ro 
police-liounds, dirty dogs, human wolves, wire-tappers, and 
the rest — what became o( all that ? 
It sounds like a tale of unreality or magic, but the whole 
thins dissolved like a mirage. One moment it was oppressing 
all men's hearts with its scowling and Unassailable front. 
The next, it had ceased to be. and the wolves, ferrets and hyenas 
it had nouri'ihed werf in fnll flight. The fear of God must have 
rome upon them ; very few have ever been found. Some 
got over the border in safety, to Sweden or Germany ; many 
in disguise still hid? in unsuspected holes ; some have, under 
iissumeil names, enlisted in tli? army. One at least, even in 
the teiTor of those hot h')urs. did not lose his cunning. With 
one exception the only buildings the crowd destroyed were 
police-stations ; to-dav every police-station in Petrograd is 
black ruins. A crowd with torches was marcliing from one 
station to another. 
" Comrades ! Comrades!" shouted a man, springing upon a 
doorstej). " To th« Justice Hall, to the Justice Hall !' ' 
So lie led them to the great white building, the hated place 
whence so many patriots had been sent to Siberia, and they 
burned it to the ground, and it contained all the secret 
records of the police spies, wlio they were and where thev 
lived and on whom thej- had spied. The wolves, ferrets and 
hyenas breathed freely again. Their identity will never be 
made known now. 
That was the limit to whicli the violence reached ; the tidal 
wave of chaos normally due from so great a convulsion never 
arrived. Petrograd and all Russia lapsed into a state of 
acquiescent good order and good nature. The people had 
destroyed the old autocratic government ; they took no 
interest in punishing the elegant thieves and scoundrels that 
had conducted it. It was probably the worst government 
that ever- e.xisted on this earth. Autocracy is always rotten 
and always a curse : this was rotten beyond all previous re- 
cords of aut(K-.racy, and a curse that made the plagues of Egypt 
seem negligible. It contained men that had stolen the money 
appropriated for rifles and sent unarmed Russian armies to 
LAND & WATER 
November 15, 1917 
the front to be slaughtered. It contained men that for a price 
had betrayed Russian armies into places where they were 
caught and shot down like rabbits in a trap. It contained 
men that had stolen food from soldiers' lips and clothing from 
soldiers' backs. It contained men that had stolen cartridges 
from soldiers' belts and shells from great guns. It contained 
men that wallowed in millions they had stolen from taxes 
wrung from peasants and half-starved workers. It contained 
men that had agreed to sell their country to Germany. Not 
one of these was hanged. The evil they did lives after them 
and will live. They and their kind crippled, broke down or 
ruined every part of the Russian Government machine. 
Since the Revolution new men have arisen of character and 
high purpose. So great was the destruction wrought by their 
jiredecessors that the new men must erect practically a new 
machine. They cannot erect it in a da>' ; they are stillhobbled 
with a million fragments of the old regime, and from that fact 
alone comes a black flood of troubles. Then there is 
German propaganda, able, adroit, marvellously organized, 
mar\-ellously handled, equipped with unlimited (piantities of 
counterfeit moneyi that many persons cannot tell from the 
genuine. There is the great army of German agents always 
secretly spreading poison. There are the Millennium people 
that believe the Russian Revolution ushered in the New 
Jerusalem and the Pearly Gates and furiously reject anything 
less. There is the large aiid active element that is against 
everything and doesn't know why. I 
With courage and patience the meii of the new order confront 
these difficulties. It will not be because of the commanding 
and overawing genius of any one man that they wiU win. 
We seem determined in this country to have somebody spring 
up in Russia with " a rod of iron." There will be no such 
man ; there would be nothing for him to do if there were one. 
Because the strength of Russia and the power that will solve 
all her difficulties is not the superior gifts of any individual, but 
the great good sense and strong dniiocratic' impulse of the 
Russian people . 
Discipline and Human Nature 
By Sapper 
THERE are times when the uuk soldii r — undisturbed 
as he is by Trades Unionism and sti ikes— regards 
with a certain wonder the condition of affairs at home. 
He reads in the paper a few speeches by people of great 
mental ability- : he reads a large number of speeches by people 
without great mental ability. He sees remarks, such as— " If 
employers and workmen will pull together with all their might, 
lietween them they will pull us through " — and many others 
all indicative of the same state of mind. And having read 
them and pondered them, and plucked an acre or two of 
France from his person, he relapses, as I have said, into a 
certain troubled wonder. 
As an officer he realises that he is in the position of an 
employer ; that his men are in the position of workmen. He 
realises that until very recently he and his men were part of those 
about whom these speeches are made, and these pious hopes 
are uttered. And having got as far as that he wonders 
what has caused the difference. 
There is no question of his workmen not pulling together 
under him and for him with all their might ; it is a certain fact 
and they do it and have done it for mtrnths. New ones have 
rome : old faces liave chopped out ; two good sergeants lie- 
one at Zillebeke and one near Lens — having finished the game 
and paid the last big price. But the platoon goes on, the com- 
pany, the battalion whatever it may be, and it still pulls 
together without powerful speeches delivered twice daily 
And he asks himself, Why ? 
Is it that the job in France is pleasanter than working in 
England :■ A dirty shell hole, plentifully supplied with slimy 
ooze ; a fly-blown trench with the stench of dead things 
nauseating the air. and the sun baking down On the hot, dried 
up sand bags : a rest in the reserve line with the ever present 
jog of a working party always with one to keep people amused ' 
And the other sid.— a home, decent hot meals always, the 
theatre and the picture palace with money to spend in them, 
the comfort and peace of England. The stagnation which leads 
to utter boredom (m one hand— the work that keeps a man 
from it on the other ; the constant risk of death on one hand— 
the practical certainty of safety on the other. And having 
got so far he decides that it is not because the job is pleasanter 
that the difference occurs . . 
Is it because the nearness to the accursed Hun has inspired 
those in France with a lofty ideal to crush the swine to 
avenge poor '^ufiering Belgium and martyred Ser\ia, which is 
absent from \hose far away ? Is it a 'wild enthusiasm in- 
spired by the entrance of Monte Carlo and Spitzbergen into the 
conflict that causes this contrast ? Does anyone think that 
these things cut the slightest ice with a man who has spent 
forty-eight hours in an advanced strong point, splendid in its 
isolation, rich beyond all dreams in freezing mud ? 
Is it discipline ? Is it fear of being punished binder the 
'™" code of militarism? Certainly it is amongst other thipgs 
the first ; as certainly it is not the second, which despite^the 
lofty utterances of certain screamers of great vocal power is not 
discipline as we understand it. At times, this second autocratic 
exercise of power is doubtless practised. With the German 
army it always is. And with them it is successful. That is 
the dih'erence between the two nations ; with us — when it is 
practised— it always fails. Our men must be led ; theirs must 
be driven— and the difference is great. 
But the real discipline— the proper sort ; the controlling 
factor which must be exercised bv someone if anv community is 
to be kept together— what of that ? It is not fear of the leader 
that IS at the basis of it ; one feels fear only for a taskmaster. 
Rather should it be a sense of responsibility ; a feeling in each 
individual man that what he does helps or hurts the side, 
and therefore that what he does— counts. For only with 
the sense of responsibility that is part and parcel of good 
discipline, will there come the desire to play for the side— 
the fulfilment of workmen and employers pulling together 
with all their might. 
Why then, asks our mere soldier, docs this discipline— this 
proper controlling factor exist in the mud of Flanders, and not 
elsewhere. And when he reaches this point in his thoughts 
be IS very near the final solution of his problem. It comes to 
him that discipline for the Englishman, if it is to be success- 
lul, must be based on an intensely human outlook. 
l^or the first time he finds ihiat he has studied human nature 
—the nature of his workmen. More, he has lived with them, 
and suffered with them, and died with them. He has looked 
arter their comforts ; he has been their friend as well as their 
omcer. He has cheered them up, and cursed them, and made 
much of them when they did well. And in doing all this he at 
last has understood them ; while— what is just as important— 
they ha^'e understood him, ]• mplover and workmen have met 
on the common ground of human nature ; is it essential that 
t ley must part brass rags again simply because in civil life 
the money factor comes in } h urther, is there not a possibility 
in the future of that common ground being reached without 
presupnosint.' a war .•' 
