Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/89

 cruel wrong to Faith and Hope dealt by the treaties miscalled of Peace.

Our experience of Russia fills us with mingled fear and hope. During the last two and a half years of bitter fighting the Russian Government has trained and equipped a magnificent army. Its navy is utterly devoted to it. In a sense the Revolution is the child of the navy, for the sailors brought the thing to birth. It is not possible to estimate the exact number of men in the active forces, but it is very large indeed, and it is a very different army from the ragged, ignorant, ill-equipped forces of the Czar, cheated and abused by corrupt generals and politicians.

In Petrograd we witnessed an enormous display of Reserve Troops, numbering not less than fifty thousand, in the Uritzky Platz, which is the new name given to the great square opposite the Winter Palace. Accompanying these troops were machine guns and much of the regular paraphernalia of war. The uniforms were smart and the men were well shod. Two similar displays in Moscow took place, the one chiefly of young officers in training, the other of fully trained officers about to leave for the Polish front. The oath which these men took in public, and in the presence of the British Delegation, is translated as follows:

"1. I, son of the working people, citizen of the