Small wonder, then, after the revolution, that there was a great popular demand for swift justice for the soldiers. The provisional government announced that henceforth each regiment should have an elected committee, an executive body which should have entire charge of regimental affairs. Food, clothing, supplies of all kinds, were to pass through the hands of these committees, and they were to hear and pass on all complaints. The committees were the vocal organs of the army. For the first time in Russian history the soldier was allowed to speak. The plan might have worked excellently had the provisional government not made the mistake of too much zeal in democratizing the army. It gorged the soldiers with freedom, gave them such heady doses of self-government that they got drunk on the idea and ran amuck like so many crazed Malays. Kerensky decreed that the soldiers need not salute their officers. “Well then, we won’t,” they said. “And just to show how free we are we won’t wash our faces, or wear clean clothes, or touch our caps to women, or stand up straight----” and from that it was an easy journey to “We won’t take any orders from anybody.” The government told the soldiers to elect their own officers, and they did, after butchering a thousand or so of their old ones. They elected them wisely in some instances, but in a great many more they did not. They chose men, not for their capacity to lead in a military way, but for their political views. In a Bolshevik regiment the best Bolsheviki were elected. If there was a Minshevik majority the new officers were pretty sure to be Minsheviki. And after they were elected nobody respected them, nor did they dare give orders. But of all the madness that took possession of the “free” soldiers, the committee madness went farthest. The Russians love to talk. To make speeches, to heckle and be heckled is the joy of their lives. The committee gave them a new chance to talk, and they got the habit of calling a committee meeting on every conceivable occasion. Petrograd heard with horror last summer that the men in the trenches, when ordered to advance, actually called meetings to discuss the orders and to vote whether or not they were to be followed. They did this at times when the Germans were at the very gates of an important strategic point.