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the abolition of military discipline on the morrow of the revo-
lution proceeded less from a desire to realize the ultra-
democratic principle than from the fear that an army held under
the old discipline might be turned against the revolution. No
chances must be taken against the subsidence of the emotion which
had swept the Petrograd garrison to the side of the people.

The desire for peace has a similar explanation. Un-
questionably the Russian people is war-weary, but the controlling
reason has been that a war cannot be carried on without a disci-
plined army; and a disciplined army might in the course of time
be led by the prestige of a successful general or the promise of
great rewards, against the revolution.

The fear of reaction accounts for the rise of the Bol-
sheviki to power and for their military successes over Korniloff,
Faledine, Alexcieff, and the Ukrainians. It is this fear that
compels the Socialist opponents of the Bolsheviki -- the Menshiviki
and the Socialist Revolutionists with their enormous preponderance
among the peasantry -- to content themselves with verbal opposition.
They see no guarantee that if the Bolsheviki were defeated in the
field by any army, no matter how devoted to the revolution, no
matter how disinterested the motives of its leaders, the force of
events will not sweep on towards reaction and Czarism.

The opponents of the Bolsheviki prefer to wait until the
time when reaction has become impossible before asserting themselves
in force against the Lenine regime. A representative of the Pet-
rograd Soviet recently in this country, characterized a paragraph
by the present writer composed in this vein, as going to the heart

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