sult with the allied Governments. The mission arrived in London on Nov. 7.

Meanwhile, the creation of a Supreme War Council, or Interallied Council, was being discussed at a conference of the British, French, and Italian Premiers, with their Chiefs of Staff, at Rapallo, near Genoa. The first act was to form an Interallied General Staff, consisting of Generals Cadorna, Foch, and Wilson. Premier Lloyd George, in a speech in Paris on Nov. 12, caused a stir by speaking with what he described as brutal frankness. The plight in which the Allies now found themselves, he said, was due to "national and professional traditions, questions of prestige, and susceptibilities," adding that the war had been "prolonged by particularism," and would be "shortened by solidarity."

The creation of the Supreme War Council and Lloyd George's speech aroused a storm of opposition in England on the presumption by the critics that it was a move to bring the commanders in the field under political control. But Lloyd George triumphed over his critics, and had the satisfaction of seeing made public a cablegram from President Wilson to Colonel House stating that the United States Government was emphatically of opinion that "unity of plan and control" was essential. By requesting Colonel House to attend the first meeting of the Supreme War Council, with General Bliss as military adviser, the President removed all doubts as to America's attitude toward the Rapallo plan.

The critical situation which was developing as the result of the rise to power of the Bolsheviki in Russia demanded unification of policy in regard to war aims and peace terms just as much as in regard to methods of conducting the war. Here again President Wilson, who had been both more alive and more sympathetic to the Russian Revolution, exercised a potent influence.

Turning now to the attitude of the Central Powers toward peace, we find

that in Austria-Hungary there was a definite and widespread desire to end the war, and that between the Government and the people there was not such a sharp cleavage as in Germany, where the military party, flushed with the pride of conquest, was resolved to emerge from the war at the head of a greater Germany. The only peace the German autocracy was prepared to make was a victorious peace, and it left no stone unturned in this direction.

A German move for peace, made in September, 1917, was revealed through the publication of a secret diplomatic document by the Russian Bolshevist Foreign Minister, Trotzky, in the form of a telegram from the Russian Embassy in London, dated Oct. 6, which stated that the Spanish Ambassador in Berlin had been approached and asked to communicate Germany's desire to enter into peace negotiations. The allied Governments were accordingly informed, and Great Britain replied that it would receive any communication from Germany respecting peace and consider it in conjunction with the other allies. Germany denied that the move originated with it, but this denial was declared to be a “pure invention" by the British Foreign Minister. Nothing further came of it.

While the Governments and their spokesmen on both sides, as was seen in the German and Austro-Hungarian replies to Pope Benedict's peace proposals, and in the allied statesmen's comments on these replies, continued to pursue the familiar lines of argument, and while the movement for a clear statement of war aims gathered strength, as was seen, for example, in Lord Lansdowne's letter at the end of November, action was taken by the Bolshevist Government in Russia under the leadership of Lenine and Trotzky. The conclusion of an armistice on the eastern front as a preliminary to peace negotiations between Russia and the Central Powers opened an entirely new phase of the international situation.

VOL. XIII.