As to the moral level of the Red Army, the general moral corruption which 
has spread all over Russia under Bolshevic reign, cannot but affect the 
Army, cannot but undermine the ideals of a true soldier among the masses, 
ideals, which in their very nature clash with the Soviet spirit, the very 
substance of which is corruption itself*). And moreover, the value of armed 
forces, their capacity of fulfilling the tasks set them by politics, cannot be 
appreciated by itself without fully taking into consideration all the other 
factors which go to influence the defensive capability of a State. The 
times when the army used to gain the frontier in order to perform some 
professional duty there while the whole country continued to live its own 
independent life, those times are a thing of the past. Nowadays, a struggle 
is carried out by the whole population in all such manifestations as affect 
the State and private life, in the material as well as in the moral sense; 
and it is this that furnishes the military potency of a country, and it is just 
here where a whole series of defects of Soviet Russia are agglomerated in 
her disorganisation too well-known for it to be necessary to enumerate its 
component parts here. These defects must needs annihilate the greatest 
part of Soviet Russia’s military efficiency. 
And now as to the general conclusion. Of all the undertakings of the 
Soviets the reconstruction of an armed force is the most successful. And 
no wonder that it is so. The shipwreck of all the devices brought forward 
by Soviet rulers, finds its explanation in the very system of communism, 
in the suppression of personal initiative, in the mania for nationalising 
everything and everybody. This mania was naturally not absolutely bound 
to exercise a destructive effect on the creation of an army, as the army, 
as a matter of fact, had already been “nationalized’’ before, — in Russia, 
as elsewhere. And moreover, the Soviet Government has always devoted, 
and continues to do so now, — more attention to the armed forces than 
to any other sphere of life. After having promised peace to the whole world 
and most particularly “peace to the huts”, the Communist Government 
squeezes all the marrow out of the population for the army in the first 
instance, and has thrust almost the whole weight of the military burden: 
upon these very peasant huts. That the Soviet Government had the 
possibility of reaching such success, was only due to the compulsory 
assistance of the officers of the Imperial Army has already been mentioned. 
And even so, the Red Army — although the best achievement of the 
Soviet World-Recreators — both in its warfare standard as in its actual 
strength, is undoubtedly far inferior to any other European Army. 
*) In estimating the moral standing of the Red Army, one must not forget 
the fact that the Army is being flooded more and more by a sea of the most 
primitive of spirits. Criminal offences in a drunken state, both of ordinary soldiers, 
as well as among those in Command has become an everv-day occurrence. Editor. 
a i a iri— 
Di