Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/97

 Rh for reconciliation had passed by, and a few weeks later the public and political life of Russia was once more permeated with mutual hatred and mistrust. But it was in the army that the influence of this policy of the Military Party was most deplorable. The morale of the army was shaken even before it met the enemy.

It is, of course, easy to understand why the Press in this country and in France persisted in denying that the Russian army committed any atrocities. It certainly is more convenient for them to represent the "army of the Tsar" as a well-disciplined model army which chivalrously and gallantly fought the enemy, whereas the army of the Revolution degenerated into an undisciplined mob, looting and destroying everything that came its way. But whether we like it or no, it is a terrible fact that the army of the Tsar, or rather of the Grand Duke Nicholas, committed atrocities both in enemy lands and in Russia itself. The most abominable atrocities were committed by the High Command. It terrorised the people behind the front, arrested and banished the populations of whole villages, took hostages, and encouraged the soldiers to look upon the civilian population as spies and secret agents of the enemy. In the invaded provinces of Galicia and the Bukovina it violated all institutions of public life, shutting down the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) schools, sup-pressing the Ruthenian newspapers and religious societies, and arresting and banishing the Ruthenian priests. It replaced the free or half-free forms of political and social life by the most rotten institutions, the worst products of Russian political ingenuity.

The short régime of Count Bobrinski, who was appointed Military Governor of Galicia, was a terrible object lesson to the peoples of Austria, and indeed of Europe in general. Bobrinski brought over the very worst elements from Russia, the political blackguards recommended by the "Black Hundred." He made Lemberg into a kind of experimental laboratory of the