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is to be an educated, well-informed man. Every officer, engineer, every sensible educated person who is willing to serve the workers and peasants, we invite to help us; we do everything that is at all possible, in the present state of general improverishment, to create for such men tolerable conditions of life. That this is so difficult is not our fault, just as it is not our fault if there is so much treason, if we have to resort to arrests. But to every conscious, honest, talented officer, whose breast holds, not clock-work, but a heart, who possesses knowledge, an active mind, we say that he has a chance of utilising his faculties on a wide arena in Workers' and Peasants' Russia. It all amounts to this; and the men of scientific knowledge and the military men should once for all comprehend this.
Military men sometimes object, „Well, and when the war is ended what are you going to do with us then?“ Some even jest about it: „I suppose all military specialists will be collected and drowned“. What narrow-minded people. From the point of view of their particular specialty it might even seem that they would be interested in having the war last as long as possible, since the Soviet government would have no need of them once it was ended. That is too childish a view. Every officer has made a study of something: every officer, as a man of discipline, will be of use to us. In the first
