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The beginning of the end of World War One
JOHN ELLISON remembers the momentous February of 1918 and the dramatic issues on the political agenda of the day
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk – officers from the staff of Field Marshall von Hindenburg meet the delegation of Soviet Russia, Lev Kamenev (centre)

As February 1918 opened its doors, the heart-warming effect of the case for peace and socialism advanced by the Bolshevik revolution and delivered in person by ambassador Maxim Litvinov — to rapturous applause at late January’s Nottingham Labour conference — was much felt in labour movement circles.

The Herald declared, moreover, that the conference had killed “jingoism” and that “no-one talked of crushing Germany,” but the war went on.

“Post rushing, trench raiding and patrol conflicts remain the limited items of infantry activity these times,” declared the Liberal Daily News on February 6, but deaths, wounds and other usual front-line sufferings were plentiful and there was a justified general expectation that a major German offensive was coming soon.   

If either of the two camps has ever fought this war in self-defence, this has long ceased to be true. This is a struggle for the partitioning of the world.

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