lay only with the Bolsheviks. Unfortunately, the nature of the defeat is much more complex; it was already foreseen by military experts before the offensive of June 18; in the 'exalted' talk of June 18 about 'revolutionary' regiments, in the 'red' flags, etc., there lurked a mortal danger.

"When dispatches were received at General Headquarters reporting the supposedly brilliant achievements of June 18, we — realizing that nothing particularly brilliant had occurred, for we had only captured a number of fortified positions which under present battle conditions the enemy had to sacrifice in order to ensure his own victory — said that, 'we shall be very lucky if the Germans do not launch a counterblow.' But the counterblow was launched, and the Russian army, like the French in 1815,was at once transformed into a panic-stricken mob. Clearly, the catastrophe was not due to Bolshevism alone, but to something deep-seated in the army organism, which the higher command was unable to divine or understand. It is this cause of our defeat, much graver than Bolshevism, that we want to discuss, as far as it is possible in a newspaper article, because time is short :

"German 'militarism' has established a rule of military science: The strongest form of action is the offensive.' This German rule proved unsuitable for us from the very beginning of the war (the disastrous defeats of Samsonov and Rennenkampf): the only thing possible for raw generals and raw soldiers is defence with protected flanks. With the natural losses incurred in the war, the standard