In spite of experience the Entente was slow in learning not to underestimate the military resourcefulness of the Germans, and Pétain's victories, coupled with the failure of the Germans to react, provoked a jubilation which was not justified. To the German Higher Command the loss of a few square miles at Verdun and the Chemin des Dames was a mere matter of detail compared with the ambitious strategy it now had in mind. Situated as the Germans were between two fronts, they were quicker to grasp the significance of events in the East than were Western Powers; and the collapse of Russia had already inspired Ludendorff with the idea and hopes of a final and victorious offensive on the West in the spring of 1918. It must come soon, or the advent of American armies would make it too late. Even the French and British forces were serious enough, and an obvious preliminary would be to weaken the enemy line in France by a diversion. The Germans knew enough about Italy to be confident that a staggering blow would not be difficult to deal, and that if it were dealt it would compel France and Great Britain to go to the rescue of their distressful ally. Italy had all along been inviting some such blow by her concentration on Trieste, a divergent quest after booty which led away from the enemy's vital parts; for the Adriatic was already closed to the Central Empires by the French and British fleets, and the fall of Trieste, however gratifying it might be to Irredentists--though Trieste had never belonged to Italy or Italian rulers--would have no appreciable effect upon the issue of the war. That quest, moreover, left the Italian flank, upon which its front entirely depended, exposed at Caporetto. It was not, indeed, probable that the Italians would have advanced very far had they set their faces towards Vienna; but if their front had faced in that direction, they would not have provoked the disastrous collapse of their whole campaign in the last week of October 1917. Hitherto Russia had prevented the Central Empires from seizing the opportunity which Italy offered; but the triumph of Bolshevism removed that protection and also supplied the Germans with political means for advancing their military ends. Not a few Italian troops had succumbed to propaganda, and when the crisis came they imitated Russian examples in a way which provoked Cadorna--in a censored message--to speak of their "naked treason."