lives. Not only military but humanitarian considerations demand good equipment and sound soldierly training.
Circumstances themselves required independence of thought and action on the part of individuals; and, in this respect, our Corps came out well on the whole. In big things and small, talent and a gift for improvisation were shown. It was not possible simply to order our men to ignore Bolshevist examples. Soldiers’ committees had, for instance, to be set up, but, as early as the Kerensky period, they were limited to economic and educational work. The democratic administration of a―volunteer—army demanded that the men themselves should have some voice in decisions. And, in a democratic army, the privileges of officers are hard to determine ought they, for example, to have their own mess? Such matters could not be dealt with at one stroke and in the lump, for conditions did not permit of strict uniformity. Therefore the various detachments did more or less as they liked. The principles and ideas of the Sokol organization served as a standard; and though I was well aware of the difference between a soldier and a “Sokol,” the influence of the Sokol idea was great and good. We made mistakes but, on the whole, we succeeded. Before long we numbered more than 40,000 men for whom arms, clothing, boots, bread and meat had to be provided—the commissariat question was difficult indeed. To some extent, as I have said, the breakdown of the Russian army helped us; but it was not easy to get corn and flour from the Ukrainian peasants—they demanded tools and nails, not money, in return—and the constant changes in the political situation hampered us. At first we had been dependent on the Russian military authorities; but, by the time we had mustered in the Ukraine, the Russian authorities were giving place to Ukrainian in proportion as the Ukraine gained independence. Yet we could not avoid dealing also with the new Bolshevist authorities who were coming into power. Then the grave problem of transport arose. How was our army to get to the East—for we held firmly to the plan of reaching France by way of Siberia and the sea—when the management and the rolling stock of the Russian railways were deteriorating daily?
Even had our men been veterans of uniform quality, things would thus have been hard enough; but, naturally, not all of our 40,000 volunteers were of equal character and worth. Naturally, too, not all of them had been prompted to join us by patriotic enthusiasm. Upon them the effects of life in most of the Russian prisoners’ camps had been very harmful,
