trian authorities immediately arrested him on suspicion of being a Russian spy, but as he was easily able to prove that he had no connection with the Czar's Government, he was released and permitted to go to Switzerland, where he remained until March, 1917. The news of the successful revolution caused him to endeavor to return to Russia and the German Government gave him the necessary permission to pass through Germany. Chief Russian Parties On his arrival in Petrograd, Lenine gathered together his followers and began the agitation in favor of the Bolshevist program. This program was outlined by Lenine in a remarkable statement which in the light of recent events has become an important document for the understanding of the situation. According to this statement, the chief groupings of political parties in Russia are: 1. The representatives of the feudal landholders and the more conservative sections of the bourgeoisie. 2. The Constitutional Democrats (Cadets) and other liberal groups representing the majority of the bourgeoisie, that is, the captains of industry and those landholders who have industrial interests. 3. The Socialist groups which represent the small entrepreneurs, small middle-class proprietors, more well-to-do peasants, petite bourgeoisie, or less as well as those workers who have submitted to a bourgeois point of view. 4. The Bolsheviki, who ought properly to be called the Communist Party, which is at present termed the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, and which represents class-conscious workers, day laborers, and the poorer strata of peasantry, which are grouped with them as the semi-proletariat. The Bolshevist Platform The Bolshevist platform, as outlined by Lenine, reads as follows: The Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates must at every practicable and feasible step for once take the realization of the Socialist program. The Bolsheviki demand a republic of the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates; abolition of the standing army and the police, substituting for them an armed people; officials to be not only elected but also subject to recall and their pay not to exceed that of a good worker. Sole authority must be in the hands of the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates. There must be no dual authority> No support should be given to the Provisional Government. The whole of the people must be prepared for the complete and sole authority of the Councils of the Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates. A constituent assembly should be called as soon as possible, but it is necessary to increase the members and strengthen the power of the Councils of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Delegates by organizing and arming the masses. A police force of the conventional type and a standing army are absolutely unnecessary. Immediately and unconditionally a universal army of the people should be introduced, so that they and the militia and the army shall be an integral whole. Capitalists must pay the workers for their days of service in the militia. Officers Subject to Their Men Officers must not only be elected, but every step of every officer and General must be subject to control by special soldiers' committees. The arbitrary removal by the soldiers of their superior officers is in every respect indispensable. The soldiers will obey only the powers of their own choice; they can respect no others. The Bolsheviki are absolutely opposed to all imperialist wars and to all bourgeois Governments which make them, among them our own Provisional Government. The Bolsheviki are absolutely opposed to revolutionary defense" in Rus sia. The Bolsheviki are against the predatory international treaties concluded between the Czar and England, France, &c., for the strangling of Persia, the division of China, Turkey, Austria, &c. The Bolsheviki are against annexations. Any promise of a capitalist Government to renounce annexations is a huge fraud. To expose it is very simple, by demanding that each nation be freed from the yoke of its own capitalists. The Bolsheviki are opposed to the (Russian) Liberty Loan, because the war remains imperialistic, being waged by capitalists in alliance with capitalists, and in the interests of capitalists. The Bolsheviki refuse to leave to capltalist Governments the task of expressing the desire of the nations for peace. All monarchies must be abolished. Revolutions do not proceed in fixed order. Only genuine revolutionaries may be trusted. The Peasants to Seize All Land The peasants must at once take all the land from the landholders. Order must be strictly maintained by the Councils of Peasants' Delegates. The production of bread and meat must be increased and the soldiers better fed. Destruction of cattle, of tools, &c., is not permissible. It will be impossible to rely upon the general Councils of Peasants' Delegates, for the wealthy peasants are of the same capitalist class that is always inclined to injure or deceive the farmhands, day laborers, and the poorer peasants. We must at once form special organizations of these latter classes of the village population both within the Councils of Peasants' Delegates and in the form of special Councils of Delegates of the Farmers' Workers. We must at once prepare the Councils of Workers' Delegates, the Councils of Delegates of Banking Employes, and others for the taking of all such steps as are feasible and completely realizable toward the union of all banks in one single national bank, and then toward a control of the Councils of Workers' Delegates over the banks and syndicates, and then toward their nationalization, that is, their passing over into the possession of the whole people. The only Socialist International, establishing and realizing a brotherly union of all the workers in all countries, which is now desirable for the nations, is one which consists of the really revolutionary workers, who are capable of putting an end to the awful and criminal slaughter of nations, capable of delivering humanity from the yoke of capitalism. Only such people (groups, parties, &c) as the German Socialist, Karl Liebknecht, now in a German jail, only people who will tirelessly struggle with their own Government and their own bourgeoisie, and their own social-patriots, and their own "centrists," can and must immediately establish that international which is necessary to the nations. The fraternization between soldiers of the warring countries, at the front, must be encouraged; it is good and indispensable. It will be noticed that the Bolsheviki have actually attempted to carry out the greater part of this program, and in some cases have apparently succeeded, at least temporarily. One Aspect of Bolshevist Liberty Ludovic Naudeau, a Petrograd correspondent of the Paris Temps, writing in October, 1917, drew this amusing sketch of one phase of life in the Russian capital: One morning recently I was awakened by the cries of my neighbor in the next room. His boots had been stolen. The same day the manager of a newspaper office told me that he had been robbed of six pairs of pantaloons. What use could any one have for six nether garments? The star reporter came in with eyes bulging. 66 Four hundred thefts every night!" he cried; "that is the average for the last two weeks. The Petrograd militia are vainly seeking for the 18,000 criminals who are living in liberty among us. It is frightful!" Under the old régime we were guarded by 5,750 police agents-large, strong men-who cost $2,500,000 a year. Those Pharaohs have been replaced by 7,000 small, mean-looking militiamen, who cost, in present taxes, $8,500,000 annually. Formerly we enjoyed sweet security. Today things fly out of one's pockets of themselves; watches escape from their a Besides, the persons whom one meets in prison do not stay there. One no longer stays in prison; it is not good form. Sometimes a new outburst of popular wrath opens the doors; sometimes the guards and sentinels give the prisoner to understand that the best thing he can do is to go away. There is talk of organizing a mass patrol of the streets, in which all the honest men of the city would have to go on guard by turns "in squads." All this is true, confirmed by a thousand witnesses. During the weeks immediately following the fall of the empire, the capital, in a sort of solemn and anguished waiting, enjoyed absolute peace, a truce of the underworld, a sort of petrification of crime. But today robbery has risen to the rank of a social institution. And yet, as Russia has not ceased to be a land of contrasts, there are no Apaches in the streets, no highwaymen, no hold-up men, none of those bloodthirsty thugs who menace life at night in other capitals. Many petty thieves and relatively few assassins! I wrote this note in a street car, and when I put my notebook in my pocket I discovered that I had been relieved of my purse; a fact that is not without its good side, since I had forgotten to mention the pickpockets, who are as numerous as the pockets of honest men. The Russian people lived for centuries under an autocracy, and yet they are by nature the most parliamentary of all the nations, doubtless because they are the most placid, the least irritable. We observed this once more at the All-Russian Congress, where a few momentary tumults did not destroy our general impression of a dignified and rather sad calmness. In that old and pompous Alexandra Theatre, under the blaze of the candelabra, amid the dull radiance of gilding almost a century old, we saw 1,500 delegates. Their controversies were long, grave, sometimes noisy, but the spectator who recalled the Boulanger episode and the Dreyfus affair noticed how much less irascible and excitable the Russians were by comparison. If the Russian people did not have, deep in their nature, a vast fund of cheerful and accommodating plasticity, a great tendency to prevent or rather to postpone conflicts by means of discussion and pacific "readjustment," of provisional agreement, civil war would have broken out fifty times since last March. General Gurko on the Revolution Exiled Russian Commander's Views General Gurko, one of the army commanders who made history for Russia in the days before the downfall of the Czar, was arrested and exiled by the Provisional Government in the first days of the revolution. He arrived in Paris early in November, 1917, and said interesting things to a newspaper representative, as follows: You OU know that it was because of a letter which I wrote to the Czar that I was imprisoned in the Fortress of Peter and Paul; yes, a letter written two days after the revolution. Now, a week after the revolution, a law of amnesty was decreed. My letter, it seems to me, should have come under that amnesty, even if it had been crimiThe text of it nal, which it was not. was published recently in an English newspaper, and still later in one of the principal Russian journals. The gist of it was this: All the Ministers of the Czar having been arrested and imprisoned at the moment of the revolutionary uprising, and most of them being entirely innocent of any misdeed, as time has proved-except in the case of two or three of them-I thought that I ought to appeal in their behalf to the fallen sovereign, so that he might say something in their defense. Besides, out of politeness rather than conviction, I expressed the thought that perhaps the future would be more kind to the imperial family. It was because of these sentiments that I was accused of criminality. In order to punish me, and doubtless to be rid of the troublesome personage which certain men in power saw in me, I was arrested. They might have done it by means of two policemen, or even would have sufficed. They preferred to mobilize a platoon of soldiers, two automobile machine guns, and an escort of cavalry. one In imprisoning me in the fortress they committed illegal acts which they tried later to make amends for. No matter! During the first days I was subjected to the treatment of a condemned criminal in a cell; later more humanity was shown. During the last weeks of my captivity I occupied a large room, with barred windows, of course, but my wife was allowed to come and live with me. Then the authorities decided to set me free-and exile me. I sailed from Archangel for London, and now I am living in Paris. Before I can return to Russia the present order of things will have to change. Many legends have been invented in regard to the origins of the revolution. One of them represents the Czar's family as pro-German. I assure you that it is nothing of the kind. The Czarina held the Germans in horror and treated William II. as a "mountebank." As for the Czar, with whom I often conversed and with whom I discussed all the current military questions, he was Commander in Chief only in name, and the military operations at the front escaped from his control, and even from his action. In imperial circles Rasputin passed for a partisan of Germany, but Rasputin had been dead two months when the revolution broke out. The revolution had been brewing a long time. There, too, German gold did its work, as it is trying to do everywhere. Food supply difficulties, which had by no means reached the stage of starvation, furnished a suitable occasion. This revolutionary movement could have been suppressed. It would merely have been necessary to make use of the troops, instead of parading them before the crowd as a menace. In such cases it is not well to let soldiers mingle with the people; they fraternize. One of the most disastrous consequences of the revolution was the crumbling of the Russian army on certain sectors under the influence of new doctrines. When that catastrophe occurred I presented myself, along with the Commander in Chief, Alexeieff, before the Provisional Government, the Executive Committee of the Soviet, and certain representatives of the Duma. We urged and begged them to stop the disorganization of the army; but apparently the task was not undertaken with entire good will. * * *Besides, the Russian front is 1.200 miles long! This revolution was to give Russia all kinds of liberty, but, alas! the dream lasted only one morning. One can now announce the failure of the movement and can state that the future belongs to the Government that shall go back to the beginning point, give the country the necessary force for the establishment of law and order, lay a solid foundation for its liberties-and, above all, banish politics from the army and restore discipline. We are still, I fear, in the descending period; but soon we shall touch bottom, and then, believe me, the good will gain ascendency over the evilat what price remains to be seen! [General Gurko summed up the situation at that time (Nov. 15) by saying that if the Bolsheviki succeeded in entering into direct peace negotiations with the German Government, from whom they were already receiving financial aid, there would be reason for the gravest fears as to the immediate outcome. He continued:] From the viewpoint of military success it is bitterly to be deplored that the Russian Army for the moment has ceased to wield anything more than a defensive, or, rather, a passive power. It still, however, holds 130 enemy divisions on that front. The German shock troops, today operating in Italy, have been taken from the Riga sector, where they were no longer needed; a few, also, have been drawn from the Russo-Bulgarian and French fronts. It is not possible for the Germans to strip the whole Russian front, where their 130 divisions are so spread out that they form only a very thin curtain. In any case, the interests of Russia and those of the Entente Allies are and must remain one and the same. The Allies need Russia, and Russia cannot live without the Allies except by falling under the economic domination of the Central Empires. * * * Do not forget that the Russian soldier today is the same as the one of 1915 who fought without rifle, artillery, or munitions, rushing forward to be cut to pieces on the battlefield, and that Russian officers have shown that they knew how to die. What our armies did then they will do again when their leaders order it. A From November 18 to December 17, 1917 By Walter Littlefield SIDE from the political events in the Chancelleries of the Allies, the declaration of war by the United States against Austria-Hungary, the formation of international councils of army and navy men for a better co-ordination of material, plan, and execution in the conduct of the war, and the dwindling belligerency of Russia and Rumania-and aside from such purely military actions as the double surprise wrought before Cambrai, the operations in the Regione of Veneto, the capture of Jerusalem, and the completion of the conquest of German East Africathe principal event has been of tactical rather than of strategic importance. Its scope and character are as yet unrevealed, although its advent has been proclaimed by the German press of every shade of political and military opinion as something decisive in the war. It is the transfer of certain scores of enemy divisions from the Russian to the French front. Before the Russian collapse we knew that von Hindenburg with his headquarters at Kovno was responsible for 450 miles of Russian front, and that on this front he had forty-eight divisions of infantry and ten of cavalry-in all an aggregate strength of about 1,200,000 men. South of him there were forty AustroHungarian divisions and an aggregation of Bulgars and Turks amounting to ten There were about 2,000,000 Teutonic effectives on the Russian front before the collapse. more. Of these we have positive information that forty-seven divisions, or nearly a million men, were sent in October to do battle in Italy and that their places were taken by half as many men in the first stages of training drawn from Germany and Austria. Moreover, from observations made by the French Headquarters Staff, published on Dec. 15, we are informed that Austria-Hungary's entire man power today reaches only 1,239,908. This last figure indicates that the Austro-Hungarian man power has been greatly exaggerated. It is a fair deduction to make that the German man power has been similarly expanded. Yet we have the exact number of divisions formerly commanded by von Hindenburg on the Russian front. To know just how many divisions are being released for work against the English, French, and Americans on the western front would presuppose a knowledge of two unknown elements-how thinly guarded the Germans dare leave the eastern front and to what number the men diverted from it may be replaced by reservists. After dealing at once with the matter of Cambrai, without attempting to identify the German reinforcements there as having already arrived from the Russian front or as being merely locally diverted, I shall take up some other events of the period covered, which, while of varied military importance, may tend to lighten for the Allies the most gloomy month of the most gloomy year of the war. General Byng's Cambrai Drive The manoeuvre executed by the Third British Army, under General the Hon. Sir Julian Byng, between St. Quentin and the River Scarpe in the last fortnight of November, when viewed alone, looms large on the annals of the war of attrition conducted by the British and French on the western front. Its initiative without artillery preparation, the tanks cutting the barbed-wire defenses, the territory occupied, and the large number of prisoners captured, when seen apart from other events, cause Vimy Ridge, which opened the way to an envelopment of Lens; Messines Ridge, which opened the way to the battles of Flanders, and even the great battle of the Somme to sink into insignificance. The hitherto invulnerable Hindenburg line |