sants, drunk with their new freedom, and without a care
for the morrow, lived off the grain that had been saved up during the
past years. As a result, whatever grain the enemy found proved spoiled
and mouldy, hardly fit to feed to hogs. As the Germans went about,
taking anything that they wished and as food grew scarce, the unrest
in Russia grew greater.

The Bolshevik government had not set up a democracy--a government
where all the people had equal rights: they had set up a tyranny of
the lower classes. The small land owners, the tradesmen, the middle
classes were not allowed any voice in the government. When the first
National Assembly or Congress was elected and called together, the
Bolsheviki finding that they did not control a majority of its
members, disbanded it by force.

Little by little people began to oppose this rule. They objected to
being robbed of their rights by the rabble just as much as by the
Czar.

When the Russian armies were disbanded, there were some troops that
refused to throw down their arms. Among them were the regiments of
Czecho-Slovaks. These men had been forced, against their will, to
serve in the Austrian army. They were from the northern part of the
Austrian empire, Bohemia and Moravia. They were Slavs, related to the
Russians, speaking a language very much like Russian, hating the
Germans of Austria and anxious to free their country from the empire
of the Hapsburgs. When General Brusiloff made his big attack in June,
1916, these men had deserted the Austrian army and re-enlisted as
Russians. They could not get back to Austria for the Austrians would
shoot them as deserters. Of course, the Austrian and the German
generals would make no peace with them. Therefore, this army, 200,000
strong, kept their own officers and their order and their arms and
refused to have anything to do with the cowardly peace made by the
Bolsheviki. Several thousand of them made their way across Siberia,
across the Pacific Ocean, across America, across the Atlantic to
France and Italy, where they are fighting by the thousands in the
armies of the Entente. The main body of them, however, are still in
Russia (August 1, 1918), holding the great Siberian railway, fully
ready to renew the war against the central powers at any time when the
patriotic Russians will rise and help them. The problem of how to get
aid to the Czechs without angering the Russian people is a big one for
the allied statesmen.

The troub