Skip to main content
The beginning of the end of World War One
JOHN ELLISON remembers the momentous February of 1918 and the dramatic issues on the political agenda of the day
Brest-Litovsk

As February 1918 opened its doors, the heart-warming effect of the case for peace and socialism advanced by the Bolshevik revolution and delivered in person by ambassador Maxim Litvinov — to rapturous applause at late January’s Nottingham Labour conference — was much felt in labour movement circles.

The Herald declared, moreover, that the conference had killed “jingoism” and that “no-one talked of crushing Germany,” but the war went on.

“Post rushing, trench raiding and patrol conflicts remain the limited items of infantry activity these times,” declared the Liberal Daily News on February 6, but deaths, wounds and other usual front-line sufferings were plentiful and there was a justified general expectation that a major German offensive was coming soon.   

If either of the two camps has ever fought this war in self-defence, this has long ceased to be true. This is a struggle for the partitioning of the world.

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
MT
Features / 15 November 2024
15 November 2024
JOHN ELLISON looks back to the 1974 general election in Greece which freed the people from the oppressive military junta
Harold Wilson arrives in Downing St 1974
Features / 31 July 2024
31 July 2024
JOHN ELLISON looks back at the Wilson government’s early months, detailing how left-wing manifesto commitments were diluted, and the challenges faced by Tony Benn in implementing socialist policies
An injured Palestinian boy is carried from the ground follow
Features / 11 January 2024
11 January 2024
Robert Fisk and John Pilger knew that the legacy of the aggression of the US and its allies against the Middle East was crucial to understanding that crimes like the war on Gaza will only lead to more violence, writes JOHN ELLISON
MAN WITH A BOAT: Tory leader Edward Heath poses for the came
Features / 4 December 2023
4 December 2023
JOHN ELLISON looks at the miners' strike and Shrewsbury 3 case that led Edward Heath to ask ‘Who governs Britain?’ and the electorate to answer: not you
Similar stories
9sailors
Features / 11 November 2024
11 November 2024
TONY COLLINS reveals the true story of the end of WWI – a story of rebellions, mutinies and strikes by soldiers and others determined to end the horrific slaughter, a story buried under official rituals and ceremonies
Demonstrators outside the Amba Hotel at Marble Arch, London,
Features / 10 September 2024
10 September 2024
TONY COLLINS looks at the evidence he has uncovered in his research on our early labour movement of deep and hostile police infiltration that ruined lives in the last century
11peacedove
Features / 15 May 2024
15 May 2024
On International Conscientious Objectors’ Day, GEOFF TIBBS explains why we should listen to the voices of COs as they bear witness to the legal, social and coercive mechanisms that war depends on
blood
Book Review / 10 May 2024
10 May 2024
GAVIN O’TOOLE applauds a uniquely nuanced people’s history of the revolutionary period, told from below