Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/185

 quick intelligence, a ready appreciation of concrete facts, and an astonishing eagerness to learn something new. The infantry troops that we were addressing were all peasants, for the most part illiterate. Their character had the same mixture of naïveté and cunning that characterizes the peasant everywhere, but in a different proportion: rather more naïveté and less cunning. Combined with that, amazing good sense and a very great aptitude for following no matter what argument on condition that it be presented simply and in a concrete form.

A delightful example of this peasant simplicity, with the touch of cunning which frequently counterbalances it, was given us after the meeting at Iezierna by a Russian officer. Mixing among the soldiers, he had listened to the commentaries of two of them during my speech. I stopped after each sentence to give our interpreter time to translate. The interpreter was a Russian Socialist who had enlisted in the French army, and there had won his Lieutenant's stripes, the Legion of Honour, and the Croix de Guerre. His dignity, the