of
propaganda. Lenine, himself, said that of every one hundred Bolsheviks
fifty were knaves, forty were fools, and probably one in the hundred a
sincere believer. Once a Bolshevik commander who gave himself up to us
said that the great majority of officers in the Soviet forces had been
conscripted from the Imperial Army and were kept in order by threats to
massacre their families if they showed the slightest tendency towards
desertion. The same officer told me the Bolshevik party was hopelessly
in the minority, that its adherents numbered only about three and a half
in every hundred Russians, that it had gained ascendancy and held power
only because Lenine and Trotsky inaugurated their revolution by seizing
every machine gun in Russia and steadfastly holding on to them. He said
that every respectable person looked upon the Bolsheviks as a gang of
cutthroats and ruffians, but all were bullied into passive submission.

We heard him wonderingly. We tried to fancy America ever being
brow-beaten and cowed by an insignificant minority, her commercial life
prostrated, her industries ravished, and we gave the speculation up as
an unworthy reflection upon our country. But this was Russia, Russia who
inspired the world by her courage and fortitude in the great war, and
while it was at its most critical stage, fresh with the memories of
millions slain on Gallician fields, concluded the shameful treaty of
Brest Litovsk, betraying everything for which those millions had died.
Russia, following the visionary Kerensky from disorder to chaos, and
eventually wallowing in the mire of Bolshevism. Yes, one can expect
anything in Russia.

They were a hardboiled looking lot, those Bolo prisoners. They wore no
regulation uniform, but were clad in much the same attire as an ordinary
moujik--knee leather boots and high hats of gray and black curled fur.
No one could distinguish them from a distance, and every peasant could
be Bolshevik. Who knew? In fact, we had reason to believe that many of
them were Bolshevik in sympathy. The Bolos had an uncanny knowledge of
our strength and the state of our defenses, and although no one except
soldiers were allowed beyond the village we knew that despite the
closest vigilance there was working unceasingly a system of enemy
espionage with which we could never hope to cope.

Some of the prisoners were mere boys seventeen and eighteen years old.
Others men of advanced years. Nearly all of them were hopeles