. . . Max Hoffmann . . . has frankly put Lenin in one category with poison gas bombs. General Hoffman wrote :
In fighting Russia we, the Germans, had an unquestionable right to try to increase the disturbances created in the army and in the country by the revolution ; just as I bombarded the enemy trenches with shells, just as I poisoned the enemy with gas, so I had the right, being his foe, to use against his troops the weapon of propaganda.
In sending into the rear of the Russian army those human bombs loaded with propaganda which would suffocate patriotic feeling and sense of duty, the rulers of Germany were following Bismarck�s famous maxim : �In a mortal combat one must make use of any weapon, without hesitating over the destruction of any material or moral treasures.� . . .