<Dl> <Dd> War News . A half - zeppelin threw half its bombs on half - time combatants, resulting in one - quarter damaged . The zeppelin, halfways - attacked by a portion of half - anti aircraft guns, was half destroyed ." </Dd> </Dl> <Dd> War News . A half - zeppelin threw half its bombs on half - time combatants, resulting in one - quarter damaged . The zeppelin, halfways - attacked by a portion of half - anti aircraft guns, was half destroyed ." </Dd> <P> Georges Clemenceau became prime minister in November 1917, a time of defeatism and acrimony . Italy was on the defensive, Russia had surrendered . Civilians were angry, as rations fell short and the threat of German air raids grew . Clemenceau realized his first priority was to restore civilian morale . He arrested Joseph Caillaux, a former French prime minister, for openly advocating peace negotiations . He won all - party support to fight to victory calling for "la guerre jusqu'au bout" (war until the end). </P> <P> Tsarist Russia was being torn apart in 1914 and was not prepared to fight a modern war . The industrial sector was small, finances were poor, the rural areas could barely feed themselves . Repeated military failures and bureaucratic ineptitude soon turned large segments of the population against the government . Control of the Baltic Sea by the German fleet, and of the Black Sea by combined German and Ottoman forces prevented Russia from importing supplies or exporting goods . By the middle of 1915 the impact of the war was demoralizing . Food and fuel supplies grew scarce, war casualties kept climbing and inflation was mounting . Strikes increased among low - paid factory workers, and the peasants, who wanted land reforms, were restless . Meanwhile, elite distrust of the incompetent decision making at the highest levels was deepened when a semiliterate mystic, Grigory Rasputin, gained enormous influence over the Tsar and his wife until he was assassinated . Major strikes broke out early in 1917 and the army sided with the strikers in the February Revolution . The tsar abdicated . The liberal reformer Alexander Kerensky came to power in July, but in the October Revolution Lenin and the Bolsheviks took control . In early 1918 they signed the Treaty of Brest - Litovsk that made Germany dominant in Eastern Europe, while Russia plunged into years of civil war . </P>

How did events on the home front show the toll that war was taking there