troops became worse. Indiscipline, and even mutiny, broke out more frequently. And such was the appalling disintegration that the army fled in panic, even before the Germans appeared in their full strength.
This disaster is commonly attributed to the Bolshevik propaganda at the front and the attempted rising in Petrograd against the Coalition Government. I am the last person to justify the Bolshevik rising in July, 1917. I condemn it because revolutionary methods were altogether out of place in Russia after the Revolution. The Bolsheviks later on conquered the power in the Petrograd Soviet by purely constitutional means, and were then strong by the support of the workers. In July, being in a minority in the Soviet, they tried to make themselves strong by machine-guns. That is why the July rising was so disgusting and failed to inspire any confidence or enthusiasm for the Bolshevik policy. But to attempt to put the responsibility for the disaster at the front on the Bolsheviks is absolutely unjustifiable. It is a deceitful move on the part of those who wish to conceal their own grave responsibility. Responsibility for the disaster is wholly borne by those who led the broken army into a frivolous adventure against the wishes, and contrary to the avowed policy, of the democracy. And even if the Bolsheviks had been responsible for the bad morale of the troops, the Government and the High Command knew that the troops were in such a dangerous mood and that the offensive was bound to lead to disaster. On the whole line only one small section was found at which an offensive was conceivably possible, and that only by "careful nursing" and by bringing in specially trained and foreign troops. It was a gamble on Russia's future, it was a gamble on all the great gains of the Revolution, and nobody should have dared to undertake it. If the Allies tried to compel the Coalition Government to do it, it should have refused. If the Allies threatened to make a separate peace at Russia's expense, it should have condemned their policy, and appealed to the peoples for a general peace, as the
