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208 been impossible. It was an attempt to exploit the modern machinery of communication to start the return to a "common consciousness" throughout the world.

But first we must examine some of the circumstances as they presented themselves at the end of 1917. For in the form which the document finally assumed, all these considerations are somehow represented. During the summer and autumn a series of events had occurred which profoundly affected the temper of the people and the course of the war. In July the Russians had made a last offensive, had been disastrously beaten, and the process of demoralization which led to the Bolshevik revolution of November had begun. Somewhat earlier the French had suffered a severe and almost disastrous defeat in Champagne which produced mutinies in the army and a defeatist agitation among the civilians. England was suffering from the effects of the submarine raids, from the terrible losses of the Flanders battles, and in November at Cambrai the British armies met a reverse that appalled the troops at the front and the leaders at home. Extreme war weariness pervaded the whole of western Europe.

In effect, the agony and disappointment had jarred loose men's concentration on the accepted version of the war. Their interests were no longer held by the ordinary official pronouncements, and their attention began to wander, fixing now upon their own suffering, now upon their party and class purposes, now upon general resentments against the governments. That more or less perfect organization of perception