Germany's striking power on the Russian front. This idea must emphatically be contradicted. There was no German offensive, not because Germany had to transfer her Eastern army to the Western front, but because of the political situation in Germany and Austria. The attempt to crush the Russian Revolution by force was at that time a very risky undertaking from the point of view of Germany's rulers. And as far as a mass transference of troops from the Eastern to the Western front is concerned, it has never been proved to have taken place. It is a great misfortune that figures relating to the movements of armies are used very arbitrarily. For instance, since the Revolution the Allied Press have proclaimed that, thanks to revolutionary disintegration, fraternisation, and so forth, the Germans have been able to transfer the greater part of their troops from the Eastern front to the West, and that the Allies have therefore had to bear the full brunt of Germany's forces. Yet even six months after the Revolution, Russia kept on the Eastern front 92 German divisions, i.e., considerably more than at any other period of the war, in addition to several Turkish divisions and the overwhelming majority of the Austro-Hungarian army.[1]
We now see that the Soviet's attitude to war and peace was based on two foundations: the struggle for
- ↑ (p. 10). In a letter to the Press, published on October 11th, 1917, Lieut. -General C. N. Bessino, the Russian Plenipotentiary accredited to the British Armies, writes: "It is over six months since our Revolution began, and our armies continue to hold the enemy's forces on the front, besides which, during this time, his forces, far from diminishing, have up to the present been augmented."
Mr. H. Warner Allen, the well-known British correspondent with the French armies, writes on September 24, 1917: "It is to be observed that the number of German divisions on the Russian front at the present moment is higher than it has ever been before, viz., 92, compared with 79 a year ago, when Brussilov had just been brought to a halt in Galicia and Mackensen was overrunning Roumania, and 67 in September, 1915, at the close of the great thrust in Poland. … Thus the number of German troops on the Eastern front was higher than ever, and it is noteworthy that the Russian Revolution did not tempt the enemy to reduce his forces in the East."
