is propaganda, but it dared not attempt to end it by force,
conscious that any attempt to do so would provoke revolt which could not be
stayed. The Bolsheviki, unable to control the Workmen's and Soldiers'
Council, sought in every possible manner to weaken its influence and to
discredit it. They conspired to overthrow the Provisional Government. Their
plot was to bring about an armed revolt on the 24th of June, when the
All-Russian Congress of Soviets would be in session. They planned to arrest
the members of the Provisional Government and assume full power. _At the
same time, all the soldiers at the front were to be called on to leave the
trenches_. On the eve of the date when it was to be executed this plot was
divulged. There was treachery within their own ranks. The Bolshevik leaders
humbly apologized and promised to abandon their plans. Under other
conditions the Provisional Government might have refused to be satisfied
with apologies, might have adopted far sterner measures, but it was face to
face with the bitter fact that the nation was drunk with the strong wine of
freedom. The time had not yet arrived when the masses could be expected to
recognize the distinction between liberty within the law and the license
that leads always to tyranny. It takes time and experience of freedom to
teach the stern lesson that, as Rousseau has it, freedom comes by way of
self-imposed compulsions to be free.

The offensive which Kerensky had urged and planned began on July 1st and
its initial success was encouraging. It seemed as though the miracle of the
restoration of the Russian army had been achieved, despite everything. Here
was an army whose killed and dead already amounted to more than three
million men,[20] an army which had suffered incredible hardships, again
going into battle with songs. On the 1st of July more than thirty-six
thousand prisoners were taken by the Russians on the southwestern front.
Then came the tragic harvest of the Bolshevist propaganda. In northeastern
Galicia the 607th Russian Regiment left the trenches and forced other units
to do the same thing, opening a clear way for the German advance. Regiment
after regiment refused to obey orders. Officers were brutally murdered by
their men. Along a front of more than one hundred and fifty miles the
Russians, greatly superior in numbers, retreated without attempting to
fight, while the enemy steadily advanced. This was made possible by the
agitation of the Bo