Meanwhile, American preparations were being delayed by an exceptional winter and by the inherent and enormous difficulty of converting a vast community inured to peace to the organized purposes of war. In spite of invidious comparisons by super-patriots between British sloth and Transatlantic promptitude, America took four times as many months as the British had taken weeks to put a hundred thousand men into the firing-line; and the Germans were transferring divisions very much faster from the Eastern to the Western front. The Bolsheviks had relieved them of all anxiety on that score. Immediately after their coup d'etat on 7 November they had issued an invitation to all belligerents to negotiate for peace. The Germans naturally accepted, and on 29 November Count Hertling announced in the Reichstag their readiness to treat. On 3 December Krilenko obtained the surrender at Mohilev of the Russian General Staff, and Dukhonin, his predecessor, was barbarously murdered, though Kornilov escaped. On the 5th an armistice was signed to last till the 17th, and on the 15th a truce for another month. Cossack rebellions under Kaledin and Kornilov broke out on the Don and under Dutoff in the Urals; and Scherbachev collected a mixed anti-Bolshevik force on the borders of the Ukraine. But peace negotiations began between the Germans and Bolsheviks at Brest-Litovsk on the 22nd. The plausible German Foreign Secretary, Von Kühlmann, presided, and Austria was represented by Count Czernin. On the 25th, which was Christmas Day for the Germans but not by the unreformed Russian calendar, Von Kühlmann announced Germany's adhesion to the Russian programme of no annexations and no indemnities on condition that the Entente accepted the same principle; and an adjournment was made until 4 January to wait for its reply.