Lastly the council is liberally sprinkled with German spies and agents. Every once in a while one of these men is unmasked and put out. But it is more than likely that his place is quickly filled. It is a most difficult thing to convince the council that any “Tavarish,” which is the Russian word for comrade, can be guilty of double dealing. The council defended Lenine up to the last moment. Even after he fled the country the Socialist newspapers, _Isvestia_, _Pravda_, and Maxim Gorki’s _Nova Jisn_, declared him to be the victim of an odious calumny. It was this Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates that first claimed a consultive position in the government, and within a few months was parading the streets with banners demanding “All the Power to the Soviet.” I cannot say that I unreservedly blame them. They were people who had never known any kind of freedom, they had been poor and oppressed and afraid of their lives. All of a sudden they were freed. And when they went in numbers to the Duma and claimed a right to a voice in their own future, men like Kerensky and others, who are honest dreamers, others plain demagogues and office seekers, came out and lauded them to the skies, told them that the world was theirs, that they alone had brought about the revolution and therefore had a right to take possession of the country. The effect of this on soldiers and on the working people was immediate and disastrous. If Kerensky was not the author of the famous Order No. 1, which was the cause of most of the riot and bloodshed in the army, he at least signed it and defended it. This order provided for regimental government by committees, the election of officers by the soldiers, the doing away with all saluting of superiors by enlisted men and the abolition of the title “your nobility,” which was the form of address used to officers. In place of this form the soldiers were henceforth to address their officers as Gospodeen (meaning mister), captain, colonel, general, as the case might be. Order No. 1 was a plain license to disband the Russian army. Abolishing the custom of saluting may seem a small thing. A member of the Root mission expressed himself thus to me soon after his arrival in Petrograd: “This talk of anarchy is all nonsense,” he said. “A lot of peacock officers are sore because the men don’t salute them any more. Why should the men salute?”