They, too, in a most effective
manner, were plotting to weaken and corrupt the morale of the army. There
was universal uneasiness. In the Allied chancelleries there was fear of a
treacherous separate peace between Russia and Germany. It was partly to
avert that catastrophe by means of a heavy bribe that England undertook the
forcing of the Dardanelles. All over Russia there was an awakening of the
memories of the graft that ate like a canker-worm at the heart of the
nation. Men told once more the story of the Russian general in Manchuria,
in 1904, who, when asked why fifty thousand men were marching barefoot,
answered that the boots were in the pocket of Grand-Duke Vladimir! They
told again the story of the cases of "shells" for the Manchurian army which
were intercepted in the nation's capital, _en route_ to Moscow, and found
to contain--paving-stones! How General Kuropatkin managed to amass a
fortune of over six million rubles during the war with Japan was
remembered. Fear that the same kind of treason was being perpetrated grew
almost to the panic point.
So bad were conditions in the army, so completely had the Germanophile
reactionaries sabotaged the organization, that the people themselves took
the matter in hand.
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