Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/235

Rh the bodies of living nations" and had refused to sign the First Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Germans then started a sudden drive on Petrograd. I joined the Red Guards for the defense of the city. Hearing this, Lenin suggested that I form a foreign detachment. Pravda printed our "call" in such English type as they could muster. (See reproduction of this on next page.)

About sixty men joined the detachment. Amongst them was Charles Kuntz, heretofore a Tolstoy an with scruples against killing even a chicken. Now that the Revolution was in peril, he threw over his pacifism and took up a gun. A tremendous change, to convert a fifty year old philosopher into a soldier. In target practise his rifle would get tangled in his beard, but once his bullet hit the bull's-eye and his eyes glistened with joy.

We were a motley crowd and our fighting-strength really amounted to little. But the spirit of it had a good moral effect upon the Russians. It gave them the feeling that they were not utterly alone. And on a tiny scale it gave us an insight into the difficulties the Bolsheviks must struggle with on a colossal scale. We saw the thousand obstacles that must be overcome before any organization could function.

British and French agents on the one hand, and German agents on the other, tried to worm their way into our detachment. The Whites tried to get hold of it for counter-revolutionary purposes. Provocators stirred up jealousy and dissent. After we got