The Conference came to a close. The Commanders-in-Chief rejoined their fronts, fully conscious that the last card had been beaten. At the same time, the Soviet orators and the Press started a campaign of abuse against Generals Alexeiev, Gourko and Dragomirov, which rendered their resignations imperative. On the 9th of May, as I already mentioned, Kerensky confirmed the “Declaration” while issuing an Order of the Day on the inadmissibility of senior Commanding Officers relinquishing their posts “in order to shirk responsibility.” What was the impression produced by that fateful Order?
Kerensky afterwards tried to adduce the excuse that the regulation was drafted before he had assumed office and was approved of by the Executive Committee as well as by “military authorities,” and that he had no reason to refuse to confirm it; in a word, that he was compelled to do so. But I recall more than one of Kerensky’s speeches in which, believing his course to be the right one, he prided himself on his courage in issuing a Declaration “which Gutchkov had not dared to sign, and which had evoked the protests of all the Commanding Officers.” On May 13th the Executive Committee of the Soviets responded to the Declaration by an enthusiastic proclamation which dwelt mainly upon the question of saluting. Poor, indeed, was the mind that inspired this verbiage: “Two months we have waited for this day.... Now the soldier is by law a citizen.... Henceforward the citizen soldier is free from the servile saluting, and will greet anyone he chooses as an equal and free man.... In the Revolutionary Army discipline will live through popular enthusiasm ... and not by means of compulsory saluting....” Such were the men who undertook to reorganise the Army.
As a matter of fact, the majority of the Revolutionary Democracy of the Soviets were not satisfied with the Declaration. They described it as “a new enslavement of the soldier,” and a campaign was opened for further widening of these rights. Members of the Defencist coalition demanded that the Regimental Committees should be empowered to challenge the appointments of the Commanding Officers and to give them attestations, as well as that freedom of speech should be granted on service. Their chief demand, however, was for the exclusion of Paragraph 14 of the Declaration entitling the Commanding Officer to use arms in the firing line against insubordination. I need hardly mention the disapproval of the Left, “Defeatist” Section of the Soviet.
The Liberal Press utterly failed to appraise the importance of the Declaration and never treated it seriously. The official organ of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Retch, May 11th) had an article which expressed great satisfaction that the Declaration “afforded every soldier the chance of taking part in the political life of the country, definitely freed him from the shackles of the old régime and led him from the stale atmosphere of the old barracks into the fresh air of liberty.” It also said that “throughout the world all other armies are remote from politics, whilst the Russian Army will be the first to enjoy the fullness of political rights.” Even the Conservative paper (Novoc Vremia) said in a leading article: “It is a memorable day; to-day the great Army of mighty Russia becomes truly the Army of the Revolution.... Intercourse between warriors of all ranks will henceforward be placed upon the common foundation of a sense of duty binding on every citizen, irrespective of rank. And the Revolutionary Army of regenerated Russia will go forward to the great ordeal of blood with faith in victory and in peace.” Difficult, indeed, was the task of the Commanding Officers who were endeavouring to preserve the Army when they found that the fundamental principles upon which the very existence of the Army depended were misunderstood so grossly, even in circles which had heretofore been considered as the mainstay of Russian statesmanship.
The Commanding Officers were still more disheartened, and the Army fell into the abyss with ever-increasing rapidity.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
The Press and Propaganda.
In the late World War, along with aeroplanes, tanks, poison gases and other marvels of military technique, a new and powerful weapon came to the fore, viz: propaganda. Strictly speaking, it was not altogether new, for as far back as 1826 Canning said, in the House of Commons: “Should we ever have to take part in a war we shall gather under our flag all the rebels, all those who, with or without cause, are discontented in the country that goes against us.” But now this means of conflict attained an extraordinary development, intensity and organisation, attacking the most morbid and sensitive points of national psychology. Organised on a large scale, supplied with vast means, the propaganda organs of Great Britain, France and America, especially those of Great Britain, carried on a terrible warfare by word of mouth, in the Press, in the films and ... with gold, extending this warfare over the territories of the enemy, the Allies and the neutrals, introducing it into all spheres—military, political, moral and economic. The more so, that Germany especially gave grounds enough for propaganda to have a plentiful supply of irrefragable, evidential material at its disposal. It is difficult to enumerate, even in their general features alone, that enormous arsenal of ideas which, step by step, drop by drop, deepened class differences, undermined the power of the State, sapped the moral powers of the enemy and their confidence in victory, disintegrated their alliance, roused the neutral powers against them and finally raised the falling spirits of their allied peoples. Nevertheless, we should not attach exceptional importance to this external moral pressure, as the leaders of the German people are now doing, to justify themselves: Germany has suffered a political, economic, military and moral defeat. It was only the interaction of all these factors that determined the fatal issue of the struggle, which, towards its end, became a lingering death-agony. One could only marvel at the vitality of the German people, which, by its intellectual power and the stability of its political thought, held out so long, until at last, in November, 1918, “a double death-blow, both at the front and in the rear,” laid it in the dust. In connection with this, history will undoubtedly note a great analogy between the parts played by the “Revolutionary Democracies” of Russia and of Germany in the destinies of these peoples. After the débâcle the leader of the German Independent Social Democrats acquainted the country with the great and systematic work which they had carried on, from the beginning of 1918, for the breaking down of the German Army and Navy, to the glory of the social revolution. In this work one is struck by the similarity of method and modus operandi with those practised in Russia.