Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/99

 Rh Every effort was made to stop this rot. Several influential public bodies—notably an unofficial Commission of the Duma, the Society of Journalists in Petrograd, and others—investigated the facts! at the front. The immense material collected testified with unfailing clearness to the criminal origin of this policy and to its terrible influence upon the army. The Russian Press was powerless, being forbidden to report the facts. But there was a widespread hope that if the facts could be brought to the notice of the Western Allied Powers, they would use their influence with the Russian Government to bring about a change for the better. The most difficult question was how to get the material over the frontier. However, this was successfully done, and yet all efforts to induce the Press in the Allied countries to make a protest were in vain. The silence of the British Press at that time was the first blow to the great admiration of Russian progressive society for Great Britain and for its free Press. The belief of Russian progressive society that England was "our ally" was destroyed; they saw that in reality England was "their ally"—the ally of the Tsarist Government, on which the English Press continued to lavish its praise and flattery.

The effect of this policy of deliberate mistrust on the morale of the army was terrible. Indeed, imagine the state of mind of the poor uneducated Russian soldier, who is taught to believe that the population in the rear is permeated with spies and hidden enemies. This terrible legend must naturally have excited and terrorised the army. The more so, as it began to dawn on the soldiers that all their greatest heroism and sacrifices ultimately led to disaster, and that for some reason or other disaster always coincided with grave cases of treason in the army itself. But even the facts about treason in the army, real and serious as they were, would not have had such a terrible effect on the psychology and the morale of the army if it had not been prepared to believe that treason was everywhere. The grave and