Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/135

 By that we do not mean that the sudden relaxation of discipline produced by the Revolution has not been felt by the troops at the front.

No one would dream of suggesting such a thing. But we must not forget that by the very nature of things this relaxation of discipline was never as marked among the troops at the front, better organized, more fully occupied, nearer the enemy, and farther from the enervating atmosphere and the thousand temptations that were at work on the soldiers in the big towns. And then there were the material difficulties which made desertions or these long train trips much more difficult to accomplish for the men at the front than for the soldiers in the rear. In the first place, the great distances, hundreds of kilometres in some instances, that the soldier had to traverse from the trenches or from his billet to the nearest station, without the welcome assistance of an obliging automobile, and then, after several days' tramp, the prospect of having to wait a few more to procure a place on the roof of a railway compartment, made the project one not to be undertaken