Types of men in the Revolutionary Army.
Besides fraternisation, the enemy High Command practised, on an extensive scale and with provocatory purpose, the dispatch of flags of truce directly to the troops, or rather to the soldiers. Thus, about the end of April on the Dvinsk Front there came with a flag of truce a German officer, who was not received. He managed, however, to address to the crowd of soldiers the words: “I have come to you with offers of peace, and am empowered to speak even with the Provisional Government, but your commanders do not wish for peace.” These words were spread rapidly, and caused agitation among the soldiers and even threats to desert the Front. Therefore when, a few days later, in the same section, parliamentaires (a brigade commander, two officers, and a bugler) made their appearance again, they were taken to the Staff quarters of the Fifth Army. It turned out, of course, that they had no authorisations, and could not even state more or less definitely the object of their coming, since “the sole object of the pseudo-parliamentaires appearing on our Front,” says an order of the Commander-in-Chief, “has been to observe our dispositions and our spirit, and, by a lying exhibition of their pacific feelings, to incline our troops to an inaction profitable to the Germans and ruinous to Russia and her freedom.” Similar cases occurred on the Fronts of the Eighth, Ninth, and other Armies.
It is characteristic that the Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern German Front, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, found it possible to take a personal part in this course of provocation. In two radiograms, bearing the systematic character of the customary proclamations and intended for the soldiers and the Soviet, he stated that the High Command was ready to meet half-way “the repeatedly expressed desire of the Russian Soldiers’ Delegates to put an end to bloodshed”; that “military operations between us (the Central Powers) and Russia could be put an end to without Russia breaking with her Allies”; that “if Russia wants to know the particulars of our conditions, let her give up her demand for their publication....” And he finishes with a threat: “Does the new Russian Government, instigated by its Allies, wish to satisfy itself whether divisions of heavy guns are still to be found on our Eastern Front?”
Earlier, when leaders did discreditable things to save their armies and their countries, at least they were ashamed of it and kept silence. Nowadays military traditions have undergone a radical change.
To the credit of the Soviet it must be said that it took a proper view of this provocationary invitation, saying in reply: “The Commander-in-Chief of the German troops on the Eastern Front offers us ‘a separate truce and secrecy of negotiations.’ But Russia knows that the débâcle of the Allies will be the beginning of the débâcle of her own Army, and the débâcle of the Revolutionary troops of Free Russia would mean not only new common graves, but the failure of the Revolution, the fall of Free Russia.”
From the very first days of the Revolution a marked change naturally took place in the attitude of the Russian Press. It expressed itself on the one hand in a certain differentiation of all the Bourgeois organs, which assumed a Liberal-Conservative character, the tactics of which were adopted by an inconsiderable part of the Socialist Press, of the type of Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo; and on the other in the appearance of an immense number of Socialist organs.
The organs of the Right Wing underwent a considerable evolution, a characteristic indication of which was the unexpected declaration of a well-known member of the Novoye Vremya staff, Mr. Menshikov: “We must be grateful to destiny that the Monarchy, which for a thousand years has betrayed the people, has at last betrayed itself and put a cross on its own grave. To dig it up from under that cross and start a great dispute about the candidates for the fallen throne would be, in my opinion, a fatal mistake.” In the course of the first few months the Right Press partly closed down—not without pressure and violence on the part of the Soviets—partly it assumed a pacific-Liberal attitude. It was only in September, 1917, that its tone grew extremely violent in connection with the final exposure of the weakness of the Government, the loss of all hope of a legal way out of the “no thoroughfare” which had arisen, and the echoes of Kornilov’s venture. The attacks of the extremist organs on the Government passed into solid abuse of it.
Though differing in a greater or lesser degree in its understanding of the social problems which the Revolution had to solve, though guilty, perhaps, along with Russian society, of many mistakes, yet the Russian Liberal Press showed an exceptional unanimity in the more important questions of a constitutional and national character: full power to the Provisional Government, Democratic reforms in the spirit of the programme of March 2nd,[25] war until victory along with the Allies, an All-Russia Constituent Assembly as the source of the supreme power and of the constitution of the country. In yet another respect has the Liberal Press left a good reputation behind it in history: in the days of lofty popular enthusiasm, as in the days of doubt, vacillation and general demoralisation, which distinguished the Revolutionary period of 1917, no place was found in it, nor in the Right Press either, for the distribution of German gold....