Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Army and People (1920).pdf/48

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

— 46 —

glances every step he takes; to meet the Red Army half way should be appreciated. It should be borne in mind that a great deal depends on our army command.

An army command must be created of workers and peasants, or else under conditions in which honest officers, not of the landlord class, can comfortably, candidly, work together with us. Then will our army at once gain tenfold strength, and we shall be able firmly to establish our victory. And the average officer must be told once and forever that the victory is ours, sure in any case; not because we ardently wish it—we wished it just as much twenty years ago—but because the course of the civil war has brought about things that way.

XVIII. Why we must conquer.

The struggle is a hand to hand fight. Once it has come to that, we cannot but conquer, and peasants of their own country. This it is that prolongs the war.

I am convinced, comrades, that the lessons pf the last two years will not be lost. The Red Army is gaining strength, the army command is growing more and more perfect. And this being so, it is of immense help in raising the descipline, the fighting quality of the men, assisting the welding of our army which, in the space of a year and a half, has grown as it would have