American public opinion concentrated on the Western Front and the campaign in France and only slowly did it begin to react to the enormous forces that were working in the central and eastern parts of Europe. As in most countries of Europe, the only persons who took a deep interest in these areas were the immigrants and the few persons who had already been awakened to the great problems which the Slavic world of the time presented. The clash of Great Britain, France and Russia against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, the Triple Entente versus the Triple Alliance, seemed real only in its relations to the Western Front. The Eastern Front and the titanic passions released in the Slavic lands under both Russia and Austria-Hungary seemed fantastic to public opinion and even to the opinion of the educated and intelligent classes. At the same time, it did have a message for the Slavic communities in the United States which sought every opportunity to raise their voice in hope of national liberation. The average American was more moved by the Armenian massacres than he was by the astounding Russian advances and retreats in the East. The causes which led the United States into the War were almost wholly connected with the respective influences of Great Britain, France and Germany and it was the armistice with Germany on November 11, 1918 that convinced the American people that the War was over and that the whole of Europe would very soon return to normalcy. Consistent with American preoccupation with the developments in Germany, the agitation for the disintegration of Austria-Hungary vigorously sponsored by the Slavic colonies in the United States and the various national committees in Europe found a hearing chiefly as a means of curtailing German influence. Furthermore, as a result of propaganda diligently spread during the War, the Russian Revolution seemed to the majority of the American people another step in the development of democracy and the break up of the control of Russia by a Germanized royal family and a Germanized bureaucracy. It might even be said that the initial distrust of Lenin came because the German General Staff allowed him to cross to Russia from Switzerland. The disintegration of the Russian front was laid entirely to German propaganda and the most ridiculous stories were advanced in order to justify this point of view. This attitude prompted the American reaction to the efforts of liberation of the various peoples of the old Russian empire and nearly all the nationalist movements were laid to German influences. We may see this in the phrasing of the sixth of Wilson’s Fourteen Points touching Russia: