Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/124

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Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution

to say anything that he did not think. His sincerity and his kindness are evident with every gesture, with every word. He is the incarnation of the ancient military Russian hierarchy in its patriarchal aspect, and one can easily imagine the soldiers addressing him as "father" when he speaks to them as "my children." We could not help remarking when we left his presence that it was such men as he who could best make us realize what is meant by the "Slavonic charm."

Slavonic also to his fingers' tips, but of an entirely different type, is Broussiloff. We saw him when he arrived the next morning from the armies of the south-west, whose command he had just resigned. His very first gestures—a few salutes, a review, a parade of the guard of honour waiting for him at the station—indicated the energy, the self-confidence, the natural air of ease and command that make a leader of men. But though commanding, he has no brutality, no roughness, either of expression or of gesture. That is the most striking difference from the Germans, even from Germanized Austro-Slavs, the

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