Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/195

 Rh less successful beginning. The representatives of the soldiers had made it quite plain that the army was not ready to make a blow, and that even if they could be forced or persuaded to attempt one, they were absolutely unable to sustain a reverse without disaster. But the generals knew their way. They began an energetic campaign of "careful nursing" on the front, and carried away the Government by promises of a splendid beginning. This "nursing" consisted in collecting on a narrow section of the front, which was very thinly held by the enemy, specially chosen divisions; but even the soldiers of these divisions were little inclined for an offensive, and the High Command collected at the same point the British armoured cars, Checho-Slovak contingents, a good many British and French aviators, and all the shock battalions, the Kornilovists, "battalions of death," and the other troops which soon after the disaster played the chief part in the counter-revolutionary movements. But that was not all. Whole regiments were made up of officers only. This heterogenous