Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/107

 Rh selves, who went out to meet the enemy in the "neutral zone"—first singly and then in larger and larger groups—conveying the news of the Revolution. Eventually they met in the trenches of the enemy or in their own trenches, and sometimes as many as 500 were present at single meetings.

When this spontaneous movement became known to the revolutionary democracy at home, it was at first received with unanimous approval and joy, but after a short period it divided them into two camps. The moderates were afraid that fraternisation would lead to disorganisation of the army; while the extremists, who were tremendously impressed by the unexpected impulse of the movement, overestimated its possibilities. For them fraternisation was "the way to peace." They saw in it "the revolutionary initiative of the masses, an awakening of the conscious intelligence and courage of the oppressed classes; in a word, one of the links in the chain leading up to the proletarian Revolution" of the world. Lenin wrote on the first of May: "Fraternisation has begun; let us help it!" But even the Bolsheviks emphasised the necessity of turning fraternisation into an active political weapon, and of taking precautions lest it should lead to strategical advantages for the enemy or to the decomposition of the army. In a manifesto to the troops entitled "How to Fraternise" the Bolsheviks said:—

"Fraternisation must not be transformed into a trap for the revolutionary soldiers on one side or the other. We are in favour of fraternisation of revolutionary soldiers on both sides in the name of the transformation of the Russian Revolution into the European Revolution, and in order to carry the spirit of the Russian Revolution into Germany and into the German trenches. We see in it the great beginning of a great deed. But we want this to be actually a fraternisation of revolutionaries and not a trap set by imperialists to catch revolutionaries. The soldier comrades at the front, weighing all the circumstances, will know how to avoid such traps