Where Are We Going?

by David Lloyd George

Any one who has read the Memoirs of an Ambassador, by M. Paléologue, will find a complete explanation in its pages of the savage hatred with which the Russian revolutionaries view all those who were associated in any degree with the old order. He tells the story of how the gallant army found itself at the critical hour without ammunition, rifles, transport, and often without food. No braver or more devoted men ever fought for their country than the young peasants who made up the Russian armies of 1914-15-16. With little and often no artillery support, they faced without faltering the best-equipped heavy artillery in the world. They were mown down by shell fire and machine guns by the million. Their aggregate casualties up to September, 1916, even according to the reluctant admissions of the Tsarist generals of the day, were five millions. In reality they were much heavier. Often they went into action with sticks, as the Russian War Office had no rifles with which to arm them. They picked up as they advanced rifles dropped by fallen comrades. There is nothing in the war comparable to the trustful heroism of these poor peasants. We know now why there were no rifles, or shells, or wagons. The wholesale corruption of the régime has been exposed to the world by irrefutable documentary evidence.

Here are a few extracts from M. Paléologue's interesting book. One extract from his diary reads:—

"The lack of ammunition means that the rôle of the artillery in battle is necessarily insignificant. The whole burden of the fighting falls on the infantry and the result is a ghastly expenditure of human life. A day or two ago one of the Grand Duke Sergius's collaborators, Colonel Englehardt, said to Major Wehrlin, my second military attaché: 'We're paying for the crimes of our administration with the blood of our men.'"

About the same date talking about the deplorable state of things, the Grand Duke Sergius, who was Inspector-General of Artillery, said to the French ambassador, "When I think that this exhibition of impotence is all that our aristocratic system has to show, it makes me want to be a Republican."

When a Grand Duke talked like that early in 1915, what must a peasant soldier have thought by the spring of 1917, after many more millions of his comrades had been slaughtered as a result of the same "exhibition of impotence."

It is no use pointing to the fact that our army was also short of ammunition at that date. The British army was a small army organised on the basis of a maximum expeditionary force of six divisions. The Russian army was a great conscript force organised on the basis of a hundred divisions in the field.

I recollect well our own military reports from the Russian fronts. They provided much distressing reading. They filled you with compassion for the millions of gallant men who were the victims of corruption and stupidity in high places. I recall one statement made to our general which betrays the callous indifference with which men in authority seemed to treat the appalling sacrifice of life amongst loyal soldiers who were facing death without a murmur, because the "Little Father" willed it. Whenever anxious inquiries were directed by our officer as to the gigantic losses in men which filled him with dismay as well as horror, the usual reply was, "Don't worry yourself. Thank God, of men at all events we have enough." An answer which sends a thrill of horror through you when you read it. That is why at the end of two and a half years the patient men in the field at last mutinied. That is why their parents and brothers in the fields supported them. The "Little Father" had failed them, and his minions had betrayed them. It is a sordid and horrid tale of peculation, maladministration, and cruel treachery. Millions of British and French money went in shameless and open bribery, whilst the soldiers in the field, for need of what the money could buy, were opposing bare breasts covering brave hearts to the most terrible artillery in the world. If the rest of the money had been well spent, what was left after providing for profuse graft would still have sufficed to save that gallant army from destruction. But unhappily no real interest was taken in anything beyond the amount and the payment of the pocket-money. That seemed to be the main purpose of the transaction. Nothing was well managed except the inevitable bribe. There were honourable and upright men who did their duty by their distracted and plundered country, but they were helpless in the torrent of corruption.

No wonder a great Russian industrialist engaged in the ministry of war, in dwelling on the sad failure of tsarism and its probable results in June, 1905, predicted a revolution with "ten years of the most frightful anarchy." "We shall," he added, "see the days of Pugatchef[11] again and perhaps worse"—a striking prophecy verified with appalling accuracy.

It is not pleasant to recall these dreadful episodes, which reveal the betrayal of a devotion faithful unto death. But this story is essential to the right appreciation of events. There is no savagery like that of a trustful people which finds that its trust was being imposed upon the whole time. Here the retribution has been hideous in all its aspects. But the provocation was also revolting from every point of view. To judge Russia fairly that must be taken into account.