slight screen, and
concentrated huge forces to press us back over the Urals once more.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DECEMBER ROYALIST AND BOLSHEVIST CONSPIRACY

The tenure of a dictator's office is very uncertain. He issues his
orders, but if the army chiefs can escape from executing them they do
so, on one pretext or another. The Russian character is most peculiar in
this respect. It will obey one thing only--force. Patriotism and public
spirit, as we know them, do not exist to any great extent. Every man
looks at every order from the personal point of view--"How will this
affect me?"--rarely, if ever, "How will it affect the country?"

It is remarkable how much Koltchak had already accomplished, but it
seemed that his career might end at any moment, in spite of every
precaution of his friends. Of these he had not many; no real dictator
should expect to have any. No man will have many friends in Russia who
puts personal questions second to the public welfare.

The preparations for the Perm offensive were well under way, when a
dispatch came from General Dutoff, stating, "That in view of the
pressure by our forces on their left the Bolshevik leaders had decided
to, what they called, 'organise their enemies' rear.' That seventy of
their best propagandist and most capable agents and officers had passed
between his columns and were now distributed somewhere in our midst."
All we could do was to wait, and see where this treacherous movement
would show itself first.

The fact that Koltchak had declared for the calling of a National
Assembly, elected by universal suffrage, to decide the future government
of Russia, so soon as order was restored, had shattered completely the
vision of the old army officers of a quick return to absolutism. His
declaration against extremists on either side had driven Bolshevik and
Tsarist into practically one camp. He was well known as a student of
English customs and institutions and a pre-revolution advocate of
constitutionalism. The Tsarist section hoped that his assumption of
supreme authority was proof that he had discarded his democratic
principles, but gradually his official declarations to the
representative of the British Government leaked out and spread
consternation in the ranks of both sections of the Absolutists. The
Bolshevik leaders have never made any bones about their fear and dread
of democracy as understood in England, and have declared they would
prefer a return to the