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The Final Stages of the War: the Russian Revolution 641 death, to be dispatched anywhere the general staff ordered. When mobilization was proclaimed, the civil government imme- diately gave way to military rule throughout the length and breadth of the land. At the opening of August the German people knew that they were going to war with Russia, but the soldiers sent to the Belgian boundary had no idea where they were going. This is what Germany's enemies called militarism and autocracy. 1158. The Fourteen Points. Again, on January 8, 1918, Presi- dent Wilson stated a program of world peace which embraced fourteen points. The chief of these were no secret international understandings or treaties; absolute freedom of navigation in peace and war, except when portions of the sea might be closed by international understanding; removal of economic barriers and reduction of armaments ; impartial adjustment of all colonial claims ; restoration of Belgium and evacuation of territories occu- pied by Teutonic allies during the war ; righting what he deemed the wrong done to France when Alsace-Lorraine was seized by Ger- many ; freeing of Asiatic dependencies of Turkey ; and the forma- tion of a general association of nations for the purpose of insuring the independence of great and small states alike. This program was heartily and unreservedly approved by the representatives of the English workingmen and made clearer than any previous declaration the purposes of the United States in entering the war against Germany. IV. COURSE OF THE WAR AFTER THE ENTRANCE OF THE UNITED STATES 1159. The Western Front, 1917. In addition to the increase in Germany's enemies the chief military events of 1917 were the following: In March the Germans decided to shorten their lines on the Western Front from Noyon on the south to Arras on the north. They withdrew, devastating the land as they went, and the French and English were able to reoccupy about one eighth of the French territory that the enemy had held so long. The