g-line without rifle or ammunition, these Russian peasants
flung themselves not once, but many times, against the finest troops of
Germany, with no more than naked bayonets against powerful artillery
and the scythe of machine-gun fire, and died like sheep in the
slaughter-houses of Chicago. Is it a wonder that at the last they
revolted against this immolation, turned round upon their tyrants, and
said: "You are the enemy. It is you that we will destroy"?

By this new revelation they forgot their hatred of Germans. They said:
"You are our brothers; we have no hatred against you. We do not want
to kill you. Why should you kill us? We are all of us the slaves of
bloodthirsty castes, who use our flesh for their ambitions. Do not shoot
us, brothers, but join hands against the common tyranny which enslaves
our peoples." They went forward with outstretched hands, and were shot,
down like rabbits by some Germans, and by others were not shot, because
German soldiers gaped, wide-eyed, at this new gospel, as it seemed, and
said: "They speak words of truth. Why should we kill one another?"

The German war lords ordered a forward movement, threatened their own
men with death if they fraternized with Russians, and dictated their
terms of peace on the old lines of military conquest. But as Ludendorff
has confessed, and as we now know from other evidence, many German
soldiers were "infected" with Bolshevism and lost their fighting spirit.

Russia was already in anarchy. Constitutional government had been
replaced by the soviets and by committees of soldiers and workmen.
Kerensky had fled. Lenin and Trotzky were the Marat and Danton of
the Revolution, and decreed the Reign of Terror. Tales of appalling
atrocity, some true, some false (no one can tell how true or how false),
came through to France and England. It was certain that the whole fabric
of society in Russia had dissolved in the wildest anarchy the world has
seen in modern times, and that the Bolshevik gospel of "brotherhood"
with humanity was, at least, rudely "interrupted" by wholesale murder
within its own boundaries.

One other thing was certain. Having been relieved of the Russian menace,
Germany was free to withdraw her armies on that front and use all her
striking force in the west. It should have cautioned our generals to
save their men for the greatest menace that had confronted them. But
without caution they fought the battles of 1917, in Flanders, as I have
told.