But one of those combinations that have often helped the Germans in this
war helped them to the success that seemed impossible. It was made up of
the secrecy with which they had been able to complete their
preparations, of the luck of surprise and bad weather, and above all of
the fatal failure in their duty of certain detachments of the Italian
forces.

[Sidenote: German propaganda has created disaffection in every Allied
country.]

[Sidenote: Soldiers everywhere are weary of war.]

One of the successes of this year's German offensive was the creation in
the heart of an efficient and gallant army of this canker of
disaffection by propaganda that has been as energetic and as dangerous
to our cause as any of the enemy's operations in the field. In every
Allied country it has been active; among the English it is at work
corrupting labor, preying on the nerves of the overstrained worker, and
whispering any subtle lie that will sap his will and undermine his
spirit. In France one fractional part of the widespread organization
that carries on this treacherous work is being exposed by the
revelations in the Bolo case. In Italy the Germans cunningly twisted
fanatics, both socialist and clerical, into agents for forwarding their
work, and they had flooded the country with money to corrupt the army
which they had not been able to beat in the field. The individual
soldiers of every country, including above all the Central empires
themselves, are dead-weary of the war, but the enemy alone has had the
cunning and the baseness deliberately to exploit this feeling to his
profit, working through the agency of bought traitors and hired spies.
And so the Austro-Germans had managed to imbue a limited part of the