2
But nothing came from the front but frantic orders by wireless to the staunch but impotent pillars of the old régime. The British, French, and American forces, convinced at last that German women actually had effected a revolution—God knew how!—attacked every point of the line from Flanders to Belfort, and their aviators dropped newspapers containing the extraordinary but verified story, into the German trenches and back of the lines.
The destruction of the railways leading to the Austria-Hungarian Empire, as well as all the rolling stock within three miles of the frontier, balked any attempt to rush supplies in from the east, and in two days Austria was in the throes of a revolution far more devastating internally than Germany's, for that excitable and harassed people, long on the verge of despair, merely caught the revolution-microbe and went mad.
To supply either the army opposing Italy or that in Roumania and Gallicia, to say nothing of that in the Northeast, was no longer even considered. The young Emperor sought only to come to an understanding with his people.
It was a matter of days before both ammunition and food would be exhausted on the two fronts, and neither had a superfluous man to send to Berlin, or even to repair the tracks.