“You, who have stood a countless number of times in the face of death! You, who have intrepidly led your men against the dense rows of the enemy’s barbed wire, to the rare boom of your own guns, treacherously deprived of ammunition! You, who, hardening your hearts, but keeping up your spirits, have cast the last handful of earth into the grave of your fallen son, brother, or friend!
“Will you quail now?
“No!
“You who are weak, raise your heads. You who are strong, give of your determination, of your aspirations, of your desire to work for the happiness of your Motherland—pour them into the thinned ranks of your comrades at the Front. You are not alone. With you are all those who are honourable, all who think, all who have paused at the brink of that common sense which is now being abolished.
“The soldiers also will go with you, understanding clearly that you are leading them, not backwards, to serfdom and to spiritual poverty, but forwards, to freedom and to light.
“And then such a thunderstorm will break over the foe as will put an end both to him and to the War.
“These three years of the War I have lived one life with you, thought the same thoughts, shared with you the joy of victory and the burning pain of retreat. I have therefore the right to fling into the faces of those who have outraged our hearts, who from the very first days of the Revolution have wrought the work of Cain on the corps of officers—I have the right to fling in their faces the words: ‘You lie! The Russian officer has never been either a mercenary or a Pretorian.’
“Under the old régime you were victimised, down-trodden, and deprived of all that makes life worth living. In no less a degree than yourselves, leading a life of semi-beggary, our officers of the Line have managed to carry through their wretched, laborious life like a burning torch, the thirst for achievement for the happiness of his Motherland.
“Then let my call be heard through these walls by the builders of the new life of the State: