Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/142

 perceive the white thread with which the German tissue of falsehoods was sewn. The Russians had ended by saying to themselves that after all the German revolution, which they had thought certain in the first intoxication of their triumph, did not seem likely to take place, and if anything was changed, it was only on their own side of the trenches. And so when we visited the trenches they were no longer exchanging cigarettes and bottles of vodka with the enemy, but shot and shell.

None the less, a few days before, a German officer had tried to penetrate into the Russian lines under cover of the white flag of the parliamentary party. He was allowed to approach, and taken to the nearest military authority with the usual ceremony, and there they asked him the reason for his visit. He exhibited a paper, the original of which was shown to us, and which said, in so many words, "that the staff of the Austro-German Army of the South had deputed the officer bearing the passport to go and negotiate with the delegates of the Russian soldiers in order to expose to them the point of