Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/197

 The most noticeable sign lies in the continued signs of outward respect.

In the rear, it is true, no soldier salutes an officer. This is one of the first innovations of the Revolution. The right not to salute, a reform which probably was welcomed with equal joy by officers as by men, for they can scarcely have relished the necessity in going through the streets of Petrograd or Moscow, crowded with troops, of constantly returning the salute. Be that as it may, in the rear the soldiers make it a point of honour not to salute any officer. On the front, on the contrary, we did not come across one soldier who did not salute his officer. Such a situation is all the more striking because the famous decree of June, of the minister Kerensky, on the "Rights of Soldiers," strange and provisional mixture of the hierarchical tradition and democratic idealism, proclaims that saluting an officer is not an act of duty, but a mere act of voluntary courtesy.

We met few officers who did not tell us that, in spite of the relaxation of former