The Franco-American advance in the Champagne-ArgonneMeuse region threatened to cut the main line of communications between Germany and her armies in Belgium and northern France, so that even if the Allied armies had elsewhere been less successful than they actually were, Germany would have been doomed to decisive defeat in a very short time. The Germans thoroughly understood the strategic importance of the Meuse valley, and in this valley occurred during October and early November some of the fiercest fighting of the war. Much of the fighting was hand to hand, and the nature of the ground, with

THE FRANCO-AMERICAN OFFENSIVE ON THE MEUSE AND IN THE ARGONNE

its ravines and gullies and woods, made it necessary to wipe out machine-gun nests with infantry rather than with artillery. Yet the Americans, as well as the French, acquitted themselves most admirably in this difficult, last campaign of the Great War. The Americans captured 26,000 prisoners and 468 guns; the French took about 30,000 prisoners and 700 guns. It is estimated that the Germans, in their unsuccessful efforts to defend their main line of communications, lost 150,000 men.

From July 18 to November 11, 1918, Allied arms were uniformly and continuously victorious in all parts of the Western Front. The Teutons were crowded almost completely out of

France and deprived of a considerable portion of Belgium. The Great War was practically at an end, for by November all other fronts the Italian, the Macedonian, the Turkish, and the Russian had crumbled, and Germany's partners in the enterprise of Mittel-Europa had surrendered unconditionally to the triumphant Allies. Germany had staked everything on the Western Front, and Germany had lost.

ALLIED INTERVENTION IN RUSSIA

Germany, it will be recalled, had concluded the peace of Brest-Litovsk with the Bolshevist Government of Russia in March, 1918. At that time the treaty was advantageous to Germany in three ways. First, it enabled her to transfer the bulk of her armed forces from the Eastern Front and to make her supreme effort in the West. Second, it promised to supply her in the not too distant future with much needed foodstuffs and with raw materials and markets for her manufactures. Third, it afforded her the opportunity to draw into the orbit of MittelEuropa a number of new quasi-independent states, such as Ukrainia, Lithuania, Esthonia, Latvia, and Finland, from which she hoped to conscript reserves of soldiers as well as to obtain economic support and political prestige.

Consequently, from March to July, 1918, while the German General Staff was devoting its chief attention and energy to preparing and launching successive mighty offensives on the Western Front against the British and the French, the German Government was not altogether unmindful of the situation in the East. In the name of upholding and enforcing the treaty of BrestLitovsk German troops remained on Russian soil, coöperating now with the Ukrainians, now with the Lithuanians, now with the White Guards in Finland, now with the Turks in the Caucasus and the region north of the Black Sea.

In Ukrainia German soldiers backed Skoropadsky's dictatorial régime with bayonets and suppressed peasants' revolts against it. In Latvia and Esthonia, German landlords were encouraged to declare the independence of the Baltic provinces and then to beg Germany's "protection." In May Emperor William II formally recognized Lithuania as a free and sovereign state on the basis of the action of a provisional government which in the preceding December had proclaimed "the restoration of Lithuania as an independent state, allied to the German Empire by an eternal, steadfast alliance, and by conventions

chiefly regarding military matters, traffic, customs, and coinage," but William's declaration significantly assumed that Lithuania would "participate in the war burdens of Germany, which secured her liberation." In June German officers took charge of the Finnish army and, after deposing General Mannerheim, the patriotic Finnish commander of the White Guards, and suppressing insurrection and imprisoning numerous socialists and radicals, prepared to transform Finland into a monarchy under a German prince and in close alliance with the German Empire. Moreover, German army officers proceeded to collect Austrian and German ex-prisoners of war, recently released from prisoncamps in Russia, and to utilize them in overrunning parts of Russia in which, according to the letter of the treaty of BrestLitovsk, Germany had no right whatsoever to interfere. Thus, in the spring of 1918, Germans in coöperation with the Turks were rendering the Black Sea an interior lake of Mittel-Europa: the Turks occupied Russian Armenia, Georgia, and other districts of the Caucasus, inflicting unspeakable atrocities upon the population, while the Teutons seized the ports on the northern shore of the Black Sea and a large strip of territory adjacent thereto. And far away, in Siberia, bands of Teuton ex-prisoners were possessing themselves of the railways and other trade routes and likewise of valuable stores of munitions and foodstuffs.

Against these flagrant aggressions the Russian Soviet Government at Moscow protested bitterly and repeatedly, but in vain. By playing the lamb at Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviki had not tamed the lion; and when the lamb attempted to lie down with the lion, a not unusual fate overtook the lamb. Germany was devouring Russia, and Russia was helpless. The Bolsheviki were confronted by chaos at home as well as in foreign relations. By their repudiation of the Russian debt, by their radical socialistic ventures, and by their separate peace with the Central Empires, they had flouted and alienated the Entente Powers, so that from the Allies they could expect little aid or sympathy in their hour of need. And constituting as they did but a minority of the Russian people, they could hope to bring order out of chaos and still maintain themselves in power only if they accepted a partnership with the Germans. The Bolshevist leaders recognized that their sycophancy to Germany invited counter-attacks upon them by the Allies, but for the present the results of German hostility appeared more real and more menacing. As Lenin stated before the Central Executive Com

mittee of the Soviets in May: "We shall do the little we can, all that diplomacy can do, to put off the moment of attack. We shall not defend the secret agreements which we have published to the world; we shall not defend a 'Great Power,' for there is nothing of Russia left but Great Russia, and no national interests, because for us the interests of the world's socialism stand higher than national interests. We stand for the defense of the socialistic fatherland." Lenin professed belief that the defense of Soviet Russia was facilitated by what he termed “the profound schism dividing the capitalistic governments," by the fact that "the German bandits" were pitted against "the English bandits," and that there were economic rivalries between "the American bourgeoisie" and "the Japanese bourgeoisie." "The situation is," he explained, "that the stormy waves of imperialistic reaction, which seem ready at any moment to overwhelm the little island of the Soviet Socialist Republic, are broken one against another."

For the present, however, Lenin had to swallow his pride and restrain his rhetoric. The Germans were still conquering territories in France, and in Russia they were still sitting squarely in the saddle. Against the potent spurs of the All-Highest German Kaiser, mere diplomacy was exceedingly thin protection to the Bolshevist brute. Under Teutonic direction and domination, and chiefly to Teutonic advantage, the Soviet Government was forced in June to sign humiliating treaties with Ukrainia and Finland. Lenin even had to acquiesce in the "selfdetermination" of White Russia, a few of whose people, in an assembly controlled by German agents, proclaimed (May 24, 1918) an "independent republic" in federal union with Lithuania and under the protection of the German Empire.

Yet Germany was not altogether successful in her efforts to exploit Russia politically and economically. The former empire of the Tsar was too extensive and too varied, and the Revolution had already introduced too much chaos into Russian politics and Russian industry, to admit of speedy and simple exploitation by any foreign Power. The Soviet Government might promise, under German pressure, to perform valuable services, but it was one thing to promise and another thing to perform; and with a steadily diminishing production of soil and mill and mine, the Bolsheviki had the utmost difficulty in supplying the needy population of Great Russia with the bare necessities of life, to say nothing of exporting supplies to the hateful Teutons. Besides, there were considerable groups of persons and even sizable

forces of armed men in Russia who opposed both the Teutons and the Bolsheviki; this opposition would have to be overcome before Germany could expect to reap the full fruits of the peace of Brest-Litovsk.

In May, 1918, the Central Committee of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary party formally denounced the Bolshevist régime and called for a national uprising against the Germans; and in June the Central Committee of the Constitutional Democratic Party did likewise. That popular feeling throughout Russia was inflamed against the Teutons was evidenced by the assassination of Count von Mirbach, the German ambassador at Moscow, on July 6, and of Field Marshal von Eichhorn, the German commandant in Ukrainia, on July 30. About the same time, the Cossacks of the Don took the field against the Soviet Government, as did also the forces of the "Provisional Government of the Caucasus"; and in Siberia several Conservative officers, such as General Alexeiev, General Semenov, Admiral Kolchak, and Colonel Orlov, organized loyalist bands and inaugurated counter-revolutionary movements. As early as February a "Temporary Government of Autonomous Siberia" had been proclaimed at Tomsk, but subsequently when this town was captured by Bolsheviki and Teutonic ex-prisoners, the seat of the Temporary Siberian Government was transferred to Harbin, in Manchuria, and then to Vladivostok. To add to the complications, General Horvath, vice-president of the Chinese Eastern Railway, in July set up an independent anti-Bolshevist government in eastern Siberia.

But the most effective check to Teutons and Bolsheviki alike was provided by a free-lance expeditionary body of Czechoslovaks. At the time of the Bolshevist coup d'état, in November, 1917, there were in Ukrainia and southern Russia some 100,000 Czech and Slovak soldiers who originally had been in the service of Austria-Hungary, but who had gone over to the Russians in the hope of fighting for their national independence on the side of the Allies. Upon the conclusion of the treaty of BrestLitovsk, an agreement was reached with the Soviet military authorities whereby these Czechoslovak troops would be allowed to proceed unmolested across European Russia and Siberia to Vladivostok, whence they would sail to join the Allies in France or Italy. At first the Czechoslovaks preserved a strict neutrality in the internal politics of Russia, and some of them actually made the journey over the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok. But before their transportation had progressed far,