Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/130

 been near the front, many who have never handled a rifle.

What have they been doing during the past three years? Very little assuredly. Their drill takes them only a few hours per week. There are very few arms or material available for instruction; very few officers, and most of the officers loafing about in the depots have never made war and know only the routine of garrison life. In general, the discipline is not sufficiently strict to enable the officers to exact from their troops a really serious effort of instruction or training. Such drill as one sees among the troops in Petrograd is generally most primitive, and as a rule they content themselves with continuing the ordinary garrison routine of peace times. They teach the soldiers to salute and to reply to their officers according to the rules of the former Government—which, however, are scarcely applicable, in Petrograd at least, since the Revolution. If they have a certain number of rifles at their disposal, they execute a few movements in close formation with their arms shouldered, and that is all. Little or no