The End of the Hindenburg Line?

The Washington correspondent of the Associated Press states that Congress will be asked to appropriate $1,000,000,000 (£200,000,000) for the building of an American merchant fleet to overcome the submarine menace.

The program of the Shipping Board contemplates the diversion to the Government of the product of every steel-mill in the United States and the cancelation of existing contracts between the mills and private consumers, and, where necessary, the payment of damages by the Government to the parties whose contracts are canceled. The Board estimates that from five to six million tons of steel and wooden vessels will be constructed by the Government in the next two years.

Associated Press,
Washington, May 8, 1917.

"A POISON-GAS ATTACK ON NEW RUSSIA"

Isolated groups of certain classes of the population, lacking conscientiousness, seek to realize their aspirations by the medium of violence, and threaten to destroy the discipline of internal policy and to create anarchy.

The Provisional Government believes it to be its duty to declare frankly that this state of things, which renders the administration of the country difficult, may lead the country to internal disorganisation and defeat at the front. The phantom of anarchy and civil war threatening liberty arises before Russia.

Russian Provisional
Government Proclamation,
Petrograd, May 9, 1917.

A FOOL'S PARADISE

As affairs are going now, it will be impossible to save the country. Perhaps the time is near when we will have to tell you that we can no longer give you the amount of bread you expect or other supplies on which you have a right to count. The process of the change from slavery to freedom is not going on properly. We have tasted freedom and are slightly intoxicated. What we need is sobriety and discipline.

You could suffer and be silent for ten years, and obey the orders of a hated Government. You could even fire upon your own people when commanded to do so. Can you now suffer no longer?

We hear it said that we no longer need the front because they are fraternizing there. But are they fraternizing on all the fronts? Are they fraternizing on the French front? No, comrades, if you are going to fraternize, then fraternize everywhere. Are not enemy forces being thrown over upon the Anglo-French front, and is not the Anglo-French advance already stopped? There is no such thing as a "Russian front," there is only one general Allied front.

Kerensky, Russian Minister of Justice,
May 14, 1917.