WAR OF THE NATIONS 



6163 



WAR OF THE NATIONS 



scores of brigades; in one section of the long 

 front when the Germans attacked the Russians 

 opened the way for their advance. 



In September, after futile efforts to secure 

 a separate peace, a German army and over half 

 of its navy made a demonstration in the direc- 

 tion of the Gulf of Finland. On the way they 

 captured Riga, a great seaport, without meet- 

 ing resistance. Pressing onward, they took 

 Oesel and Dago islands, commanding the gulf, 

 but only after considerable resistance had been 

 overcome. In a naval engagement,, against 

 heavier units, the Russians inflicted severe 

 damage, sinking a total of a dozen vessels, los- 

 ing one battleship and three destroyers of their 

 own; but the way to the forts at Kronstadt 

 and to the capital city, Petrograd, was open. 



reporter on a New York Jewish paper at a 

 salary of $12 per week. Trotzky was made 

 foreign minister of Russia, and Lenine, as 

 premier, was given autocratic power by the 

 workingmen's and soldiers' committee. The an- 

 nounced program of this revolutionary govern- 

 ment was to obtain peace with the Germanic 

 powers and to confiscate all land in Russia and 

 parcel it out to the peasants. The leaders 

 called themselves and their ignorant followers 

 the bolshcviki, or maximalists, a term which 

 finds its nearest American interpretation in 

 those of the majority, or common people. 



On December 9 the bolshcviki arranged an 

 armistice with Germany and entered into peace 

 negotiations on the basis of "no indemn 

 and no annexations." The Germans rejected 



GERMAN OCCUPATION OF ITALY 



At the left the shaded area represents the extent of the Italian Invasion of Austrian territory. 

 At right, the shaded section shows tne same territory regained for Austria by the armies of Qr- 

 many, and roughly the depth of the Austro-German drive in November, 1917, towards Venice. 



However, there was another surprise in the 

 Russian situation. A so-called council of work- 

 ingmen and soldiers, after secret organization, 

 overthrew the provincial government in No- 

 vember and seized all power. Those members 

 of the late government who were unable to 

 escape were arrested, and in a brief reign of 

 terror which resulted while the new forces were 

 gaining control in Petrograd and Moscow be- 

 S.OOO and 10,000 people in the two cities 

 11- <1 Kerensky was able to escape. 



The leaders in the coup were Nicolai Lenine 

 and Leon Trotzky. Lenine had been pro- 

 claimed a German emissary in July by the pro- 

 visional government, and at the crisis of his 

 revolutionary movement he was surrounded by 

 German officers as his advisers. 1 

 a Russian who had 

 after the March revolution. He had been a 



such terms and demanded for themselves all 

 occupied territory. Trotzky and his associates 

 refused to make peace, but also declared they 

 would not continue the war. In March, 1918, 

 Lenine signed a humiliating peace by winch 

 Germany was given Livonia, Est honia, Cour- 

 land and the Aland Islands, and its tit I 

 Poland was confirmed. German armies, how- 



. contemptuously disregarding tl. 

 continued their inarch into Russian and 



before June had control also of the Ukraine 

 and of Crimea. Germany's influence, too, was 

 paramount in the new republic of Finland. 

 Italian Reverses. Italy's campaign against 

 Tneary progressed tenl lv ihnuich- 

 out the summer and early fall, under the lead- 



p of Cadorna. The army's outposts 

 pn-hcd far northward over mountains which 

 made its successful movements the marvel of 



