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and is willing to serve his people; go, use your knowledge which you have obtained at a high price, at the cost of the Russian people; apply your military science to the construction of the new „Red Army“, which will fight the German imperialists and the internal foes, the „White Guards“ and all those who would do harm to Soviet Russia.
Thus spoke, thus offered the Soviet Government, as both friend and foe must admit; this cannot be erased, as the saying is, and the axe cannot cut out what the pen has written. Such are the facts.
In answer to this began the cleavage of the officer class, of which I spoke a while ago. Some came to us with distrust, even with a stone in their bosoms, who later on grew more and more interested in the work of construction. Others, the majority, went against us, and now are in the ranks of the „Whites“, fighting their own country.
Comrades, I know that among the military specialists there are protests against wholesale accusations; they justly observe that a difference should be made between officers and officers.
Quite right. Also we must admit that at present, after two years of the most embittered civil war, there is a tendency among working men and Red Army soldiers to speak disdainfully of specialists generally, and especially of officers.
