Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/111



HE army came out in support of the Revolution and went over to the side of the people. It was one of those impalpable miracles of history which are impossible to grasp and to estimate; any attempt to explain it rationally or on purely logical grounds is bound to fail. Whole books will be written on this marvellous conversion. Every detail in the life of the Russian soldiers will be told; the tragic story of their sufferings, of their cruel and incompetent commanders who led them to slaughter without adequate equipment, and of their continual betrayal by treason at the front and marauders at the rear. The story will be told of all their hopes and their despondencies; and the more we know about these terrible three years of war, the more we understand the life of the Russian soldier, the more clearly we shall realise how this regeneration came about, transforming in a flash the Russian soldiers, the slaves of the Tsar and of the landowners, into the zealous supporters of the Revolution. But even then we shall not know the whole movement in the soul of the Russian soldiers during those few hours when their participation in the Revolution was decided. `