Mein Kampf
a new one arose. Inexhaustibly the vast Empire kept giving the Tsar new soldiers, and the war its new victims. How long could Germany last in this race? Must not the day come, after a last German victory, when the Russian armies—not even yet the last ones—would array themselves for the final battle? And then what? In all human probability Russia’s victory might be postponed, but come it must.
Now all these hopes were done with; the ally who had laid the greatest blood-sacrifices on the altar of the common interests was at the end of his strength, and lay at the feet of the implacable attacker. Fear and horror crept into the hearts of the soldiers, hitherto blind in their faith. They feared the coming spring. For if they had not succeeded in breaking the German when he could give but part of his energy to the Western Front, how could they still count on victory with the entire strength of the mighty hero state apparently gathering itself for an attack?
The shadows of the South Tyrolean mountains sank uneasily upon the imagination; as far away as the fogs of Flanders, the beaten armies of Cadorna conjured up gloomy specters, and belief in victory gave way to fear of the coming defeat.
There—just as people seemed in the cool nights to hear the steady rumble of the advancing shock troops of the German army, and were looking forward in uneasy dread to the coming judgment day, suddenly a glaring red light blazed from Germany, throwing its flare into the last shell-hole of the enemy front.
At the moment that the German divisions were having their final training for the great assault, the general strike broke out in Germany.
For a moment the world was speechless. But then, with a sigh of relief, the enemy propaganda snatched at this help in the twelfth hour. At one blow the means was found to bring back the ebbing confidence of the Allied soldiers, to describe the probability of victory as conceivable again, and to change the uneasy dread of coming events into confident determination. Now the regiments awaiting the German attack could go into the greatest
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