In the Družina, the language of command had been Russian. In the second Division it was Czech; and, in the Corps, Czech was introduced though, in some respects, only nominally, because our men had neither the time nor the capacity to translate the Russian words of command quickly and to adopt them to our needs. This was one of the difficulties inherent in the very character of our military organization.
The Materials of an Army.
Some effort of imagination is needed to understand how troublesome the work of organization really was. It was not merely a question of the language of command and of army signals, but of the whole military administration. Our men were volunteers. They had joined of their own free will, and this gave them a certain liberty. Our ideal was to make a democratic army; and it is comprehensible that, in the Russian chaos, the notions of liberty, equality and fraternity were, at times, somewhat anarchically interpreted. Especially after the Bolshevist Revolution, when Bolshevist ideas began to spread even in our ranks, it was a heavy task promptly to work out a democratic system of discipline and obedience such as is indispensable to an army in the field. As I have said, we adopted the French disciplinary system, with some necessary and provisional alterations.
Among our volunteers there were, of course, members of all our parties and factions at home—another source of trouble, because the men, and particularly the officers, could not always distinguish between politics and strategy. Yet antagonisms were not so sharp as they would have been at home. Nevertheless, in such circumstances, it was by no means easy to put the army on a purely military basis and to make it efficient. It was not, I repeat, merely a question whether the command should be Russian or Czech (though this was long debated) but of settling a far wider problem—what strategy and tactics would best express the spirit of our nation? In any event, we had to make our volunteer army fit to face a first-class foe; and, despite all our care, some degree of amateurishness remained in the organization and command both of the whole and of the various parts. The solution of many a puzzle cost me, a civilian, much hard thought. Our soldiers naturally compared themselves with the Russians around them, but we had to judge by the standard of the Germans and the Prussians whom we wished to fight. In battle, discipline and technical knowledge save
