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revolt, with the dignity maintained by the Bolshevik press? Not for one moment did the Government attempt to conceal the extreme gravity of the situation. Not for one moment did it think, as is the custom with bourgeois governments in such circumstances, of inspiring its people with renewed courage even at the cost of a slight distortion of the truth, by the announcement of some imaginary victory. Never were its informations more exact. The odious calumny that its successes on certain points of the Czecho-Slovak front were due to the presence of German troops was met by it from the first moment with a categorical denial, in which it pointed out that, in the ranks of the Red Army, there were international units composed of German, Austrian, and Hungarian socialists, who volunteered for the defence of the Russian revolution and, in defending the latter, for the defence of the World revolution. Later on, events were to prove that, as it happened, these German and Austro-Hungarian internationalists were not fighting merely „at the orders of“ and for the sake of Austro-German Imperialism! Further, the Bolshevik Government, which naturally felt itself invincible on this point, as again it was relying solely of the truth, requested that a commission of journalists and allied officers, appointed by the diplomatic representatives, and the military missions still at Moscow, should be allowed to go over the whole Czecho-Slovak front, and interrorgate the combattants in the Internationalists units on the spot,—a proposition which, naturally, received no consideration.
However, events were hastening on, and by the end of August, a meeting at the Consulate-
