The army had become a hungry horde of ill-shod and ill-clothed men with but a single desire upon earth--to get back to whatever corner of that vast land they called home. They had stayed in the trenches for nearly a year after they had made their first demand for peace. Their committee meetings had become pathetic recitals by the delegates of the conditions of their men. The horses were dying from lack of feed. The men were suffering hideously in the frozen trenches because of lack of boots and clothing. Again and again the delegates declared: “They say they’ll stand it just one more week and that’s all.” When the week was up, in spite of the tortures of cold and hunger, most of them still stayed on. The committees were unequal to the task of provisioning the army. Given the same conditions, any group of officials, any dictator, any Tsar, would have failed equally; but the unthinking critics of Russia persisted in placing all the blame for the disorganization of the army and navy upon the committees. As a matter of fact, the disorganization came first, and the committees afterward. They were an outgrowth of the chaos that immediately followed the fall of the Tsar. They were the attempt of the men themselves to bring some sort of order out of the confusion that naturally resulted when the governor of the Russian engine was suddenly removed. In July General Denikine, in command in Galicia during the disastrous offensive, made a report to the War Council in which he described conditions existing as early as June, saying: “We no longer have any infantry. I will make the statement stronger, and say we no longer have any army. The army is in ruins.” February was almost here. Nothing had happened to improve the army--everything had happened to complete its disorganization. Considering the condition of that army, the miracle was not that they left the trenches so soon, but that they stayed so long. Considering the frightful conditions in Russia, the amazing thing was not that there was so much violence, but that there was not more. CHAPTER XXIII THE GREAT BETRAYAL Looking back, so much is clear! On a gray November evening out on the Russian front not far from Dvinsk, the gunners, delivering a daily salute to the German trenches, heard a muttered command to stop firing. They turned to face a line of soldiers in coarse mud-colored coats, their trench-tanned faces grimly set beneath shaggy hats of sheepskin. The gunners shrugged their shoulders and turned to the battery. “Stop firing,” again came the command. “Who said so?” asked one of the gunners. “We say so,” a soldier answered. “Those are our brothers over there. The war is finished. It was the Tsar’s war. They are workingmen and peasants like us. They don’t want to fight us; we don’t want to fight them. Stop firing.” The gunner laughed. “If you don’t stop shooting, we’ll shoot you. I tell you, you’re killing our brothers,” said the soldier again, in the same quiet, final tone.