[Illustration: The Revolutionary Army: a review. Kerensky.]
The second Quartermaster-General--General Markov--had a serious task before him--he had to create the necessary apparatus, to establish communications with the important papers, to supply the Stavka with a "megaphone" and raise the condition of the Army Press, which was leading a wretched existence and which the army organisations were trying to destroy. Markov took up the task warmly, but failed to do anything serious, as he only remained in office two months. Every step of the Stavka in this direction called forth from the Revolutionary Democracy a disingenuous accusation of counter-revolutionary action. And Liberal Bourgeois Moscow, to which he turned for aid, in the form of intellectual and technical assistance in his task, replied with eloquent promises, but did absolutely nothing.
Thus the Stavka had no means at all, not only for actively combating the disintegration of the Army, but for resisting German propaganda, which was spreading rapidly.
Ludendorff says frankly and with a national egotism rising to a high degree of cynicism: "I did not doubt that the _débâcle_ of the Russian Army and the Russian people was fraught with great danger for Germany and Austria-Hungary.... _In sending Lenin to Russia_ our Government assumed an enormous responsibility! This journey was justified from a military point of view; _it was necessary that Russia should fall_. But our Government should have taken measures that this should not happen to Germany."[21]
Even now the boundless sufferings of the Russian people, now "out of the ranks," did not call forth a single word of pity or regret from its moral corrupters....
With the beginning of the campaign, the Germans altered the direction of their work with respect to Russia. Without breaking their connections with the well-known reactionary circles at Court, in the Government and in the Duma, using all means for influencing these circles and all their motives--greed, ambition, German atavism, and sometimes a peculiar understanding of patriotism--the Germans entered at the same time into close fellowship with the Russian Revolutionaries in the country, and especially abroad, amongst the multitudinous emigrant colony. Directly or indirectly, all were drawn into the service of the German Government--great agents in the sphere of spying and recruiting, like Parvus (Helfand); provocateurs, connected with the Russian Secret Police, like Blum; propaganda agents--Oulianoff (Lenin), Bronstein (Trotsky), Apfelbaum (Zinovieff), Lunacharsky, Ozolin, Katz (Kamkoff), and many others. And in their wake went a whole group of shallow or unscrupulous people, cast over the frontier and fanatically hating the _régime_ which had rejected them--hating it to the degree of forgetfulness of their native land, or squaring accounts with this _régime_, acting sometimes as blind tools in the hands of the German General Staff. What their motives were, what their pay, how far they went--these are details; what is important is that they sold Russia, serving those aims which were set before them by our foe. They were all closely interlaced with one another and with the agents of the German Secret Service, forming with them one unbroken conspiracy.