7 June 1917. Alfred Knox

Non-fiction

Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents

Alfred Knox

Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary

At lunch in the Army Staff we had a visit from a revolutionary doctor, who, on account of his political opinions, had been promoted from the post of junior doctor in a hospital to be P.M.O. of the whole front. He spoke of Lenin as of a "clean-minded idealist".

We all attacked him on the question of discipline and the folly of abolishing the death penalty. He was a simple idealist with no practical acquaintance with the every-day routine of the control of troops, many of whom are naturally cowards, in action. He quoted with pride, as an example of his method of appealing to the better feelings of the men, one of his orders, which ended: "I demand, I beg, I hope that this order will be carried out". Damned ass!

The G.R.E. of the front, General Velichko, came to supper. He told an anecdote to illustrate the difficulty of getting money out of the Government. A lieutenant-colonel spent Rs.7.50 of his own money and claimed refund from Government. The correspondence continued for eight years. The officer retired, but being a man of strong principle, still continued to agitate. At last he took to his death-bed, and when he was already unconscious a letter came to say that he was "the creditor of Government for Rs.7.50". The decision came too late to afford the dying man any pleasure, but the widow, imagining the formula to which she was unaccustomed to be some tardy recognition by Government of her husband’s life-work, wrote on his tombstone: "Here rest the ashes of Lieutenant-Colonel, Creditor of the Russian Government".

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