Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/120

remove the army from under the sway of the ruling classes. The propertied classes were so much alarmed at these dangers which they saw in the proposed democratisation of the army, that they left no stone unturned in their desperate efforts to prevent it. An appalling contradiction arose. The army was actually falling to pieces; it was losing all form and structure, and degenerating into an amorphous and sprawling mass. And the only remedy which could save the army, weld it together, imbue it with new life and give it form and stability—the thorough and consistent democratisation of the army—was not to be carried out. The chief enemies of democratisation were precisely those people who shouted loudest about the need of preserving the "fighting fitness" of the army. The alternatives were, as I have said, a democratic army or no army at all. The revolutionary democracy were heart and soul for democratisation; their opponents preferred to see the army fall to pieces before their eyes rather than consent to its regeneration on democratic lines.