permeate the ignorant,
peasants of the rank and file and caused endless demoralization.
Animated by the same spirit, many of the workingmen in the factories
supplying the army grew restless under the discipline of work and
struck for impossible wages. They had always thought that under a
Socialist system they would have little work and plenty to eat. Now
the social revolution had been accomplished, and these improvements
did not materialize. If more disorder and fighting were needed to
bring them about, they would supply these deficiencies.

What added to this spirit was the arrival in Russia, early in April,
1917, of the extreme radical Socialist, Lenine. He is generally
credited in this country with being an agent of Germany, but men of
his type are not easily subsidized, nor would it have been necessary
for the Germans to do so. Utterly idealistic, a wild fanatic,
unpractical to the point of being unbalanced, he represented that wing
of radicalism which lives in Utopias and will give no consideration to
things as they are. They preach the doctrine of the brotherhood of man
with the same bitterness that many religious sects preach the
salvation of the soul. Lenine began his propaganda, together with
thirty or more of his followers who arrived with him. They preached
an immediate separate peace with Germany and Austria; it was not to
the interest of the Russian working classes to fight the Teuton
working classes when both were slaves under the same masters, the
capitalists of the world. Let the Germans fight their capitalists and
the Russians theirs. And even if the Germans did conquer Russia, what
did it matter? They would not prove any worse masters than the Russian
capitalists. All the working classes of the world should unite and
attack the capitalists simultaneously, etc. Undoubtedly Lenine made
some impression on the more ignorant workingmen of Petrograd and
soldiers of the army, but his significance has been much overestimated
in this country. In Russia his influence corresponds somewhat to the
influence of Emma Goldman in this country: their followers are more
noisy than numerous.

CHAPTER LXXXV

POLICIES PROCLAIMED

The first important cause for dissension between the Council of
Workingmen's and Soldiers' Deputies and the Provisional Government
occurred on April 7, 1917, when Professor Milukov, speaking as
Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated that the occupation of
Constantinople and the Dardanel