predecessors. Fate is strangely capricious—Milyukoff left the Provisional Government before Kerensky, because Kerensky wished to amend its programme in a pacifist sense; afterwards, when Kerensky attempted to fight, Milyukoff was ready to negotiate with the Germans for peace!
My own conviction was firm—not to meddle in the internal revolutionary affairs of Russia and to get away from Russia to France as had been agreed. Therefore, when the Bolshevists under Muravieff marched against the bourgeois National Council of the Ukraine and took Kieff, we made a Treaty with them. They guaranteed our armed neutrality and our freedom to leave for France. Thus we were recognized as a regular and independent army and Government; and, in order to strengthen our position, I declared-in agreement with the French Military Mission—that our army was a part of the French army. This was on February 7, 1918, a day before the Bolshevists captured Kieff.
Muravieff himself tried to keep his pledges; but, whether he knew it or not, the Kieff Bolshevist Soviet sent Czech agitators to persuade our troops to join the Red Army. This was one of the many critical moments we went through. After careful reflection I decided to let the Bolshevist agitators talk to our fellows. As a result, only 218 men out of our whole army joined the Reds, and several of them came back next day, for, naturally, they were not slow to see the defects of the Bolshevist forces. An episode which opened the eyes of the better sort more thoroughly than I could have done by any prohibition of Bolshevist propaganda, was that, on the morrow, one of our Reds boasted that he had a pocket full of watches. Not a few Russian and French officers were very sceptical about my decision to allow Bolshevist propaganda, but its upshot went in my favour and against military red tape.
I do not deny that there were decent and honest fellows among those who went over to the Bolshevists. Some of them afterwards rendered us good service as members of the Bolshevist army. But Bolshevist excesses at Kieff and in the neighbourhood tried our patience sorely. We were especially upset by the news that, despite the Agreement, some of our sentries guarding military stores near the city had been killed; for the Bolshevists, in their brutal arrogance, had not only killed our men but had profaned their bodies after stealing their clothing and boots. It was hard to resist the natural impulse to chastise them; but, taking all circumstances into account, I confined myself to a strong protest and to the exaction of a promise that
