-past ten we could still see the whole population of a village dancing on the roadside, singing folk-songs, while in the automobile which was bearing us along we could not help thinking in contrast of the sufferings of occupied Belgium. …

*****

But other surprises were in store for us. About eleven o'clock we reached a little town, Tchertkoff. In the town's principal square there was one big house brightly illuminated. It proved to be one of the largest cafés of the district, where, as in all towns or villages of Austria, the major part of the population spend the most of their time. We went in. An animated crowd, with many Russian officers among them, filled the place. They paid scarcely any attention to us, and allowed us to install ourselves quietly at the only unoccupied table. On that table, as on all the others, there were platters filled with cake and a delicious white bread made with milk and eggs, which, except for the currants, reminded us of our Brussels "cramiques." Along with that there was excellent coffee with cream, such as is only to be found in the Austrian cafés. We leave it to the reader's imagination to judge how we enjoyed this feast, after two months of "voluntary rationing" in London, Resbrödkort in Sweden, and the horrible black viscosity that they served us in the name of bread at Petrograd.

We found the same abundance later in the other Austrian towns that we visited. If we think for a moment, such a condition is not surprising. That part of Austria which is occupied, a district as large as Belgium, is an entirely rural region; the rare towns and villages that one comes across are only agricultural markets. The soil is fertile. Products of every description are plentiful. The exportation of these products is very difficult, indeed practically impossible, for there is on the one side the barrier of the trenches, and on the other hand the impossibility of using the Russian railway lines for anything besides military transports. The Russian army of occupation furnishes a surplus population just dense enough—save on the immediate front, where the concentration of troops leads to more difficulty in obtaining their supplies on the spot—to enable the inhabitants to dispose of the surplus of their produce at prices slightly above the former very low cost of living. Thus we see that, economically, this district, which one might have imagined devastated by three invasions in three years, is a veritable land of plenty, in comparison with any other country, belligerent or neutral.

Let us hasten to add that the rule of the Russians in occupation is very mild. We have already seen an example of this in the presence of the freed prisoners, who walk about in their Austrian uniforms from the frontier of Podolia to the second line of trenches. Generally speaking, the presence of the Russian army does not seem to inspire the civilians of that district with the terror that remains in our land, for instance, at the mention of the Cossacks to the great-grandchildren of those who remember 1815.

In certain cases the Russians of 1914, in Eastern Prussia for instance, may have shown themselves worthy descendants of their ancestors, but in all our journeying in Galicia we did not meet with a single instance of depredation. On the contrary, at every step we had fresh instances of the extreme respect of the Russians for the rights of the population in the occupied country. And this is not only because of their affinity of race and language. The peasant, for instance, has not made a very good impression upon the Russian soldier, who accuses the native of exploiting him and making him pay very much too dear for food.

It would be an exaggeration to state that the population manifests anything that would remotely resemble enthusiasm for Russia. The Ruthuanians, properly speaking, are the only ones who look upon the Russians as their liberators. The greater part of the peasant population obviously take no interest in the war as a political event; they think of it only with regard to its effect upon their immediate material interests. They submit with indifference to the flux and reflux of the occupations, alternately Russian and Austrian, and only try to get what profit they can out of both armies, while a minority, composed of a part of the Jewish and German populations of the small towns, is evidently hostile to the Russians, and longs for the return of Austrian rule: the Austrian Germans, for obvious reasons, the Jews especially, from their ancient resentment to the Russians, which the Russian Revolution has hardly attenuated, because of the oppression of their race in Russia.

*****

This hostility of a minority of the populations of the towns is openly shown. That is further proof of the benevolence of the Russian rule. Belgians and British whom we met in Galicia were astonished to see the Russians accommodating themselves so benevolently to this resentful, contemptuous attitude, that was demonstrated, for instance, by young Jews in the cafés. Our fellow-countrymen did not hide their contempt of what they called the cowardice of the Russians. At a meeting in the open air that we had held at Tarnopol, about a thousand Austrian civilians, men and women, were among our soldier audience, During one of the speeches one of the auditors, it seems, had manifested loudly his hostility to the cause that we were defending. The Russian soldiers who surrounded him had politely asked him to be quiet, but without molesting him in any way, so that the incident had passed unnoticed by the member of our party who was speaking at the time. Such tolerance was certainly astonishing to Westerners, but they were wrong, we think, in calling it cowardice. We, who had been in Russia for several weeks, had constant proofs, just as surprising, of the extreme respect for liberty of opinion which characterizes this good-natured people, and to us this came less as a surprise. Certainly one must admit there is an element of native indolence, of nitchewoïsme, in the mild manner in which the Russians rule the inhabitants of this enemy territory. But at bottom this attitude is the same as the psychological disposition of the average Russian taken individually. It is especially a manifestation of that naïve kindness, of that evangelical passivity, of that deep-rooted hospitality which is the most striking characteristic of the Russian.

How can we explain otherwise that these same Russians, who have everywhere in their own country destroyed and burned the slightest sign reminiscent of the Czarist Government, have left in Bucowina and in Galicia all the Austrian symbols? Everywhere on the public buildings one saw the Austrian eagle and German inscriptions, superfluous, moreover, in a country where the only languages spoken are the Ruthuanian, Slav, and Polish. Even the old tobacco shops of the Austrian monopoly have retained their black and yellow signs. At Czernowitz, when General Korniloff received us at the General Headquarters, established in the palace of the former Austrian Governor, he was seated under a life-sized portrait of the Emperor Francis Joseph. Now in Russia we should have to look long before we could find a portrait of the Czar with anything left but the frame!

In that same city, accompanied by two Russian officers, we had gone to make some purchases in a shop. It was kept by people whose Viennese accent clearly showed their origin. They wrapped up our purchases in a copy of the Arbeiter Zeitung, dated July 1914. One of us who had been a student in Vienna, exclaimed: "Well, it reminds one of many things to see a copy of the Arbeiter Zeitung of pre-war days." And the shopkeeper added immediately, with a deep sigh: "If only we could begin to receive it again every morning as we used to before the war!" Our Russian friends only smiled at this statement. We, however, could not help thinking what would have happened to a Belgian shopkeeper if he had made a similar remark in the presence of German officers in the zone of the armies or if a citizen of Noyon, before some French officer, had expressed regret at not seeing the Liller Kriegszeitung any more.

We had another example of Russian tolerance when we arrived at Buczacz. It was one o'clock in the morning, and the General Staff had not expected our arrival in the middle of the night. Most of the town having been demolished by the bombardments, lodgings were scarce. To make room for us, soldiers and officers who were occupying a little villa that had remained intact in the outskirts of the town were asked to turn out. The next morning we inspected the place, which had evidently served as a billet for the Russian troops during several months. On all the walls there were photographs of the former owner of the house, an Austrian officer, generally taken in his full regalia and uniform. They had not disturbed the portraits nor any of the other souvenirs that had belonged to the former inhabitants. Can we imagine Belgian or French soldiers living for weeks under the martial gaze of a German officer, even if only in a portrait?

 

7. The 108th Division.

After a very cordial reception from General Belkovitch, commanding the 7th Army, and from his General Staff, and a long conference with the army Soviet, we got into touch for the first time with the troops at the front. The infantry of the 108th Division was in billets at about fifty kilometres from Buczacz, north of Podgaïce. The army commander had given the order to assemble. Two hours' motoring, over the horrible sandy tracks, through the grand, wild scenery of the Galician plains, brought us to the appointed place. There we received one of the most striking impressions of our whole trip. Our automobiles were going through a deep valley, when suddenly, at a turning, we saw, some hundreds of yards distant, the long brown ribbon of the troops massed along the two sides of the road which we were following. Amidst that mass of more than nine thousand men there flashed in the sun the brass musical instruments that were playing "La Marseillaise," and the scarlet flags. For the first time we saw an army marching under the red flag of the Internationale. This sight reminded us of our splendid workmen's processions of the past, and, indeed, if instead of these Galician hills there had been on the horizon the slag-heaps of our mining districts, we might have believed we were transported by magic in the midst of one of those crowds of demonstrating workmen that were so familiar to us before the war.

We got down from our car to shake hands with the divisional commander, Stephanovitch, who had come to meet us, and with him we reviewed the three regiments, passing during twenty minutes between a double line of companies drawn up for review. The impression was once more purely military; not a muscle of these sunburned faces twitched, not a gesture, if it were not the stiff, martial salute of the officers, broke the correct immobility of the whole line. At a sign from the General, while we were installing ourselves on a rising on the side of the road, the ranks broke up, and that mass poured towards us, bringing in its train the General, the officers, the flags, the music, and forming silently and very quickly a great audience. In a moment the review became a public meeting, and the straight military lines of the troops gave place to the picturesque irregular outline of an open-air meeting.

This succession of impressions had been so bewildering that the member of our party who was to speak first found himself quite at a loss. There had been nothing to indicate up to the present what had been expected of us by these soldiers marching under the red flags: while passing us in the review their faces expressed nothing but the mechanical impassibility of the disciplined soldiers; but in the mass crowded around us we could read intense curiosity.

But as soon as our interpreter, who translated each sentence, had said in Russian the first words, "This red flag under which you are fighting is also our own, …" there broke forth an amazing deafening burst of delirious applause. Frantic hurrahs drowned the music of the "Marseillaise" and the "Brabançonne" which the military bands began playing at full blast. And so it was after each sentence, after every allusion to the sufferings of Belgium, to the solidarity between the Allies, to the responsibility of the Russian Revolution with regard to international socialism, and the necessity of safeguarding our honour by breaking by a determined offensive the inactivity on the eastern front.

The advice of friends who understood the psychology of the Russian people, and a certain amount of experience gained from the audiences at Petrograd, Moscow, and Kieff, had taught us to be on our guard against the sometimes fleeting and childish enthusiasm of this impressionable public, very hospitably disposed at first sight with regard to strangers, very eager to hear speeches, since they are no longer forbidden, and quite ready, especially when young soldiers are concerned, to manifest loudly for or against any statements that are made.

So we restrained ourselves as well as we could from being carried away by this collective enthusiasm. But there could be no possible doubt as to the veritable feeling of our audience as soon as the speakers delegated by the soldiers began to speak and their speeches were translated to us. They all told us in touching terms how great was their admiration for Belgium and their attachment to the Internationale that we represented. They told us of their readiness to complete the work of the Revolution by an offensive against the last autocracies of Europe. There was only one attempt, timid enough it is true, at contradiction on the part of a Bolcheviki soldier, who, evidently hoping to embarrass us, asked a question concerning the Stockholm Conference. But his question and our reply that "we were adversaries of fraternization with the agents of the Kaiser, whether at Stockholm or in the trenches," was received in such a manner that the Bolcheviki, urged mockingly by his comrades to defend his opinions, promptly vanished in the crowd without insisting further.

The sun was setting when the manifestation ended, and it was not without some difficulty that our automobiles, to which we were carried on the robust shoulders of the soldiers, could start on the sandy tracks again in the direction of Buczacz.

 

8. A Mutinous Army Corps.

As we started we saw another, not less remarkable, sight. From the heights, gilded by the setting sun, there came interminable columns going towards the front. All of them had the red flag at their head, and the inscriptions on some of them were translated to us: "To victory or death," "To the Trenches for Liberty," "Let us defend Russian Liberty," and another, on the standard of a mounted artillery brigade: "Our cannons will thunder for Liberty." Nothing could be more picturesque than the sight of these troops covered with the dust of their march, accompanied by horse transport columns which seemed to date from the First Empire, and singing the "Marseillaise" in that slow, modulated manner that the Russians affect. The artillery especially, which formed the largest part of these caravans, was very characteristic. For instance, the sight of two officers seated in an ancient coach, dusty and dirty, drawn by a tired horse, while two other officers, who evidently took turns with those in the conveyance, were walking on the dusty road, holding to the vehicle with one hand, was like a picture from Meissonnier.

These columns that we saw marching towards the trenches were the loyal troops of the 7th Siberian Army, part of which had just mutinied.

This corps, which formed part of the 7th Army, was resting during several weeks, after a long spell in the trenches. The Bolcheviki propaganda, helped, as we were informed from reliable sources, by Austro-German agents, became very important, and led the men to mutiny against the authority of the Commandant of the army. The rebels asked to be sent for two or three months to a town in the interior of Russia, not only to rest, but to discuss at leisure the political and international situation, after which they would decide whether or not to take part in the offensive. At their head was a Lieutenant-Colonel, who had succeeded in carrying with him two-thirds of the infantry. The rest of the infantry, all the artillery, and the other special arms of the service, in all about half of the total effective, refused to listen to the propagandists of desertion. They even ended by deciding that they wished to have nothing more to do with the rebels, and that they would leave immediately of their own free will for the front. It was these men that we had just seen pass.

As soon as we knew who they were we stopped beside a group of infantrymen to harangue them. It is easy to imagine what we said to these brave fellows, and that it gave them pleasure was evident from their enthusiasm. Long after we had left them we could still see them, on looking back, waving their fur caps at the end of their long bayonets that were sparkling in the last rays of a glorious sunset.

Long shall we keep the memory of this epic scene, which irresistibly made us think of the heroic days of 1792. With what fervour did we wish that evening, as we saw the red flag guiding these men towards the setting sun, that it could lead them to a grand repetition of Jemmapes and Valmy. The reminiscence was so striking that one of us quoted the words of Goethe to those around him on the night of Valmy: "From this day dates a new era in the history of the world, and you will be able to say: I was there."

But was it to be Valmy? Or would it be Neerwinden? Some weeks later we knew: it began as Valmy and ended like Neerwinden.

 

9. A Terrorist Functionary.

When we arrived at Buczacz we learned that the affair of the 7th Siberian Corps had become serious. The rebels had just refused to consider the conciliatory propositions of the Government's emissary. They were intending to march on Tarnopol, and to encamp there without authority. What made the situation difficult was that they had retained all the machine-guns of the infantry, which, nevertheless, was gradually separating from the rebels and following the artillery to the front.

General Belkovitch, judging that our intervention might be useful, decided that the next day we should visit the rebels in their camp, about two hours' motor drive from Buczacz.

The next morning, however, the situation had become still more grave. The Government emissary had, after the refusal of the rebels to consider his propositions, finally broken off all negotiations with the rebels, leaving them only as a last resource the assurance that if they had any further proposals to make he would be ready to listen to their delegates until evening. In these conditions he asked us to abandon the idea of visiting them, which was, of course, such a sensible view that we could not do otherwise than agree with him. We decided then that instead of visiting the rebels we would go and address a part of the troops that had voluntarily returned to the front.

Before setting out we had a long conversation with the Government emissary in question. He was no other than the Revolutionary Socialist Savinkoff, who had on his record of services several deeds of terrorism, of which the most famous was that against Plevhe at Odessa. The terrorist of Odessa was now in khaki uniform, representing the Government, and preaching discipline and national duty to the troops. And he had quite the air of being the right man in the right place. Such was certainly the opinion of the Commandant of the 7th Army, who was nevertheless an old soldier, trained in quite a different school from that of the Revolution. While by no means concealing his dislike for the institution of "commissioners to the armies," in which he saw an attempt to rescind the authority of the hierarchic leaders, he loyally owned that Savinkoff was rendering great service to him in the re-establishment of discipline in the army, and that "it was a pleasure, moreover, to have personal dealings with a man possessed of such good common sense." Also, if one were to judge by the manner, both firm and prudent, in which he had conducted the affair of the 7th Siberian Corps, Savinkoff, who was soon to become Minister of War, deserved this flattering appreciation. We learned some days later that the question of the 7th Army Corps had been, thanks to his diplomacy, settled in a satisfactory manner. As soon as the Government had shown that it was ready to employ force, if necessary, to reduce the rebels to obedience, they had yielded at once and abandoned their resistance. In order to punish them, and at the same time to act justly towards the loyal troops who had refused to serve again in the same units with the traitors, they were immediately sent to the front in small groups, separated among various units.

*****

One hour in the automobile brought us, through Monasterjiski, to the little hamlet where we found some thousands of infantrymen of the 7th Corps "who had deserted towards the front." We addressed them from the doorstep of a little church, around which there were only orchards and no houses, the cottages of the villages being very scattered. As there were among these Siberians a fairly large percentage of industrial labourers, the socialistic note was particularly accentuated in the manifestations of the assembly.

 

10. From Buczacz to Iezierna.

The same day we left Buczacz and the 7th Army Corps for the General Headquarters of the 11th Army, the right wing of which, the 6th Corps, was encamped at Iezierna.

During the motor run, as on the two previous days, we saw interesting traces of the military operations which, since 1914, had been taking place in this district. Many of the villages that we passed through were in a large measure destroyed by bombardment. Some had been completely abandoned by their inhabitants, and the whole surrounding country, left uncultivated, was covered by veritable jungles of weeds and flowers of many colours. We came across the old lines of trenches and barbed-wire entanglements. Shell-holes and little wooden crosses were alongside the roads, marking the places where the combats had been most fierce.

In this undulating country, with little vegetation, it is easy to take in at one glance the whole former organization of the land for several kilometres round. On that bare soil, where the zigzag of the trenches and of the lines of barbed-wire entanglements are the traces left of the gigantic battles that had taken place there, it did not need a very great effort of imagination, thanks to the shell-holes which revealed the artillery preparations and the individual pits dotted here and there that showed the progress of the attacking troops, to bring to our minds the often terrible battles that have marked the flux and the reflux of the enemy forces during three years.

A particularly tragic impression was awaiting us some kilometres north of Buczacz. The country was entirely deserted, with its uncultivated lands and the immense plain without a tree, without even a shrub. As we reached a cross-road the Russian officer who accompanied us said: "Look!" We only saw two roads, and to the left of the principal one, a few hundred yards away from each other, two bits of ruined walls rising out of the brushwood, all that was left of a formerly prosperous little town. The walls indicated the sites of two churches, and had evidently been left there as signposts. As far as the houses were concerned, there was not the slightest trace of even their ruins. We got out of the motor-car to see if we could not discover some trace of remains. We looked in vain; there was nothing anywhere but a mass of weeds, which came up to our waists, wild flowers of a thousand colours, over which the butterflies were fluttering. From time to time we struck our feet against some bricks or against a little eminence that perhaps had been a wall. The only visible trace of habitation that remained was the wells, of which the little walls had been razed to the ground; the holes seemed like big dark eyes gazing up at the heavens.

Assuredly, we had never seen such diabolically refined devastation; they had not been content with demolishing, but the material even had been carted away and thrown out on the roads or in the ditches. Who was it that had done that? It was neither the Russians nor the Austrians. The Germans had been there in 1915. They pretended that francs-tireurs had fired upon their troops from the houses, and they had made an example with the Gründlichkeit that characterizes all their methods. After that we understood why in this part of Austria the population, which shows a certain indifference when they are asked whether they prefer the Russians or the Austrians, reply in a very decisive manner when questioned as to their sentiments concerning the Germans.

*****

At Tarnopol, where we stopped for five minutes, we had the pleasure of discovering suddenly among the grey mass of soldiers grouped at the corner of a street the red tassel that adorns the cap of the Belgian gunners. They were the blue police caps with red tassels of the soldiers of the Belgian armoured cars that have been on the Russian front more than two years. We spoke to them for a moment, and then said au revoir, for we were to see them that evening in their camp at Iezierna, where they were to follow us.

 

11. Our Visit to the 6th Crops.

The hours passed at Iezierna are among our happiest memories. Was it the delight of having found ourselves this time on a real battle front, was it the sympathetic cordiality with which General Nottbeck and his staff greeted us, or was it the presence of our fellow-countrymen of the Belgian armoured cars that seemed to take us back in a sense to our little country of the Yser? All these reasons, and something more—the extraordinarily enthusiastic reception that our propaganda met with from these troops of the 6th Army Corps.

Here we felt much nearer the front than in the General Headquarters of the armies or of the groups of armies through which we had just passed. We were made aware of that at once by the material details of life—by the improvised camping in the staff-offices of the corps, by the meals of the picnic order, where good appetite and gaiety on the part of the guests made up for the frugality of the dishes; but we were made aware of it also by the atmosphere of comradeship that reigned among the officers, whose mess reminded us of similar experiences in Belgium.

So we shared, for a day at least, the life at the front. Before seven o'clock in the morning a member of our party had already tasted Austrian fire, by flying in a Russian observation biplane over the enemy lines. Before midday we had taken a long walk with General Nottbeck to the first line of trenches, and for the first time in several months we heard again the familiar music of the shells and bullets.

But these excursions were not undertaken mainly in a spirit of curiosity. Flying over the Austro-Turko- German lines at an altitude of from 800 to 900 metres along the whole line of the projected offensive, Lieutenant de Man had been able to make very interesting observations of the organization of that part of the front. And our visit to the trenches of the first line allowed us to take note of many details that it was interesting to know in order to appreciate the conditions in which the coming offensive would be undertaken.

We might sum up what we saw as follows:

We were surprised to find, that the trenches and positions on the Russian front, or at least on that part of the front which we have seen and which we were told was typical, resemble much more what is to be seen on the western front than one would expect. The sector of Koniucki-Brzezany, notably, scarcely differs from that of a "calm" sector on the western front, except that in view of the comparative scarcity of artillery on a given front there are much fewer shell-holes and mine craters.

All the same, the proportion of daily losses per division is nearly the same as with us. We were told the number of killed and wounded daily during the recent months for all the divisions of the 6th Corps, which occupied what is supposed to be a "calm" sector; these totals are pretty much the same as those of a Belgian division for the same period. Their proportion of losses by infantry fire is rather more than ours.

It was easy to observe, on the other hand, that the enemy positions were much more strongly fortified than those of the Russians. Officers having visited different parts of the front, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, told us that it is the same thing everywhere. It is not that the Russians have fewer men to carry on their trench construction. On the contrary, they have just now an enormous numerical superiority. The number of the divisions on the battle front on June 1st was five to three, but allowing that the Russian divisions have much greater effectives than the German, Austrian, Turk, or Bulgarian divisions, the number of Russians on the front is at least double that of their enemy. Let us not forget, moreover, that for one Russian soldier at the front there are at least four in the reserve camps or depots.

For the very reason that they are inferior in numbers the Austro-Germans have made a great effort by employing probably second-rate or tired troops to organize their front in such a manner as to obtain a maximum of defensive power with a minimum of men. In the sector where the offensive of the 1st of July was being prepared, for instance, the enemy trenches of the first line were a system of four, five, or six parallel lines, while the Russian trenches opposite formed in general only one or two. Moreover, the enemy trenches were much deeper than the Russian trenches. In short, what struck us most was the great abundance of barbed-wire entanglements that protected the Austrian positions for a great distance behind the first line. In some places where the Russian and Austrian trenches were relatively far apart—from 800 to 1,000 metres on the opposite sides of a valley—the Austrian lines were protected by four continuous and parallel barbed-wire entanglements, ground-level entanglements and knife-rests predominating.

The contrast was striking, not only between the Austrian and Russian positions which were opposite, but also between the present lines held by the enemy and the former ones which have been successively abandoned, and which one meets, in some cases almost intact, between the present front and the Austro-Russian frontier. The new enemy front was infinitely stronger and better organized than any of their former fronts.

How can we explain the relative weakness of the Russian positions? Probably we must seek the chief motive in the industrial inferiority and poor means of transport. That is what determines at least the scarcity of concrete and barbed wire in the Russian trenches. But this explanation is not sufficient, for even with the available material—the stones on the ground and the wood of the forests that they had at hand—the Russians might have done better, dug deeper trenches, fortified them more strongly, and constructed more comfortable and stronger dug-outs. Probably we must attribute this ineffective organization to the native indolence and the fatalist temperament of the Russian. There is, of course, a theoretical justification for this state of affairs. The Russian generals told us that if the enemy had constructed much stronger positions it was because the poverty of his effectives forced him to make a stronger defence, while the Russians, knowing, the enemy too weak to attack and themselves preparing for an offensive, were content with parallel lines of trenches sufficiently well protected by barbed-wire entanglements to prevent the enemy from coming over freely during the night. But it is only just to say that those who explained that theory to us did not seem to be quite convinced themselves of its soundness.

*****

The Russian generals with whom we spoke took into account the fact that the proposed offensive would have to deal with material difficulties much more considerable than those of the preceding years. It would obviously be necessary to make artillery preparations much more extensive than those of 1916 to destroy the first line of trenches and the barbed-wire entanglements before sending the infantry to the attack. They understood that necessity all the better since the soldiers who had taken part in the offensive of 1916 had never forgotten what it cost them to advance before the Austrian barbed-wire entanglements had been completely destroyed. General Nottbeck said to us: "This time the Russian infantry, before receiving the order to attack, must be freed from the least apprehension of finding the enemy barbed wire insufficiently demolished. When they ask us after the first day's bombardment of the enemy front if the moment for attack has come, we shall simply have to tell them to wait, and give them during the second day the sight of our bombardment reducing the enemy defences to naught. Then on the evening of the second day we shall tell them once more to wait, and it will only be after the third day's artillery preparation, when they begin to get irritated by such a waste of shells, that we shall give the word: Forward!"

The 6th Army Corps disposed for its artillery preparation on the part of the enemy's line that it was going to attack of about fifty rounds per metre of frontage. In short, in spite of the increased difficulties, the material conditions of the offensive seemed rather favourable to our Allies.

The chief problem seemed to be how best to deal with the moral of the troops. There were two aspects. The first question that we asked ourselves was this: In spite of the Léninist and German propaganda, in spite of the deceptive illusions aroused regarding the coming of the Messiah of Stockholm, had the Russian troops kept their will to fight sufficiently well to obey the order to attack? And the second: Supposing that the will to fight still existed, would the discipline of the army, shaken by revolution, be sufficiently strong for operations to take place that would not degenerate into disorder, confusion, and disaster?

In short, there were two questions to be dealt with, not wholly independent of each other, certainly, but distinct: the moral and the discipline.

 

12. The Moral of the Troops.

Of the moral of the troops we received at the 6th Army Corps, the 7th, and later at the Russian Army in Roumania, the very best impression.

At the three big meetings when we had addressed the troops of the 6th Army Corps and of the 11th Army—at Wymyslovka, at Iezierna, and at Tarnopol—the men were most enthusiastic.

The meeting at Wymyslovka had this peculiarity: it was held in a little Ruthuanian village, immediately behind the trenches. All the roads leading to the village were within sight of the enemy. Thus the troops came to the meeting-place in small detachments, and our auto- mobiles, which raised clouds of dust, had to keep a certain distance from one another, so as not to arouse the suspicion of the Austrian observers. In spite of that, some shrapnel did burst after we had passed, and wounded a soldier on the road behind us. But the meeting, at which four thousand troops were present, took place without any disagreeable interruptions in an orchard out of sight of the enemy. What struck us most there was to observe among the audience numerous soldiers taking down notes; they were the delegates from Soviets of distant units, who were thus going to let their comrades know what we had said.

Through delivering many speeches to these soldier audiences we had been able to make certain observations on the national psychology, and to find out which arguments were suitable and which were not, and the best method of presenting them. The interpreter's method of translating sentence by sentence gave us time to observe our audiences at our leisure, while the preceding sentence was being translated into Russian. The general conclusion to which we came was that we had to do with more naïve and simple audiences than the average popular audience of the West, but with none the less an extremely quick intelligence, a ready appreciation of concrete facts, and an astonishing eagerness to learn something new. The infantry troops that we were addressing were all peasants, for the most part illiterate. Their character had the same mixture of naïveté and cunning that characterizes the peasant everywhere, but in a different proportion: rather more naïveté and less cunning. Combined with that, amazing good sense and a very great aptitude for following no matter what argument on condition that it be presented simply and in a concrete form.

A delightful example of this peasant simplicity, with the touch of cunning which frequently counterbalances it, was given us after the meeting at Iezierna by a Russian officer. Mixing among the soldiers, he had listened to the commentaries of two of them during my speech. I stopped after each sentence to give our interpreter time to translate. The interpreter was a Russian Socialist who had enlisted in the French army, and there had won his Lieutenant's stripes, the Legion of Honour, and the Croix de Guerre. His dignity, the beauty of his fine light-blue uniform, with its row of decorations and stripes, evidently made a great impression on these two Russian soldiers, for the following dialogue took place:

"Who is that big officer in blue? Is that not the Minister's staff officer?"

"Not at all. Don't you know? That is the King of the Belgians."

"Well then, the King of the Belgians is simply a fool. He does nothing but repeat what his Minister says."

After that will they tell us that in order to govern the Russian people it is necessary to have the prestige of a constitutional monarchy?

To adapt our language to the intelligence of our public, we had ended by selecting different metaphors that seemed to produce the best impression. Here are a few examples:

"Tyranny in Europe is like a monster that we read of in old legends that had three heads. Every time that a brave knight destroyed one, another head grew up. To kill the monster it was necessary to destroy the three heads at once. Well, the monster of European despotism has three heads. They are called Romanoff, Hohenzollern, and Habsburg. They are those of the Czar at Petrograd, the Czar at Berlin, and the Czar at Vienna. The Russian people have destroyed one of the three heads. But beware. It will grow again if they do not cut off the other two also."

And then:

"The Germans who try to fraternize with you are like the wolf that devoured little Red Riding Hood. The wolf, to deceive little Red Riding Hood, put on the nightcap and the spectacles of the grandmother. 'Why have you such large eyes?' asked little Red Riding Hood. 'The better to see you with, my child,' said the wolf. 'Why have you such large ears, grandmother?' 'The better to hear you with.' 'Why have you such long teeth, grandmother?' 'The better to eat you with, my child.' And the wolf devoured the too trustful child. And so beware of the German wolf! While he is trying to deceive you with fine words, he is getting ready to devour you."

Or else the following metaphor, suggested by General Nottbeck:

"The Russian people, having made its Revolution, is like a bird that has been imprisoned too long, and whose cage has just been opened. Blinded by the light, unaccustomed to flying, he flaps his wings and flies to the right or to the left, stupidly hitting his beak against the windows, and hurting his wings against all obstacles. It would seem as if he must fall exhausted, and be picked up and put back into his cage, but suddenly he sees the light through a wide-open window, and this time he flies strong and straight before him to the open air, leaving his prison for ever behind him. …"

And then as a peroration:—

"Pacifist agitators will tell you that the Germans and the Austrians ask nothing better than a revolution, and the right to follow the red flag, and free themselves from the yoke of their Czars. Well, they will soon be able to prove the truth of their words. When you go over the top of your trenches, carrying before you the red standard of liberty, with the device: 'No Annexations! No contributions of war! The right for all nations to dispose of themselves!' If they are sincere, they will follow your standard and march with you to Berlin and Vienna to dethrone the Emperor and establish their liberty. But should they fire on you, and insult the red flag, will you let them do so? No, it is you yourself then who will go and plant it in their cities, bringing liberty to your enemies on the point of your bayonets!"

*****

Such words always aroused a storm of applause. At the meeting at Iezierna, the enthusiasm was beyond all bounds; even General Nottbeck was borne shoulder-high in triumph and tossed in the air in the Russian fashion. We were frequently submitted to this treatment ourselves, which is, it seems, the orthodox method of showing enthusiasm. It consists of seizing the object, or rather the victim, of their enthusiasm in twenty pairs of strong arms, which, with a rythmical movement broken by wild cries, fling him into the air as high as possible, as if he were shot from a catapult. Then the muscles relax and the arms form as it were a mattress, into which the victim falls, only to be flung up in the air again immediately, and so on. General Nottbeck submitted to this treatment with the stoicism of a real soldier, his body stiff, his face immovable, his hand at the salute. I am convinced that we Belgians, unaccustomed to this type of enthusiasm, made but a piteous figure the first time we underwent it. The first day of our arrival in Petrograd I was the victim of the enthusiasm of the sailors of the Black Sea, and my colleagues told me after all that was seen after the first leap in the air was a collar and two cuffs waving wildly, and a heap of clothes, presumably containing a man. Afterwards we got on better, for one becomes accustomed to everything, even to Russian enthusiasm.

This enthusiasm, moreover, sometimes takes a less disconcerting form. We had a memorable example at a meeting at Iezierna. It was a wonderful scene. It was at dusk on these wide Galician Steppes, night was falling when the meeting ended. The applause continued until our motor-car, to which the strong shoulders of the soldiers had borne us, had left the meeting-place to return across country to the General Headquarters.

Suddenly a group of Cossacks, who had been listening at a little distance from the crowd, mounted on their horses, put them to the gallop, and executed round our motor-car a kind of fantastic dance, only stopping when their horses gave out. One of them went on after the others, and for long we could see his silhouette, like some centaur wheeling round us in the dusk uttering hoarse shouts.

Once more we endeavoured, after such memorable scenes, not to let ourselves be carried away by the impression of the moment, and to draw only prudent conclusions from these manifestations, but when we heard the men, as the officers of the Belgian armoured car whom General Nottbeck had tactfully invited to meet us at dinner that evening, affirm that as far as they knew, and speaking at least for the 7th Army Corps, the moral of the men had never been better since the Russian Revolution, we were compelled to believe them. Their opinion, corroborated by that of others, with whom we talked, was undoubtedly of considerable value, since they had been fighting for two years with the Russian troops in Galicia.

Moreover, General Nottbeck himself, who up till then had preserved a phlegmatic calm that justified his British origin, yielded finally to the excitement of these enthusiastic scenes, and when we bade him farewell and were climbing into the automobile which was to take us to Czernowitz, it was with visible emotion that he said to us in shaking hands, "Now, I have confidence."

*****

But that such a confidence be justified, we must look for something more than enthusiasm, more than the applause of audiences, three weeks before the attack. The hierarchical organization of the army is necessary, its moral cohesion, the spirit of subordination and of responsibility must be such that this enthusiasm runs no risk of being wasted or transformed into panic at the first check. In short, there must be a certain minimum of discipline, and that is the second part of the problem of the moral reconstruction of the Russian front. It is, we must admit, the more delicate and difficult, and it is, moreover, not easy for observers, more or less superficial, to give a definite opinion.

We need not deny that the first effect of Revolution on the army was purely destructive. The Russian armies were certainly reduced even before the Revolution to lamentable impotence, because of the disorganization and the demoralization of the nation, for which the Czar's rule was to blame, and which was, moreover, the cause of its downfall. In this point of view the Revolution only brought to light a deplorable situation, which, had it been prolonged, would have led Russia inevitably to a separate peace.

But at least the army held together. It kept its outward appearance, thanks to the discipline, to the blind obedience that reigned in it. The Revolution put an end to this discipline completely, upsetting the hierarchy on which it was based. Now it is quite true that the Russian army may have gained enormously by replacing this form of hierarchy, which had become unbearable, by a new hierarchy conforming to democratic ideas, but it is equally certain that the fighting power of an army without any sort of discipline is inferior to that of a disciplined army, no matter how imperfect that discipline may be.

The Russian army is a proof of this. Some days after the Revolution the Germans, with the greatest ease, cut in pieces, on Stokhod, several Russian regiments, whose Soviet during the attack were discussing what steps it were best to take. While Bolschewiki and Menschewiki were making speeches and trying to come to an agreement, or not to come to an agreement, on the principles of strategy and revolutionary tactics, the Germans were massacring thousands of men and striking panic among the survivors.

It seems certain that the first idea of the Revolution was to replace completely this former "autocratic" rule of the officers by a new so-called "democratic" rule, that of the Soviets. During the first week of the revolutionary era, the Soviets that had been formed in the smallest units, while leaving the officers nominally in power, claimed and exercised in reality the power which had belonged to them.

To realize that such a state of things could not last, we need not go very deeply into the question. We have but to ask ourselves how such quasi-parliamentary institutions as the Soviets could be usefully incorporated in the organization of a modern army. The system adopted left all responsibility to the officers, while giving all the power to irresponsible assemblies, who even claimed the direction of strategic operation, or, to be more exact, non- operations. This system was given a trial, negative, it must be admitted, in the domain of military tactics at Stokhod, and in the domain of the internal discipline of the units at the front. But little by little the force of facts compelled them to admit that the power of the Soviets must be limited, in a large measure the authority of the officers re-established.

We can see now that the former hierarchy had simply suffered a partial eclipse. At first it was a total eclipse, but that did not last. The partial eclipse will probably last. The present régime is a co-existence, imperfectly organized as yet and full of illogisms of the two methods of discipline, the former hierarchy and that of the Soviet.

Indeed, there is one strong factor that we must take into account in the Russian army. It is habit, custom handed down by tradition and endorsed by common sense.

In Petrograd we were given à propos of this a typical instance. The rebel sailors of Kronstadt had massacred many of their officers, a certain number of whom were brutes, deserving no better fate; they then threw the survivors into prison. They announced that the Germans were their brothers. They declared that they would only obey those of their own class, whom they had chosen freely. Now these same sailors continued all the same their service of guarding the coast, just as before. They would have been, no doubt, rather embarrassed had the necessity arisen to attack a German torpedo boat, but as for the daily routine of service they were simply obeying an illogical but tyrannical habit.

This same force of moral inertia has made itself felt in the army.

The most noticeable sign lies in the continued signs of outward respect.

In the rear, it is true, no soldier salutes an officer. This is one of the first innovations of the Revolution. The right not to salute, a reform which probably was welcomed with equal joy by officers as by men, for they can scarcely have relished the necessity in going through the streets of Petrograd or Moscow, crowded with troops, of constantly returning the salute. Be that as it may, in the rear the soldiers make it a point of honour not to salute any officer. On the front, on the contrary, we did not come across one soldier who did not salute his officer. Such a situation is all the more striking because the famous decree of June, of the minister Kerensky, on the "Rights of Soldiers," strange and provisional mixture of the hierarchical tradition and democratic idealism, proclaims that saluting an officer is not an act of duty, but a mere act of voluntary courtesy.

*****

We met few officers who did not tell us that, in spite of the relaxation of former discipline, the daily routine was carried on almost as well as under the Czarist régime. That is partly owing to the Soviets and partly in spite of them. In spite of the Soviets, because at the beginning of the revolutionary era they systematically sapped the prestige of the recognized authorities of the army, which constitute, after all, the sole responsible authority competent to deal with all questions of military tactics, properly so called.

The Soviets, in a whole series of questions of internal discipline, have obtained from the soldier better obedience by re- placing the former slavish obedience by a new and more spontaneous discipline with a more direct bearing on the needs and views of the men.

They have had a weakening influence when they introduced into the conduct of military operations and the general direction of the army, an element of parliamentary deliberation, political discussion being incompatible with the principles imposed by the necessities of war, which demand unity of command, centralization of responsibilities, and rapid decisions.

But they have had and continue to have a good effect when they limit their power to what seems rightly their moral domain, the participation in disciplinary justice and the control of the administration of units.

At the time of writing no officer had the right to punish a soldier. For that the decision of the Soviet, composed of the commandant of the unit and three delegates chosen by the subalterns and soldiers, was necessary.

We can see at a glance that this organization is still, in its present form, both imperfect and provisional.

But it is all the more interesting to hear such officers as we have questioned on the matter, even those who by their military training might be less disposed to approve of democratic Utopianism, proclaiming that the Soviets have already rendered them great service from a disciplinary point of view. We were given several examples, which showed that very often the Soviets of units, for infringement of discipline, inflicted more severe punishments than those meted out by the "autocratic" leaders of other days. Let us add, that these punishments inflicted on the soldiers by their own comrades, having a greater moral effect, discipline has generally improved.

In what concerns internal administration, all the officers whom we questioned, especially Generals Broussiloff, Korniloff, and Nottbeck, did not hide their opinions that the authority of the Soviets, especially since it was limited to certain questions, constituted in their eyes a real advance on the old discipline. The domain in which their influence is most beneficial is the control of internal administration of units, participation in the control of the Commissariat, in the organizing of reliefs, sentry duty, recreation, and in the political education of the soldiers.

In short, it seems that this institution, after having been, during the first days of the Revolution, an instrument of dissolution of established authority, has gradually modified its character, tacitly abdicated from certain of its extreme ambitions, and may be in a fair way not to take the place of the hierarchical discipline, but by controlling it and collaborating with it, to become a useful organ for the maintenance of discipline, and the reorganization of the army.

*****

This evolution is, of course, only in its infancy. The stage of maturity at which it has arrived apparently varies greatly in different parts of the Russian army. At the time of our mission in Russia it presented a strange spectacle of a provisional amalgam full of surprises and contradictions, a mixture of the old iron discipline and the democratic and fraternal customs of the new régime.

We had an amazing example of the curious contrast that this transition offers during our last visit to the Russian troops at the front. We had reached Roumania, after having said farewell to the 6th Army Corps in an open-air meeting at Tarnapol, and visited at Czernowitz General Korniloff, Commandant of the 8th Army. After two days spent with the Roumanian army we saw a review on the front at Tereth of two regiments of Russian infantry, the 57th and the 59th, with General Tcherbatcheff in command.

The review had taken place with a correct discipline that would have made the Potsdam guard or the guard of Buckingham Palace green with envy. Frenchmen who were present, and who had seen this military ceremony at Tsarskoïe Selo, under the former régime, told us that this review was exactly like these used to be. The troops marched in companies in impeccable lines, singing their battle songs. These choruses, set for several voices, with each rank singing its part in the strong, beautiful voices peculiar to the Russians, keep admirable time with their march. After the march past the men presented arms, keeping their orderly lines so exactly that the men in the second rank had the point of their bayonets just at the neck of the leaders of the file.

To listen to our speech, the troops then formed a square with remarkable rapidity, and during the whole meeting remained at attention, without moving a rifle, without a man stirring. But immediately the parade was over, when we were to have a conference with the Soviets of the two regiments, the military authorities who accompanied us the—Chief of the Roumanian General Staff, General Tcherbatcheff, General Berthelot, and General Cumont, Chief of the Belgian military mission in Roumania—went away, to give us full liberty to discuss with the officers and the soldier delegates who, mixing together fraternally, surrounded us. We replied to their questions, and finally they gave a touching demonstration of their respect and enthusiasm for Belgium. Then we saw the officers and soldiers, who had just half an hour before given us so admirable an example of discipline, embrace each other cordially. A Russian soldier, whose speech in French—he had formerly been a student at Nancy—had greatly moved Generals Tcherbatcheff, Berthelot, and Cumont, who had now returned and mingled with the crowd, was embraced by the three Generals, while the Colonel of the 57th Regiment, a fine old man, who had been wounded four times, was borne aloft in triumph by the soldiers. Finally the Generals present—those same Generals who had no longer the right to put a man in cells without the intervention of the police and the Soviets—were borne in triumph among cries of "Long live Russian Liberty!" "Long live Belgium!" "Long live Socialism!" "Long live the International!"

Then what General Nottbeck had said several days before recurred to our minds: "To-day, you see, Generals have much harder work than formerly; then they only gave orders, now they must give speeches. They know that their men will only march if their leaders can convince them of the necessity. I think men so convinced fight better than those who merely obeyed orders which they did not understand. But shall we succeed this time in convincing them? That is the whole question. After all it is on us, the leaders, that the answer depends."