DAY BY DAY WITH
THE RUSSIAN ARMY
1914-15
THE AUTHOR.
DAY BY DAY WITH
THE RUSSIAN ARMY
1914-15
BY
BERNARD PARES
Official British Observer with the Russian Armies in the Field
WITH MAPS
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd.
1915
TO
NICHOLAS AND MARY HOMYAKOV
Tidings from the Tsar of Germans,
Tidings to the Russian Tsar.
"I will come and break your Russia,
And in Russia I will live."
Moody was the Russian Tsar,
As he paced the Moscow street.
"Be not moody, Russian Tsar,
Russia we will never yield.
"Gather, gather, Russian hosts;
William shall our captive be.
"Cross the far Carpathian mountains;
March through all the German towns."
Marching Song of the Third Army.
PREFACE
For the last ten years or more I have paid long visits to Russia, being interested in anything that might conduce to closer relations between the two countries. During this time the whole course of Russia's public life has brought her far nearer to England—in particular, the creation of new legislative institutions, the wonderful economic development of the country, and the first real acquaintance which England has made with Russian culture. I always travelled to Russia through Germany, whose people had an inborn unintelligence and contempt for all things Russian, and whose Government has done what it could to hold England and Russia at arm's length from each other. I often used to wonder which of us Germany would fight first.
When Germany declared war on Russia, I volunteered for service, and was arranging to start for Russia when we, too, were involved in the war. I arrived there some two weeks afterwards, and after a stay in Petrograd and Moscow was asked to take up the duty of official correspondent with the Russian army. It was some time before I was able to go to the army, and at first only in company of some twelve others with officers of the General Staff who were not yet permitted to take us to the actual front. We, however, visited Galicia and Warsaw, and saw a good deal of the army. After these journeys I was allowed to join the Red Cross organisation with the Third Army as an attaché of an old friend, Mr. Michael Stakhovich, who was at the head of this organisation; and there General Radko Dmitriev, whom I had known earlier, kindly gave me a written permit to visit any part of the firing line; my Red Cross work was in transport and the forward hospitals. My instructions did not include telegraphing, and my diary notes, though dispatched by special messengers, necessarily took a month or more to reach England; but I had the great satisfaction of sharing in the life of the army, where I was entertained with the kindest hospitality and invited to see and take part in anything that was doing.
The Third Army was at the main curve in the Russian front, the point where the German and Austrian forces joined hands. It was engaged in the conquest of Galicia, and on its fortunes, more perhaps than on those of any other army on either front, might depend the issue of the whole campaign. We were the advance guard of the liberation of the Slavs, and to us was falling the rôle of separating Austria from Germany, or, what is the same thing in more precise terms, separating Hungary from Prussia. I had the good fortune to have many old friends in this area. My work in hospitals and the permission to interrogate prisoners at the front gave me the best view that one could have of the process of political and military disintegration which was and is at work in the Austrian empire. I took part in the advanced transport work of the Red Cross, visited in detail the left and right flanks of the army, and went to the centre just at the moment when the enemy fell with overwhelming force of artillery on this part. I retreated with the army to the San and to the province of Lublin. My visits to the actual front had in each case a given object—usually to form a judgment on some question on which depended the immediate course of the campaign.
I am now authorised to publish my more public communications, including my diary notes with the Third Army. I am also obliged to the Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury for leave to reprint my note of September 1914 on Moscow. I think it will be seen that if we lost Galicia we lost it well, and that the moral superiority remained and remains on our side throughout. We were driven out by sheer weight of metal, but our troops turned at every point to show that the old relations of man to man were unchanged. The diary of an Austrian officer who was several times opposite to me will, I think, make this clear. When Russia has half the enemy's material equipment we know, and he does, that we shall be travelling in the opposite direction.
It was a delight to be with these splendid men. I never saw anything base all the while that I was with the army. There was no drunkenness; every one was at his best, and it was the simplest and noblest atmosphere in which I have ever lived.
Bernard Pares.
DAY BY DAY WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY
July-August 1914.
While the war cloud was breaking, I was close to my birthplace at Dorking with my father, whom I was not to see again. Though eighty-one years old he was in his full vigour of heart, mind and body, and we were motoring every day among the beautiful Surrey hills. He had had a great life of work for others, born just after the first Reform Bill which his own father had helped to carry through the House of Commons, and stamped with the robust faith and vigour of the great generation of the Old Liberals. Like every other interest of his children, he had always followed with the fullest participation my own work in Russia, and I had everything packed for my yearly visit there. In London I had had short visits from Mr. Protopopov, a liberal Russian publicist, and later from the eminent leader of Polish public life, Mr. Dmowski, than whom I know no better political head in Europe. Both had expected war for years past, but neither had any idea how close it was. Mr. Protopopov was absorbed in a study of English town planning and Mr. Dmowski was correcting the proofs of his last article for my Russian Review, which he ended with the words, "The time is not yet." He came down and motored with us through what he called "the paradise of trees"—and Poland itself has some of the finest trees in Europe; and my father was keenly interested in his hopes for the future of Poland. He was going to the English seaside when events called him back to an adventurous journey across Europe, in the course of which he was twice arrested in Germany, the second time in company of his old political opponent, the reactionary Russian Minister of Education, the late Mr. Kasso. To them a German Polish sentry said that as a Pole he wished for the victory of Russia, for "though the Russian made himself unpleasant, the Schwab (Swabian or German) was far more dangerous."
When I read Austria's demands on Serbia, I felt that it must mean a European war, and that we should have to take part in it. I remember the ordinary traveller in a London hotel explaining to me how infinitely more important the Ulster question was than the Serbian. It was clear that the really mischievous factor was the simultaneous official and public support of Germany, who claimed to draw an imaginary line around the Austro-Serbian conflict and threatened war to any one who interfered in the war. I had long realised the humbug of pretending that Austria was anything distinct from or independent of Germany; and the claim of the two to settle in their own favour one of the most thorny questions in Europe could never be tolerated by Russia. The Bosnian withdrawal of 1909 would, I knew, never be repeated, least of all by the Russian Emperor. The line had been crossed; it was "mailed fist" once too often.
Serbia's reply showed the extreme calm and circumspection both of Serbia and of Russia. Then came in quick succession the great days, when every one's political horizon was daily forced wider, when all the home squabbles of the different countries—the Caillaux case, the Russian labour troubles, and the Irish conflict, on which Germany had counted so much—were hurrying back as fast as possible into their proper background. There was a significant catch when the Austro-Russian conversations were renewed, and Germany, who had now come out in her true leadership, went forward to the forcing of war. The absurd inconsequences of German diplomacy reached their extraordinary culmination in the actual declaration to Russia. To make sure of war, the German ambassador in St. Petersburg received for delivery a formal declaration with alternative wordings suitable to any answer which Russia might give to the German ultimatum; and this genial diplomatist delivered the draft with both alternative wordings to the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr. Sazonov. It is the last communication printed in the Russian Orange Book.
The question was, how soon we should all see it. The news of the German declaration was in the English Sunday papers. Many English clergymen see virtue in not reading Sunday papers. I went to church. The clergyman began his sermon: "They tell me that the Sunday papers assert that Germany has declared war on Russia." Not a very promising beginning, but England was there the next minute. "If this is true," he went on, "and if we come into it, as we shall have to, we stand at the end of the long period when we have been spoiling ourselves with riches and comfort and forgetting what it is to make sacrifices"; and there followed an impromptu but very clear forecast of what was to be asked of us.
No one will forget the great days of probation, when each great country in turn was called on to stand and give whatever it had of the best. Russia was what one had felt sure that she would be. The Emperor's pledge not to make peace while a German soldier was in Russia, was an exact repetition of the words of Alexander I, but given this time at the very beginning of the war. The wonderful scene before the Winter Palace showed sovereign and people at one; and the wrecking of the German Embassy was an answer of the Russian workmen to an active propaganda of discontent that had issued from its walls. Next came France's turn, her remarkable coolness and discretion, and the outburst of patriotic devotion which the President of the Chamber voiced in the words, "Lift up your hearts" (Haut les cœurs). Then the turn of the Belgians, king and people, and their splendid and simple devotion. And now it was for us to speak.
I believed that we were sure to come into the war, but it was three days of waiting and the invasion of Belgium that gave us a united England. The Germans did our job for us. It was a quick conversion for those who hesitated; one day, neutrality to be saved; the next, neutrality past saving; the next, war, and war to the end. When we were waiting before the post office for Sir Edward Grey's speech, every one was asking, "Have they done the right thing?" This was the atmosphere of the London streets on the night that we declared war. We all lived on a few very simple thoughts. It was clear that there must be endless losses and many cruel inventions, but just as clear not only that we had to win but that, if we were not failing to ourselves, we were sure to.
I was in London before our declaration to ask what I could do, and was now making my last preparations for starting. The squalor of the great city had taken the aspect of a dingy ironclad at work. At the Bank of England, where payment could still be claimed in gold, I was asked the object of my journey. No one seemed to know about routes except Cook & Son. In the country the mobilisation passed us silent and unnoticed, except for the aeroplanes which we saw streaming southwards. I saw my father in his garden for the last time, went to London, and there, in a confusion of little things and big, with a taxi piled in haste with parcels of the most various nature and ownership, hurried to King's Cross, bundled into a full third-class carriage and started for Russia.
August 21.
At King's Cross I was already almost in Russia. The sixty or so Russians who had come to the Dental Congress in London, after one sitting had been caught by the war. Their English hosts looked after them splendidly, and they themselves pooled the supplies of money which they happened to have on them. There were also several members of the Russian ballet, and other Russians on their way from Italy, Switzerland and France, going via Norway and Sweden to St. Petersburg. Our route of itself was a striking illustration of the great military advantage possessed by Germany and Austria. With its interior lines of communication, the great German punching machine could measure its forces to any blow which it wished to deal on either side, while for any contact with each other the Allies had to crawl right round the circumference. For this military advantage, however, the aggressors had sacrificed in the most evident way all political considerations. In a quarrel which Austria had picked with Serbia, Germany forced war on Russia for daring to mobilise. Germany made an ultimatum to France at the same time, so as to make war with both countries simultaneously and give herself time to crush France before Russia could help her. For greater speed against France, she invaded neutral Belgium, thus making England an enemy and Italy a neutral. The absurdity became apparent when, with all this done, we were still waiting for the completion of the Russian mobilisation which was the nominal cause of the European War. Hence the union of so many peoples; but for all that the military advantage remained. It was as if Europe had the stomach ache, with shooting pains in all directions.
I asked a friend in the train what might be the state of mind of the Emperor William. He replied by quoting the answer of an Irishman: "He's probably thinking, Is there any one that I've left out?"
At Newcastle, the Norwegian steamer had booked at least forty more passengers than it could berth. I only got on to the boat by a special claim and had to sleep in a passage with my things scattered round me. All the corridors were taken up in this way. The Russians are admirable fellow-passengers: they had organised themselves informally under a natural leader into a great family. One corridor was set apart for a night nursery. The women received special consideration, and any one who had a berth was ready to give it up to them. One Russian, thinking I was ill, offered me his. I was ensconced with my back to the wall at the head of a staircase, and they would stop to chat as they went up or down. They had been greatly impressed by the spirit in England: the Englishman they regarded as a civil fellow who had better not be provoked, for if he was he would get to business at once and not look back till it was finished. They spoke very simply of themselves and of their little failings, and said that for this reason it was the greatest comfort to have England with them. What had impressed them most was the calm and vigour with which we had faced our financial crisis. They had seen some of our territorial troops, whom they classed very high for physique and spirit. They had much to tell one of France and Italy, and also of insults offered to them or their friends when leaving Germany. There were outbursts of sheer hooliganism marked with a sort of brutal contempt for Russians, and one lady, they said, had the earrings torn out of her ears. Their humanity was shocked by all this. They had nothing but condemnation for anything of the kind, from whatever side it came, and they were quite ready to criticise their own people or ours wherever there was any ground for doing so.
The captain said to me, "We sail under the protection of England." We were stopped once by an English warship, but only for a few minutes. At Bergen I found new fellow-passengers, and after an evening which was a succession of fiords, lakes, rocky heights and white villages, we passed by a wonderfully engineered railway over the snow level and down to Kristiania. The Norwegians were friendly and sympathetic, the Swedes courteous but reserved. There had recently been unveiled a frontier monument showing two brothers shaking hands; and one felt that the one country would not move without the other.
Between Kristiania and Stockholm I wrote an article on the Poles, and directly afterwards, puzzling out a Swedish newspaper, I read the manifesto of the Grand Duke Nicholas. We had with us Poles who were travelling right round to Warsaw. From Stockholm the more apprehensive members of our party went northward for the long land journey by Torneô. The rest of us risked the voyage across the Gulf of Bothnia. In the beautiful Skerries, we were at one point sent back by a Swedish gunboat and piloted past a mine field. I was on a Finnish boat, which was fair prize; so I had an interest in any ship that showed itself on this hostile sea. When we reached Raumo, a little improvised port in Finland, there was an outburst of relief for those who had come so far and were home again at last. All classes joined and enjoyed the home-coming together. The train picked up detachments of Russian troops on their way to the war. I had no seat, and went and slept or drowsed for an hour or two in a carriage full of soldiers. As I lay on a wooden bench I listened to a young peasant recruit with a bright clear face who was talking to his mother. It seemed to be a kind of fairy tale that he was telling her, and the clearly spoken words mingled with the movement of the train: "And he went again to the lake, and there he found the girl, and there was the golden ring, the ring of parting."
Petrograd.
I shall not dwell on the six weeks or so that I spent in St. Petersburg. My time was taken up with a number of details and with arrangements for getting to the front. I had volunteered for the Red Cross when I was asked to serve as official correspondent.
On my arrival I saw Mr. Sazonov, who spoke very simply about the overdoing of the mailed fist; he was as quiet and natural as he always is. He was very pleased with the mobilisation, which he told me had been so enthusiastic as to gain many hours on the schedule. This was the account that I heard everywhere. Mr. N. N. Lvov, of Saratov on the Volga, one of the most respected public men in Russia, was at his estate at the time. When the news of war came, the peasants, who were harvesting, went straight off to the recruiting depot and thence to the church, where all who were starting took the communion; there was no shouting, no drinking, though the abstinence edict had not then been issued; and every man who was called up, except one who was away on a visit, was in his place at the railway station that same evening. In other parts the peasants went round and collected money for the soldiers' families, and even in small villages quite large sums were given. The abstinence edict answered to a desire that had been expressed very generally among the peasants for some years. It was thoroughly enforced both in the country and in the towns. In the country the savings banks at once began steadily to fill, and the peasants, who would speak very naïvely of their former drunkenness, hoped that the edict would be permanent. In the towns some few restaurants were for a time still allowed to supply beer, but this ceased later. In all this time I only saw one drunken man.
The whole country was at once at its very best. After a mean and confused period every one saw his road to sacrifice. The difference between the Russians and us was that while this feeling, often so acute with us, could often find no road, in Russia, with her conscription and her huge Red Cross organisation, the path was easy. All the life of the country streamed straight into the war; age limits did not act as with us; and the rear, including the capital, was depleted of nearly every one. This made one feel that no good work could be done here without access to the army. Nearly all my friends were gone off, and I was anxious to join them.
The interval was filled with different lesser interests. The question of communications between the Allies was engaging a great deal of attention. I was a member of a committee at the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, which was working out arrangements for trade routes. My English friends and I also tried to plan an exchange of articles, asking leading Russians and Englishmen to write respectively in English and Russian papers. But, though this was felt to be important, we broke down on the Russian side, because those who wished to write for us were swept away to war work at the front. In the rear the most important work was the relief of the families left behind. This engaged a number of devoted workers and was soon brought into very good order both at St. Petersburg and at Moscow, but it was in the main a task for women.
At the outset of the war the aged Premier, Mr. Goremykin, whose political record was that of a benevolent Conservative, at once saw the need of engaging the full co-operation of the nation as a whole. After consultation with public leaders the Duma was summoned. A few representative speeches were expected, but with a remarkable spontaneity not only every section of political opinion, but every race in the vast Russian empire took its part in a striking series of declarations of loyalty and devotion. Each man spoke plainly the feelings of himself and those for whom he spoke. Perhaps no speeches left a greater impression than those of the Lithuanians and of the Jews; these last found a noble spokesman in Mr. Friedmann. The speeches in the Duma, which were circulated all over the country, were a revelation to the public and to the Duma itself; and the war thus had from the first a national character; it was a great act in the national life of Russia.
In particular it was found that the Red Cross work could not possibly be organised on any basis of suspicion of public initiative. In the Japanese War Zemstva were still suspect to the Government, because they represented the elective principle. The Zemstva created a large Red Cross organisation under the admirable Prince George Lvov, but it worked under great difficulties. Now Mr. Goremykin confided the main work of the Red Cross to Prince Lvov and the Zemstva; and almost every one prominent in Zemstvo or Duma life engaged in this work, which gave splendid results. The later attempt of the reactionary Minister of the Interior, Mr. Maklakov, to close this organisation ended in his resignation.
Red Cross Zemstvo work meant the nationalisation of Russian public life, which had so long been under the strong control of reactionary German influences. The liberation from these influences was sealed by the re-naming of the capital. The German name, St. Petersburg, was exchanged for the Russian Petrograd. This was no fad. It was the fitting end to a long struggle of the Russian people as a whole, under a national sovereign, to develop itself independently of any mailed fist, to manage its own affairs as Russian instincts should direct.
In Moscow in 1812 the Emperor met his people after the beginning of the war. Gentry offered their lives; merchants, with clenched fists and streaming eyes, offered one-third of all their substance. In 1914 the Emperor again went to pray with his people in Moscow, and the growth of a still greater Russia has only augmented those proportions, deepened the reach of that historic example of patriotic self-sacrifice.
"Russia," said one of the best Russians to me, Mr. N. N. Lvov, "was lost in a confusion of petty quarrels and intrigues; and suddenly we see that the real Russia is there."
The pleasant streets of this great country city, so far more homelike than those of the capital, we found even more country-like than ever; a notable absence everywhere of young men; the feeling that all those who were left were at work somewhere together.
In the town hall, which I have always found so thronged and busy, none of the chief public men were to be seen; the work of all seemed to have passed to the new department opened close by for the town organisation in connection with the Red Cross. There, after a long wait while numberless applicants for service passed us, we received an admirably short and clear explanation of the work for the wounded. In the same building was organised the care for the poor, strongly developed in recent years at twenty-nine local branches, and now working wholesale and with splendid effect for the homes of those who have gone to the war.
At the Zemstvo League there was the atmosphere of all the years of missionary work for the people that has been carried on in camping conditions for so many years by the Zemstvo in all sorts of country corners of Russia. Every one was moving quietly and quickly about his share of the common business. At the big green baize table every seat was occupied—here a woman of the poorer class volunteering as a Red Cross sister, there a medical student asking for service. Small conferences of fellow-workers going on in all the side rooms; and in the evening a common discussion of how the Zemstvo work could be carried further to the economic support of the population; an appeal is being drawn up to go to every one in Russia. Here I found the excellent "twin" secretaries of the President of the Duma, Mr. Shchepkin and Mr. Alexeyev, who have done so much for friendship with England, and the head of the whole Zemstvo League, Prince Lvov, who in a few simple words gave all the objects of the work for the wounded, who were expected to number 750,000.
Next we were taken to the chief depots. Princess Gagarin has given her beautiful house for one, and now lives in a corner of it, helping at the work. There are two main departments for paid work and for unpaid. Patterns of all the clothes, pillows, and hospital linen required for the wounded are sent here, and the material cut out is given out to 3,200 women, some of whom stand in a long file in the court outside. Every day the store, which works till midnight, is cleared for a new supply, and the materials prepared are packed in cases of birch bark for the army. In the Government horse-breeding department there is another great depot under the direction of Princess O. Trubetskoy. The workers, rich and poor, all have their simple meals together in one of the working rooms. There is a large store of chemicals, and elsewhere a department for the supply of furniture and implements for the field hospitals.
It would be hard to make those who cannot see it feel how intimately the Russian people now feels itself bound up with the English in a great common effort. The Rector of Moscow University, with whom I was only able to converse by telephone, said to me: "Tell them in England that we have one heart and one soul with them."
Every day great numbers of wounded are brought by train to Moscow. By the admirable arrangements of Countess O. Bobrinsky, a vast number of students, young women, and helpers of all kinds are waiting for them at the Alexandrovsky station to assist in moving them and to supply them with refreshments. An enormous silent crowd surrounds the white station. The owners of motors are waiting ready with their carriages; all details are in order. Three trains come in between six and ten o'clock. The sight is a terrible one; faces bound up, limbs missing; some few have died on the journey. The wounded are moved quickly and quietly to the private carriages. As they pass through the crowd all hats are off, and the soldiers sometimes reply with a salute. It is all silent; it is the pulse of a great family beating as that of one man.
October 8.
The Emperor's visit to the Vilna was a great success. He rode through the town unguarded. The streets were crowded, the reception most cordial. The upper classes in Vilna are mostly Poles, a kind of Polish "enclave." There are several splendid Catholic churches. On the road to the station are gates with some revered Catholic images, before which all passers by remove their hats. There is a large Jewish trading population often living in extreme poverty: for instance, sometimes in three tiers of cellars one below another. The peasants are mostly Lithuanians. Thus there are not many Russians except officials. At the beginning of war the nearness of the enemy was felt with much anxiety. Now there is an atmosphere of work and assurance. The Grand Hotel and several public buildings are converted into hospitals, where the Polish language is largely used. The Emperor visited all the chief hospitals, and spoke with many wounded, distributing medals in such numbers that the supply ran short. He received a Jewish deputation and spoke with thanks of the sympathetic attitude of the Jews in this hour so solemn for Russia. The general feeling may be described as like a new page of history. Among Poles, educated or uneducated, enthusiasm is general. This is all the more striking because in no circumstances could Vilna be considered as politically Polish. Vilna shows all the aspects of war conditions, but the country around is being actively cultivated.
October 10.
We reached the Russian headquarters as the bugle sounded for evening prayer. The atmosphere here is one of complete simplicity and homeliness. Our small party includes several distinguished journalists from most of the chief Russian papers, also eminent French, American and Japanese representatives of the Press. We found the Grand Ducal train on a side line. It was spacious and comfortable but simply appointed. We were received by the Chief of the General Staff, one of the youngest lieutenant-generals in the Russian army. He is a strongly built man with a powerful head, whose carriage and speech communicate confidence. He spoke very simply of the military conditions, of the common task, and of his assurance of the full co-operation of the public and Press. The Grand Duke then entered, his light step, bright eye and imposing stature well shown up by his easy cavalry uniform. Shaking hands with each of us, both before and after his address, he said: "Gentlemen, I am glad to welcome you to my quarters. I have always thought, and continue to think, that the Press, in competent and worthy hands, can do an enormous amount of good. I am sure you gentlemen are just the men who by your communications through the papers, telling all that is most keenly interesting, and by your correct exposition of the facts, can do good both to the public and to us. I unfortunately and necessarily cannot show you all I should be perhaps glad to show, as in every war, and particularly in this stupendous one, the observing of military secrecy relative to the plan and all that can reveal it is the pledge of success. I have marked out a road on which you will be able to acquaint yourselves with just what is of most lively interest to all, and what all are anxious to know. Allow me to wish you success and to express to you my confidence that by your work you will do all the good which is expected of you as representatives of the public, and will calm relations and friends and all who are suffering and anxious. I welcome you, gentlemen, and wish you full success." We were invited to join in the lunch and dinner of the General Staff in their restaurant car. There were no formalities—it was simply a number of fellow workers having their meals together, without distinction, just as in the big houses in Moscow where the making of clothes for the army is proceeding. A notice forbids handshaking in the restaurant, under fine of threepence for the wounded. I noticed a street picture of the Cossack Kruchkov in his single-handed combat with eleven German Dragoons, also a map of the front of the Allies in the West, but hardly any other decorations. Among the party there was, in accordance with the temperance edict, no alcohol.
To-day I visited several wounded from the Austrian front, mostly serious cases. The first, an Upper Austrian with a broken leg, spoke cheerily of his wound and his surroundings. He described the Russian artillery fire as particularly formidable. His own corps had run short of ammunition, not of food. Another prisoner, a young German from Bohemia, singularly pleasing and simple, described the fighting at Krasnik, where he was hit in the leg. The battle, he said, was terrible. The Austrian artillery here was uncovered and was crushed. The Russian rifle line took cover so well that he could not descry them from two hundred yards in front of his own skirmishing line, but its firing took great effect. I saw also an Austrian doctor taken prisoner, and now continuing his work salaried by the Russians. All three prisoners evidently felt nothing antagonistic in their surroundings. They struck me as men who had fulfilled a civic duty without either grudge or any distinctive national feeling. I spoke with several Russians who had been badly hit in their first days of fighting, especially at Krasnik. Here a young Jew fell in the firing line on a slope, and saw thence more than half of his company knocked over as they pressed forward. He was picked up next morning. A Russian described how his company charged a small body of Austrians, who retired precipitately to a wood but reappeared supported by three quickfirers which mowed down most of his company. All accounts agreed that the Austrians could never put up resistance to Russian bayonet charges. This was particularly noticeable in the later fighting. As one sturdy fellow put it, "No, they don't charge us, we charge them, and they clear out." I was most of all impressed by a frail lad of twenty who looked a mere boy. He was not wounded, and was sent back simply because he was worn out by the campaigning. He said, "They are firing on my brother and not on me. That is not right, I ought to be where they all are." One feels it is a great wave rolling forward with one spirit driving it on.
Many of these wounded had only been picked up after lying for some time on the field. I saw one heroic lady, a sister of mercy, who had herself carried a wounded officer from the firing line. Both the hospitals that I visited were strongly staffed. In the second, designed only for serious cases, and admirably equipped with drugs, Roentgen apparatus and operating rooms, the sister of the Emperor, the Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (who went through the full two years' preparation) is working as a sister of mercy under all the ordinary discipline and conditions of travel and work. Starting at the outbreak of the war, she was in time for the tremendous pressure of the great Austrian battles, when the hospital had to provide for three hundred patients instead of the expected two hundred. All the arrangements in these hospitals, based on fifty years' experience of Russian country hospital work, were carried out under the most difficult conditions and bore the impression of missionary devotion. Here, for instance, all the medicine chests were adapted for frequent transport; the table is also the travelling chest, and so on.
The country aspect was also noticeable in an army bread factory which I visited. The rye bread is dried to a portable biscuit; the soldier can carry a large supply of this biscuit and has something to eat in the firing line when other provisions run short.
Lvov (Lemberg), October 15.
To-day, on their arrival, the Russian Governor-General of Galicia received the correspondents, and addressed us as follows—
"I am glad, gentlemen, to meet you; I am well aware of the enormous advantage that can be derived from the use of the Press, and am only sorry that you are to be for so short a time in Galicia, for I should like you to have had the opportunity of studying on the spot the difficult questions of administration: you might have communicated to me your impressions and suggestions—for in your capacity of writers you are trained critics. We have to deal in Galicia with various nationalities, and very divergent political views.
"I shall be glad if I can be of any assistance in your study of the country. I have already communicated to various deputations, and to the public, the principles of my attitude toward the problems of administration, and have no alterations to make in my declared views.
"Eastern Galicia should become part of Russia. Western Galicia, when its conquest has been completed, should form part of the kingdom of Poland, within the empire. My policy as to the religious question is very definite. I have no desire to compel any one to join the Orthodox Church. If a two-thirds majority in any given village desires to conform to the Orthodox Church, then they should be given the parish church. This does not mean that the remaining third should not be free to remain in its former communion. I am avoiding even any suggestion of compulsion. The peasants pass over very easily to Orthodoxy; for them the question is in no way acute, indeed the so-called Uniats consider they are Orthodox already. But it is different for the clergy, for whom the question is a real one. I respect all the priests who have remained in their parishes, and they have not been disturbed. Those who have abandoned their benefices I am not restoring: nor shall I permit the return of any who are associated with any political agitation against Russia.
"A difficult question has arisen relating to Austrian officials in the town of Lvov: from persons of means they have now become paupers requiring assistance. Another question is that of credit: numbers of banks are without their cash, which has all been taken away to Vienna. These banks are sending a deputation to Petrograd to solicit the support of the Bank of Russia.
"There is also the question of the police. I am waiting for trained policemen to be sent from Russia: it is impossible, of course, to use untrained men for administrative work, and meanwhile I contrive to employ the local Austrian police. Some magistrates have fled—we have to put the affairs of justice in order: I am awaiting a representative of the Ministry of Justice, who will examine the question.
"In certain regions around Lvov, Nikolayev, Gorodok and other places where there has been severe fighting, the population has been left in a state of great distress. In Bukovina, however, there is little distress, except in the towns; and as the crops there are good, we are importing food into Galicia from thence. The relief of distress is being dealt with by committees, including prominent local residents, under the Directors of Districts, and controlled by a central committee, whose chairman is Count Vladimir Bobrinsky. In cases of extreme distress it is being arranged that money may be advanced to the necessitous.
"I have established in Galicia three provinces: Lvov (Lemberg), Tarnopol, and Bukovina. Perhaps we may establish another province, following the line of demarcation of the Russian population, which on maps of Austrian Poland is admitted to include parts of the region about Sanok (in central Galicia)."
October 24.
I have spent some days in the Austrian territory conquered by the Russians. The Russian broad gauge has been carried some distance into Galicia, and the further railway communication with the Austrian gauge and carriages is in working order. The large waiting-rooms were covered with wounded on stretchers with doctors and sisters of mercy in constant attendance. They utter no sound, except in very few cases when under attention. One poor fellow, a bronzed and strapping lad struck through the lungs, I saw dying; he looked so hale and strong; his wide eyes kept moving as he gasped and wrestled silently with death; he seemed so grateful to those who sat with him; he died early in the morning. I talked with three Hungarian privates, keen-eyed and vigorous. They said their men were very good with the bayonet and seldom surrendered, a statement which was confirmed by a Russian cavalry officer who had just returned from fighting in the passes, though it seems the Hungarians do not consider the war as national beyond the Carpathians, and they fight well because they are warlike and not because they like this war. The prisoners with whom I talked were very energetic in praising their treatment by the Russians, which is indeed beyond praise. Everywhere they met people with tea, sugar, and cigarettes. One said repeatedly, "I can say nothing," and another said, "I cannot but wish that we may do as well by them in Hungary." These were the only Austrian prisoners in whom I have seen a trace of that national enthusiasm for the war which is so evident in all the Russian soldiers. I talked with two Italians, simple, friendly fellows who described their treatment as pulito, or very decent.
The Slovenes and Bohemians seemed rather in a maze about the whole thing. A Ruthenian soldier of Galicia was quite frank about it. "Of course we had to go," he said, but he expressed pleasure at the Russians winning Galicia, and even regarded it as compensation for his wound.
I saw off a train of Russian wounded. They were most brotherly and thoughtful for each other. An Austrian patient told me he was happy and had made great friends with the Russian next to him. The electric trams are used for ambulances, and the chief buildings are turned into hospitals. The biggest is in the Polytechnicum, and is served practically by Poles. The big Russian hospital of the Dowager Empress is very well equipped. The Red Cross organisation is in the hands of eminent public men; such as Homyakov, Stakhovich and Lerche, who visited England with the party of Russian Legislators in 1909. Count Vladimir Bobrinsky, another member of that party, is chairman of the relief committee appointed by his cousin the Russian Governor-General of Galicia. The town is old and pleasing, set in undulating country. It is in excellent order. A little sporadic street firing was quickly suppressed. All inhabitants throughout the conquered territory must be at home from ten in the evening till four unless they have special permission. How well this rule is kept one could judge when returning from the station. No one was out except Russian sentries and Austrian policemen, who have been continued on their work. Otherwise one sees no signs of a conquered town.
The day the Russians entered, the Polish paper issued its morning edition under Austrian control and its evening edition under Russian. The electric lighting and tramways continued working and the shops remained open. The fighting, which was most severe, was all outside. But even on the sites of engagements the amount of damage done by artillery is limited to few places and few houses, and cultivation is now going on, without any signs of war, close up to the present front. A general order forbids the leaving about of any refuse. There is no friction between the Little Russian peasants and the troops or the new administrators; but the Jews adopt a waiting attitude. The general position is a great credit to the Russians, and gives ample proof of their close kinship with the great majority of the conquered population.
October 26.
I have visited some of the battlefields of Galicia. It is much too early to attempt any thorough account of these battles; nor did the conditions of my visits make any complete examination possible.
The chief harm which Germany and Austria could inflict in a war against Russia was to conquer Russian Poland, whose frontier made defence extremely difficult. Regarding this protuberance as a head, Germany and Austria could make a simultaneous amputating operation at its neck, attacking the one from East Prussia and the other from Galicia. But the German policy, which had other and more primary objects, precipitated war with France and threw the bulk of the German forces westward. Thus the German army in East Prussia kept the defensive, and Austria was left to make her advance from Galicia without support.
The Austrian forces on this front were at first more numerous than the Russians. The Russians had been prepared to defend the line of the Bug, which would have meant the temporary abandonment of nearly all Poland. But the alliance with France and England made it both possible and desirable to advance, and at the battle of Gnila Lipa the army on the Austrian right was driven back beyond Lvov (Lemberg), the town falling into Russian hands. The next great fighting was for the possession of the line of the river San.
It must be remembered that while the fighting lines ran roughly from north to south, the frontier line here ran from east to west. Thus the left of each force occupied the territory of the other. The first decisive success had been that of the Russian left in Galicia; but the Austrian left and centre were still allowed to advance further into Russian Poland. A double movement was then undertaken against them. While General Brusilov pushed home in southern Galicia the success already obtained on this side, and thus secured the Russian left flank from a counter-offensive, General Ruzsky, the conqueror of Lvov, came in on the Austrian centre at Rava Ruska, while other Russian armies, detached from the reserves standing between the Russian northern and southern fronts, and making good use of the advantageous railway connexion, arrived to the north of the Austrian left. Seldom has a tactical battle been planned on so large a scale. The Austrians, threatened at this point with outflanking on both sides, after several days' hard defensive fighting, withdrew with a haste that had the character of a rout, and which only saved them from complete annihilation. Their centre, like their already beaten right, retired southwards toward Hungary, while their left, just escaping the peril of being surrounded, fell back rapidly in the direction of Cracow, where it was strengthened by further support from Germany. Two German corps had already joined it, but too late to avert the reverse already described. The success of Brusilov at Gorodok (Grodek) secured to the Russians the line of the river San as far as Peremyshl (Przemysl).
This series of operations, after the Russian evacuation of East Prussia necessitated by the strong German movements on the northern fronts, left Russia with the following line of defence: the Niemen, the Bobr, the Narev, the middle Vistula, the San (to Peremyshl) and the Carpathians. This line includes the larger part of Russian Poland, the city of Warsaw, and western Galicia, with its capital, Lvov. This line is infinitely more satisfactory than that of the Bug. Its security on the south depends in part on the action of Rumania, but a counter-offensive from Hungary has already been repulsed on this side. On the north, attempts of the Germans on Grodno and on Warsaw have been triumphantly repulsed; and the Russians have since fought with success along almost the whole line; a serious German and Austrian effort is to be anticipated on the middle Vistula and the San.
I have so far visited only Galich (Halicz), the junction of the Stryi (Stryj) and Dniestr, and the battlefield of Rava Ruska. Galich was at the south of the first Austrian line of defence. The Dniestr here presents from the north-eastern side a concave front, defended by extensive wire entanglements and trenches, and, behind the river, by low but jutting hills. The town, which lies on a ledge between these hills and the river, bears the distinctive Russian character and possesses an ancient Russian church, now Uniat, and a remnant of an early Russian tower. There is no doubt of the Russian-ness of Galich; the only inhabitants whom one sees besides the picturesque Little Russians are the numerous Jews. There was nothing to indicate nearness of the enemy, and complete order prevailed, the Russian authorities being evidently chiefly concerned with the newness of their work and the task of organisation. Friendly relations were maintained between the troops here and the inhabitants; and the only violences of which there was local evidence were those committed by Austrian soldiers before the evacuation of the town. In spite of the strength of the position, no serious resistance was offered here. The Russians appeared unexpectedly at a point on the north of the river, taking in reverse the Austrian field works at this point. They shelled the neighbouring township with extraordinary accuracy, destroying only the houses in the middle and leaving standing the two churches and a third spired building, the town hall. The Austrians then retired rapidly over the bridge, which they blew up, and evacuated Galich.
At the junction of the Dniestr and Stryi we also found deep trenches, some six feet deep and three feet wide. The tower at the bridge head, commanding a wide, flat outlook, had suffered but little. The railway bridge had been blown up. Here, too, there were no signs of serious resistance. At a railway junction in the neighbourhood there were again striking signs of the accuracy of the Russian artillery fire, only a distant portion of the station building having suffered. Close by lay a very handsome French chateau belonging to the Austrian General Desveaux, who was connected with the Polish family of Lubomirski. The interior of this chateau had been systematically wrecked by the Little Russian peasants of the locality, the top torn off the piano, family portraits defaced, sofa and chairs destroyed, and the bare floor covered with a thick litter of valuable sketches and pictures, among which I noticed a map of the Austrian army manœuvres of 1893. I heard here and in other places of the violences committed against the peasants by the Austrian troops on their passage, the inhabitants being often left entirely destitute. The Ruthenian troops in the Austrian army were in a very difficult position: in several cases they fired in the air; and the attacking Russians would sometimes do the same, on which numbers of the Little Russians would come over to them. The Cossacks who preceded the Russian army offered no violence here, I was told, except where villagers told them untruly that the Austrian troops had left the village; with such cases they dealt summarily. They were also sometimes drastic, though not necessarily violent, with the local Jews, who in Galicia have held the peasants in the severest bondage, leaving only starvation wages to the tenants of their farms and exacting daily humiliations of obeisance.
My examination of these questions could only be very short; but the general picture obtained was, I think, in the main correct, because it was confirmed by much that I have heard from the soldiers of both sides; and it is clear that the Russians considered themselves to be at home among the Ruthenians of Galicia, whose dialect many of them are able to talk with ease. One thing was clear: namely, that there was no friction in the parts which I visited, except with the Jews, and that life was going on as if the war were a thousand miles away instead of almost at one's doors.
Our visit to Rava Ruska presented much greater military interest; we drove round the south, east, and north front of the Russian attack on this little town, and very valuable explanations were given by an able officer of the General Staff. On the southern front, near the station of Kamionka Woloska, where there were lines of trenches, the deep holes made by bursting Russian shells and sometimes filled with water, lay thick together.
The eastern front was more interesting. Here there were many lines of rifle pits, Austrian, Russian, or Austrian converted into Russian. The Austrian rifle pits were much shallower and less finished than the Russian, which were generally squarer, deeper and with higher cover. An officer's rifle pit just behind those of his men showed their care and work for him, as was also indicated in letters written after the battle. Casques of cuirassiers, many Hungarian knapsacks, broken rifles, fragments of shrapnel, potatoes pulled up, and such oddments as an Austrian picture postcard, were to be found in or near the rifle pits. These wide plains, practically without cover, were reminiscent of Wagram. A high landmark was a crucifix on which one of the arms of the figure was shot away; underneath it was a "brother's grave" containing the bodies of 120 Austrians and 21 Russians. Another cross of fresh-cut wood marked the Russian soldiers tribute to an officer: "God's servant, Gregory." Close to one line of trenches stood a village absolutely untouched, and in the fields between stood a picturesque group of villagers at their field work, one in an Austrian uniform and two boys in Austrian shakos.
The hottest fight had been on the north-eastern front. Here, after a wood and a fall of the ground, there came a gradual bare slope of a mile and a half crowned by two Austrian batteries which lay just behind the crest. This ground had been disputed inch by inch and was seamed with some five or six lines of rifle pits. At one point three Russian shells fired from about due east had fallen plump on three neighbouring rifle pits, and fragments of uniform all round gave evidence of the wholesale devastation which they had worked. All the ground was cut up with deep shell pits, and this place, which was a kind of angle of the defending line, must have become literally untenable. The pits for the Austrian guns still contained a broken wheel and other relics, and close by was a cross made of shrapnel.
The impressions which most defined themselves from this battlefield were the almost entire absence of cover, the exposed position of the rifle pits, the deadliness of the Russian artillery, the toughness of the resistance offered, and lastly the thunder of cannon from some thirty miles away, which was sounding in our ears all the time of our visit to the field of Rava Ruska.
We did not pursue our journey further along the northern positions. In the market place we saw an angry scramble of a large number of Jews over some sacks of flour; and in a wood outside we passed a strong, masterful old Jew with dignified bearing striding silently with his two sons over his land, a sight which is hardly to be seen in Russia. The Jewish land-leasers here sometimes take ten-elevenths of the profits, as contrasted with the two-thirds which the leaseholder takes in Russia. Distant hills to the north marked the old frontier of Russia.
From narratives of soldiers a few characteristics of all this fighting may be added. The attack was throughout delivered by the Russians, even where their numbers are inferior. The men are full of the finest spirit, and they have the greatest confidence in their artillery, though the proportion of field guns to a unit is less numerous on the Russian side than on the German or Austrian. When given the word to advance, the Russians feel that they are going to drive the Austrians from the field and go forward with an invincible rush. They say that less resort is made to the bayonet by the Austrians and by the Germans. In the rifle fire of their enemies they find, to use the expression of one of them, "nothing striking," the one thing that commands their respect is the heavy artillery, but the Russian field artillery has had a marked advantage. Small bodies of Austrians have made repeated use of copses to draw advancing Russian companies on to their quick-firing guns, which have sometimes done deadly work. Cavalry has played but an insignificant part in the fighting.
But the most impressive thing of all is the extraordinary endurance of the men in the trenches. It is a common experience for a man to be five to eight days in the trenches in pouring rain, almost, or sometimes altogether without food, then perhaps to rush on the enemy, to fall and see half his comrades fall, but the rest still going forward, to lie perhaps through a night, and then to the hospital to lose a limb: and yet, spite of the reaction, such men are not only patient and affectionate to all who do anything for them, but really cheerful and contented, often literally jovial and always in no doubt of the ultimate issue.
There are no two accounts of the spirit in the Russian army. One feels it as a regiment goes past on foot or packed into a train, with one private tuning up an indefinite number of verses and the rest falling into parts that give all the solemnity of a hymn. It draws everything to it; so that no one seems to feel he is living unless he is getting to the front; the talk of all those who are already at work, whether officers or men, is balanced and confident, and all little comforts are shared simply as among brothers. I saw a little boy of twelve with a busby looking as large as himself, an orphan who performed bicycle tricks in a circus, and had now persuaded a passing regiment to let him come with them, and seemed to have found his family at last.
All the life of Russia is streaming into the war, and never was the Russian people more visible than it is now in the Russian army.
October 30.
I have spent some days in Warsaw and have examined the scenes of the recent fighting as far out as beyond Skiernewice. The Russian river line of defence ran along the Niemen, Bobr, Narew, middle Vistula and San. The Germans had not previously seriously tested the strength of the centre of this line, and Russian reports issued had so far only spoken of a northern and a southern front.
Warsaw lay beyond the defensive river line. A rapid seizure of the city before winter set in would have greatly strengthened the Prussian northern front and have endangered the Russian occupation of Galicia. It would also have created a moral effect on the Poles and might have served as a support to any proposals to negotiate.
The Germans advanced principally from the south-west, a region largely left in their hands. German army corps reached a line south-east of Blonie, and at Pruszkow they were little more than six miles from Warsaw. The cannonade shook the windows in the city. German aeroplanes dropped bombs near the railway bridge, Etat Major and elsewhere, killing over a hundred persons but not achieving any military object. The population were much exasperated, and many went out to the scene of the fighting. The brunt of the defence fell on two Russian corps, especially on one containing Siberian troops which had to oppose three German corps. Splendid work was done at Pruszkow and also by a Siberian regiment at Rakitna. Here the Germans, covered by woods and gardens, delayed the Russian advance and placed machine guns on the roof of a high church. The inhabitants say that the Siberians long refrained from returning the fire from the church. The regiment lost its colonel and many officers and 275 men, but held good till reinforced. Several Russian corps arrived, and the Russians then drove the Germans back in successive rearguard engagements which lasted for eighteen days. Another regiment specially distinguished itself at Kazimierz and received a telegram from the Commander-in-Chief, congratulating it on a brilliant bayonet attack. Two days ago it drove back the enemy with the bayonet through a wood, inflicting heavy loss. The Germans retired rapidly in the night south-westward. The country up to several miles west and south of Lowicz and Skiernewice has now been recovered.
The Germans in these operations seized provisions and some valuables and committed some minor indignities, but the country has in no way an aspect of devastation. The population is strongly for Russia and offers every service to the Russian soldiers. In Warsaw great enthusiasm prevails, with a very striking difference from the attitude before the war and the Grand Duke's appeal. The Germans during their withdrawal made clean work of bridges, railways, and stores. There was every sign of a deliberate and well-executed retreat. Fewer prisoners were taken than in the case of the Austrians, the wounded being mostly carried away. The Russian artillery worked with great precision and effect, and the Russian infantry, after artillery preparation, attacked throughout.
There is no sign of any likelihood of a further German aggressive on this side before winter, but there is always the possibility of an early conflict southward, where the Russians need to secure and complete their conquest of Galicia, and the enemy have to guard their base of joint action between Germany and Austria.
October 30.
My visits to the scenes of fighting in the Warsaw area have been of interest. The main scene of the most critical fighting, Pruszkow, we did not visit. The Germans tried to force their way up here from the south, close to the Vistula, and got to within some nine miles from Warsaw. If they had captured the town (about 900,000 inhabitants, of whom 300,000 are Jews), and occupied the Vistula bridges, they would have established an enormous political and military advantage, which could not have been reversed without the greatest difficulty. Though Warsaw was beyond their line of defence, the Russians made every effort to hold it.
We visited a point in the centre of the line of defence, where the Russians held good under heavy losses; their rifle pits were close up to a copse and gardens, and they had tried to secure a footing even closer in. From thence their line ran in a convex curve to Rakitna. Here their artillery had battered in the sides of the lofty and impressive church, leaving standing the woodwork of the roof and two irregular pinnacles. The Germans fired from this church; they had confined several of the inhabitants in the vaults. The buildings near the church were reduced to ruins. Close up against the village lay graves of the attacking Siberian regiment, marked by lofty well-cut orthodox crosses, the men lying together under a vast regular mound and Colonel Gozhansky and six of his officers under separate crosses at the base, while at the head stood one great cross for all the dead of the regiment. The inscriptions were throughout in almost identical language, ending: "Sleep in peace, hero and sufferer." In a small garden close by, the Germans had buried their dead so rapidly that some of them were still uncovered. On two neighbouring crosses they had paid their tribute to "six brave German warriors" and to "six brave Russian warriors." Through a great hole in the ruined church one caught sight of a crucifix, untouched but surrounded with marks of shot in the wall. In the neighbouring township of Blonie, the town hall had been set on fire.
Blonie, which was the northern point of the line of battle, lies about eighteen miles due west of Warsaw; from thence runs an excellent broad chaussée, embanked and lined with poplars, going straight westward towards the frontier. At Sochaczew the high bridge over the river was broken off clean at both ends and the central supports entirely destroyed, but there were few other marks of war. At Lowicz the bridge had been destroyed and, as at Sochaczew and Skiernewice, had been very rapidly repaired by the pursuing Russians. Lowicz lies in flat country, through which the rivers make deep furrows. It is a clean and picturesque little place, with a symmetrical central square flanked by large buildings and with the fine parish church at the western end. The Poles of this part wear very distinctive national costumes; the women have skirts in broad and narrow vertical stripes, with orange, or sometimes red, as the foundation of colour, the narrow stripes being usually black, purple and yellow; round their shoulders they wear what look like similar skirts, fastened with ribbons at the neck, and they have variegated aprons, in which the foundation colour of the dress is absent; the general impression in the fields or on the sky line is of a mass of orange. The old men wear grizzled grey overcoats and broad-brimmed hats, and the younger men elaborate and tight-fitting costumes that suggest a groom of the eighteenth century, or loose zouave blouses and trousers of blue or other colours. Houses in the villages are spacious and plastered white, with sometimes a certain amount of decoration, usually in blue. At Lowicz there were some marks of war. My host for the night, an old soldier from Orenburg who had served under Skobelev, spoke with indignation of the recent German occupation; they had taken all the supplies that they could find. But there were no signs of any permanent occupation, and the German requisitions could not have been very thorough, as one saw many geese, pigs and, above all, very fine horses in this part, and the inhabitants had quite settled down again to their ordinary occupations. From such accounts as I have read of the conditions in Germany, I should think that one would see there fewer young and middle-aged men and less field work going on than in this no-man's land that has lain between the two hostile lines of defence and has been traversed by each army in turn.
From Lowicz to Skiernewice there runs south-westward a chaussée and also a more direct road that passes through an area of sand and mud. Napoleon used to say that in his campaign of Poland (1807) he had discovered a fifth element—mud. There is no other obstacle, the broad undulating plains suggesting parts of the north of France; combining lights and shades, they offer scope for the artist, and the long lines of well-to-do villages have a pleasing effect that is enhanced by the graceful local costumes. The peasants are well built and good featured, often with a military air and carriage; their manners are excellent, and their intercourse with the Russian soldiers is both courteous and cordial. They were at any time ready to come and help in the frequent breakdowns of our motors, and I noticed, to my surprise, after experiences of other years in Warsaw, that they felt no difficulty in understanding Russian and in making themselves intelligible to us. At some points on our road there were marks of rearguard fighting, and as we were told, two or three wounded, but we saw hardly any prisoners, except a body of Landwehr men, and no trophies. At the village of Mokra (which means "damp") the houses still bore the ordinary German chalk marks assigning the billets to given numbers of men. At Skiernewice the coal stores at the station had been fired and were still burning: but the town was comfortably held by the Russians, and we found no difficulty in the matter of supplies and quarters. Skiernewice will be remembered as one of the last stopping places in the Russian empire on the road from Moscow to Berlin, and also as a former meeting place of the three emperors. It has great preserves for pheasants, which are only touched during the visits of the Sovereign. There is the usual central square of Polish houses, and here, as in Sochaczew, the Jews were in evidence, though they have been removed from some military centres where they have given assistance to the enemy. From Skiernewice we travelled a considerable distance south-westwards, passing over a fine military position carefully prepared by the Germans, and commanding a view of some ten miles to the north-east, but abandoned without any sign of resistance. At every point we met the picturesque-looking peasants returning to their now recovered homes.
At a low-lying village we saw vedettes riding to and fro, trains of supplies, vans of the Red Cross being loaded with wounded, and in front of the poor thatched cottages a line of deeply hollowed trenches, from which rose a colonel, a simple homely man in workday uniform, to offer us part of the repast. There was the strong family feeling typical of any gathering of Russians. We passed along the line chatting with the men; a young colonel galloped up to invite us to visit his guns; but we turned to a nearer battery, of which the old commander did us the honours. These men were from a military province in the heart of Russia, and their faces passed into a broad friendly grin as they stood to their guns for us, sat to be photographed at their tea-drinking, and told the story of their last fighting. They had been firing for all the last two days. At about half a mile lay a copse on a hill, at first held by the Germans, and behind it a long wooded ridge near which were German rifle pits. The German artillery put up a cross fire from both sides. Their shells had done very little damage. The Russian infantry charged up the nearer slope and drove the Germans with the bayonet through the copse. Here there were more than three hundred German dead; among them boys of thirteen and fourteen, whose soldiers' pay-books gave their ages. One officer remained standing just as the blow had caught him. In the night the Germans had rapidly withdrawn and were now several miles away.
On a bare slope to the right of the battery stood an infantry regiment, which in eighteen days' fighting had been reduced to about half its strength. As we approached, we saw it drawn up under arms and in a hollow square. A priest was preaching. He was arrayed in rich blue vestments, which showed up in the dull earthen colour of the slope and of the soldiers. His strong handsome features and long hair recalled pictures of Christ. His deep voice carried without effort to the ranks in the rear. As I approached, he was saying, "Never forget that wherever you are and whatever is happening to you the eye of God is on you and watching over you." After the sermon followed prayers, a band of soldiers at his side, led by a tall Red Cross soldier, joining in the beautiful other-world chants of the Eastern Church; they were trained singers and sang just as in church, without any accompaniment and with perfect balance and rhythm, the tall soldier conducting them very quietly with his hand. At one point, the prayers for the Emperor, all crossed themselves. All fell on their knees again at the prayers for the Russian troops, for the armies of the Allies and that God should give them every success. Once more all knelt at the prayers for their slain comrades, while the beautiful "Eternal memory" was chanted by the little choir. The rest of the service was standing; the men remained firm and motionless, in fixed and silent attention. There were impressive moments when the priest placed a little Gospel, bound in blue velvet, on an improvised lectern of six bayonets crossed in front of him, and when turning to all sides shadowed the men with a little gold cross which he waved slowly with both hands. After the service the Colonel stepped forward and with a quick movement called for the salute to the flag, and every musket was raised with a dull rattle that sounded out over the vast open space under the grey sky. Next he read out in a loud clear voice a message from the Commander-in-Chief congratulating the regiment on the brilliant bayonet attack at Kazimierz, and called out: "For Tsar and country, Hurrah!" This cheer rose like low thunder and died away in distant peals. Some twenty to thirty men had received the cross of St. George for personal bravery, and these, at a word from the Colonel, stepped out and filed by with quick springing step, circling round the priest and the piled bayonets, then stopped in front of him to kiss the Cross which he pressed in turn to the lips of each. Then the whole regiment fell into movement and swung round the open square, the cross movements, carried out slowly and in perfect order, giving the appearance of a labyrinth. One could not tell which way the men would turn, but they swung round with precision and came forward with the strength of a great river. An officer had asked me to carry a postcard message for him, and while he wrote "I am alive and well" and a short greeting, we were caught in the current, which parted to each side of us at the words of the kneeling writer, "Brothers, don't come over me." As each section passed the saluting point, the officer ordered the salute, the Colonel replied with a word of congratulation, and the men gave a short sharp cry expressing their readiness for work. There was a remarkable regularity and springiness in the march of the men, and their motion was that of an elemental force moving well within its strength, like the flow of the Neva. After the march past the Colonel handed to us a whole bundle of postcards for home.
We passed from the bare grey slope with all this strong life on it and drove forward to the next village, lately held by the Germans and now abandoned. Here we saw a very different spectacle, showing the effectiveness of the Russian artillery. The houses were for the most part long and spacious, built of huge stones with a superstructure of wood and roof of thatch. Some of them still remained intact; but most had only the stone basis standing. Everywhere were groups of the bright orange-coloured peasants, just returned, and in one house stood an old woman making her first examination of her devastated home. We stood in the slush on the dirty lane listening to the last report of a mounted staff officer, and as the Germans were evidently retreating rapidly we turned back to Skiernewice. We had followed the Russian advance some seventy miles from Warsaw.
It is well to recognize the value of these operations. The Germans would obtain obvious advantages from a rapid seizure of Warsaw. So far western Poland, lying between the two military lines of defence, had been a kind of no-man's land, and as the main operations were to north or to south, the Germans had made here a number of raids and had secured partial and transitory successes. They now, as at Grodno, tasted the actual Russian line of defence. The Russian forces in the centre were much stronger than anticipated, and making a great effort, not only repulsed the attack but made any real success on the German side impossible. The political aspect of the attempt and the character of its failure are illustrated by the following incident. The King of Saxony, whose ancestors were kings of Poland, had sent a court official with presents and decorations for those who should take part in the capture of Warsaw, and this official was himself captured by Cossacks after the repulse. The Germans, on the failure of their attempt, withdrew quickly but in good order, leaving few prisoners and spoils of war. The country was not devastated. There had been, after the repulse, some disgraceful incidents, e.g. they had made a Polish landowner and his servants stand in the Russian line of fire: and clocks and ornaments were taken away. But I have no evidence of any atrocities such as those in Belgium, and these could hardly have escaped observation. The German troops seem to have been partly reservists, with whom excesses are less likely. The signs indicate that the retreat is definitive, and such is the inference from the reported incendiarism at Lodz, which is full of German factories.
Trustworthy eyewitnesses speak with great enthusiasm of the conduct of the Russian troops on the Upper Vistula, where more serious fighting is to be expected. The influence of the Commander-in-Chief has produced the selection of capable commanders everywhere, and the subordinate officers are full of spirit and energy. Here again the German heavy artillery commands respect, but the Russian field guns and howitzers are served with remarkable precision and alertness and meet with great success. The complete confidence of the Russian infantry in the effectiveness of the Russian artillery is a striking and general feature. The men are always keen for bayonet work, which the enemy consistently avoids.
The Russian cavalry has, by different accounts, shown great dash and has been handled with dash and skill. In a raid beyond the river on the enemy's communications, a Russian cavalry division came on Germans in the dusk, and the troopers with the baggage column in the centre left the baggage and, charging, completely routed the enemy. The division several times got into the German forces, taking many prisoners. Large numbers of stragglers have been taken by the Russians. A Hungarian division put up a good resistance for three days and then collapsed.
German officers pay ridiculously small sums for their keep; for example, two marks for two days' keep of three officers, and they appropriate valuables and take all stores. The population in southern Poland is in a state of profound distress, and the Russians are organising extensive relief work. The Germans compel captured officers to work with the men, spit at them and drive them about bare to the waist.
A competent eyewitness in East Prussia says that the German communications are very good, and that underground telephones are frequently discovered. Large forces are in close contact here, and the Russian counter-stroke has much impressed the enemy. Our men bear fatigue and privations with great endurance.
The Polish population shows the greatest alacrity in assisting the Russian troops both in the country and in the towns. All Poles now readily speak Russian. Yesterday the Warsaw Press entertained the Russian and foreign correspondents. There was a distinguished gathering, and both Russians and Poles spoke with striking frankness and feeling. One eminent Polish leader, Mr. Dmowski, said that all the blood shed between the two nations was drowned in the heavy sacrifices of the present common struggle. Polish politicians are keenly enthusiastic for France and Great Britain, and are studying the development of closer economic and other relations with Great Britain.
The Russian advance is now much more complete in southern Poland and is better lined up with the forces in Galicia. This advance tends to secure the Russian position on the northern frontier, where any German initiative becomes daily more hazardous. The ordinary fresh yearly Russian contingents mean an increase of half a million men. The arrangements for the wounded provide, if necessary, for over a million.
I have just made a journey over the country lying between Warsaw and Cracow, where the Russian advance is now proceeding. My previous communication spoke of the original line of Russian defence along the Bug, and the later and more advanced line along the Vistula and the Narew. Present events are rapidly converting the new advance west of Warsaw from a counterstroke into a general transference of the sphere of operations and a most valuable rectification of the whole Russian line.
In East Prussia the Germans are being slowly driven back by a double turning movement. Further westward the northern frontier of Poland is well secured. The Russians have now occupied and hold firmly Plock, Lodz, Piotrkow, Kielce and Sandomir, as also Jaroslaw and all the other passages of the river San. A glance at the map will show the importance of this line, which is only a stage in the general advance.
On the repulse of the German attack on Warsaw, the enemy was pressed back south-westward in three weeks of continuous fighting. Near Ivangorod, a famous Caucasian regiment forced the passage of the Vistula under the fire of German heavy artillery. The advance guard crossed the broad stream—here unbridged—in skiffs and ferry-boats, and held good under a devastating cross fire till the construction of a pontoon bridge allowed the passage of reinforcements. The supports coming along the river bank from Ivangorod had to advance through flooded swamps almost breast high. Their footing was made good at Kosienice, where desperate fighting took place. Later they made a series of brilliant attacks in forests, after which the Germans were thrown back on Radom. The general advance drove the enemy back beyond Radom and Ilza.
At the small town of Szydlowiec the German commandant threatened, as the Russians approached, to blow up the remarkable town hall, in Florentine style, conspicuous for thirty miles around, and the beautiful Gothic church, six hundred years old. The inhabitants offered to ransom them by a contribution of 5000 crowns. The offer was accepted; but twenty minutes later the town hall was blown up, and the church followed at the end of another quarter of an hour. This story was narrated to me with great indignation by the inhabitants.
Some miles in front of Kielce the Austrians—now abandoned by the Germans, who had retired—made a stand near Lesczyna on a high sandy position with a large fir copse in its centre and extending over a wide front. The attack on it was delivered by a Russian corps including a division mainly composed of Poles, and fell chiefly on an Austrian Polish regiment from Cracow. The assailants kept up a fire all day, and finally rushed the enemy's rifle pits with hurrahs. The Austrians left Kielce at night and in the early morning—some were captured by the Russians, who came in close upon their heels. They were pursued for some miles, and brought to action again later on the same day. Next day the Russian artillery was also heard to the south-east of Kielce. The Germans had retreated in the direction of Czenstochowa.
All this three weeks of fighting was in the characteristic Russian style: bayonet attacks were repeated for two hours; small units eagerly attacked larger ones of the enemy. In general the Russians outflanked the enemy, but in one case they broke through his centre. Often the Russian artillery caused him to decamp in the night.
Officers describe the enthusiasm of the rank and file as growing if possible greater. It is clearly visible in the rear of the army, and shown by the energy with which transport is being pushed up. The enemy has thoroughly destroyed the bridges, but they are quickly repaired, and meanwhile the ardour of the troops and of the transport trains minimises all delay.
It may be noted that the German rifle fire is superior to the Austrian. Some Austrian regiments have been found to be officered by Germans. The Austrian Slavonic regiments resist well for two or three days, but then break up and surrender in large bodies—they have sometimes asked for guides to take them to the Russian lines.
The inhabitants speak well of the Austrians, but with indignation of the Germans. Prisoners confirm the bad relations between the two allied armies, and Austrians and Germans when captured have to be kept apart.
I saw at Kielce ample evidence of the enthusiasm of the Poles for the Russian cause; they show the greatest courtesy and kindness, especially in the villages. I am told on good evidence that at Kalisz, when a German soldier defaced a portrait of the Tsar, a Polish official struck him in the face, and for this was bound to a telegraph post for two days, and then taken down and shot. All evidence of prisoners shows that the Russians are treating enemies as well as their own comrades—often I have seen them giving the captives the best of everything.
The following interesting proclamation was posted to-day by the commander of a Russian army corps at Radom, where the Germans had remained for over a month.
"Poles! Our wounded officers and soldiers, and also our prisoners who have fallen into the hands of the enemy and have passed through the town or province of Radom, speak with deep gratitude of your cordial treatment of them. You have tended the wounded, fed the starving, and clothed and sheltered from the enemy those escaping from captivity. You have given them money and guided them to our lines. Accept from me and all ranks of the army entrusted to me our warm and hearty thanks for all your kindness, for your Slavonic sympathy and goodness."
The theatre of the present operations is of crucial importance. Here Austria and Germany join hands. Serious reverses would compel them either to retreat on diverging lines, or to expose one or other of their capitals. Either event would have political consequences of the highest military significance.
November 9.
I left Warsaw on November 2 by motor and arrived without incident at Radom (sixty miles to south-south-west). The town was held by the Germans for a month and four days. They made themselves objectionable to the inhabitants, taking all supplies on which they could lay hands; but I came on no evidence of any particular outrages. The inhabitants showed the heartiest friendship to the Russians, as is recognised in the proclamation of the Commanding General which I have already quoted. Nothing could exceed the care and thoughtfulness of my own Polish hosts; the Russian soldiers, for instance the one who accompanied our party, were on friendliest terms of intercourse with the Poles, and the objection which the Poles previously had to speaking Russian had vanished as if by magic. It should be noted that the inhabitants of all this area are particularly strong in Polish patriotism. Beyond Radom the excellent high road to Cracow, running on an embankment and lined with poplars, was broken at every bridge and cut up for some distance by a road plough. Side tracks had been made at every necessary point. We travelled in the midst of troops all hurrying forward to participate in the taking of Kielce. They moved slowly along the road in straggling groups like an enormous family on its way to a huge picnic, but the unity of each regiment is never lost and the most remarkable impression which one receives is that of destination—of movement to "the appointed place." Every artificial barrier was little more than an occasion for thought and effort: the Russian peasant, everywhere accustomed to obstacles of this kind, has all sorts of ready and resourceful ways of surmounting them; and they call forth all his brotherly instincts of joint work and mutual help. Any number of men run up from their loose ranks to push a motor or cart or transport wagon over a marshy stream, and the travellers call back from their vehicle, "Thank you, brothers." It is like a current that slows up and takes thought against some barrier, but whose general movement seems not even to be checked. Some of the side passages looked very bad indeed, but every one somehow got through, no matter what the size of their carriage. Often at such points there were companies that rested along the grassy banks of the road; in other places one saw, to the side, great parks of small grey wagons. Those carrying straw for the bivouacs were in front; but sometimes one came upon a resting battery. The brotherhood between officers and men is another notable feature of the march of a Russian army.
At Szydlowiec, seventeen miles south of Radom, I saw the first signs of devastation, but these were not the work of the advancing Russian artillery but had been perpetrated deliberately by the retreating Germans. The tower of the town hall was crumbled to ruins. The church is not large, but has a high pointed roof, of which the open woodwork still remains, with the cupola as if caught astride of it in its fall. Inside, the beautiful painted inner roof is mutilated, but the monuments of the ancient Szydlowiecki family, and notably the graceful figure of a sleeping woman, have for the most part escaped. The floor was covered with rubbish and the damage is estimated at a very high figure. While I was in the church, the dignified old priest entered with six young men, who knelt with faces full of reverence before they set to work to clear the nave of rubbish. The Pole who told me the story of the ruin of the church told it quietly but with flashing eyes. He said the inhabitants asked rather that the whole town should be destroyed and the church be left standing. The only excuse was a few shots from the advancing Russian infantry and artillery, and there was no regular fighting there, the Germans making no resistance and retreating too quickly to blow up the castle.
After Szydlowiec, the Cracow road on its way to Kielce (twenty-seven miles) passes through country of quite a different character. A long rise, and we were now close up among the troops. At one point the long train of wagons branched away to a village on our left, and out of it by another road there came in another stream of fighting men. We passed some two hundred Austrian prisoners in their blue shakos and uniforms; they were all Poles, with hardly any guard but giving no trouble; one of them courteously stepped out of the ranks to pick up my field glass, which I had dropped. These men, who talked freely to us, did not look at all miserable, only confused. The Russians behaved to them as to their own people.
At last we came to the hills above Kielce. It was now clear what had happened. Troops of all kinds were streaming into the town and all resistance was over. On the main street we were stopped for a few moments by a general and his staff. At the chief hotel large parties of officers were sitting down to lunch. All the streets were full of movement, but with no sign of any conflict or friction—horses, dismounting messengers, soldiers eating, talking or resting, the townspeople standing watching, satisfying the requirements or questions of the newcomers or joining in their talk. We had no difficulty in securing good rooms, and our lunch was as good as it would have been in Warsaw. Many of the troops had passed or were passing on along the broad road in the direction of Cracow. Mounting the high hill south-west of the town we could see the scattered stream of men, horses and carts going forward past pleasant houses, hills and villages, and the thunder of artillery came to us from beyond a ridge in the distance. Our plans, however, prevented us from going further. At the hotel the regiment which had done most of the fighting was sitting at dinner and singing the regimental song and the national hymn. The song began with a Mahometan word, "God has given us victory."
Next day, November 4, with villagers guiding and recounting to us, we went over the scene of the last Austrian resistance about six miles east of Kielce. A long curving line of rifle pits ran over a broad high front; sometimes the line ran along the inside of an extensive copse of small fir trees; some of the pits contained extemporised pallets of fir boughs, in others were bullets, weapons or even letters. The Russian advance was indicated by two hostile lines running almost side by side, where within a few yards I picked up undischarged bullets of the two armies. In a little wooded cemetery on the bare ridge lay a number of bodies, Austrian and Russian, brought in by the villagers for burial. It was not a sight to dwell on; but one thing that I shall not forget was the body of a young Austrian of not more than twenty, full of grace and beauty, the head thrown back, the breast bared, and the hand lifted as if waving on the attack. Outside, other bodies were still being brought in, the Russians greatly predominating in numbers. Some Austrian wounded still walked about the village. One, with whom I spoke, had the lower part of his jaw bound up and complained that he could drink nothing. He was greatly depressed but had no rancour and evidently felt at home with the villagers, who were of the same blood and behaved to him rather as people would to an interesting traveller in their midst. He was a Pole from no further off than Cracow, where he was a master—"professor" as he put it—in a secondary school, a very intelligent and educated man who seemed quite out of place in a uniform and on a battlefield. He told me how they replied all day as best they could to a cross fire, till in the evening the Russians came on them shouting "Hurrah!" A day earlier, and we should have seen this fight. The Germans had left them in the lurch—"as they always do," he added. It was in the main a battle of Poles against Poles. He himself was a "Pan-Slavist," he told me, but could not say so because of his post. If the Russians got Cracow and maintained the appointment of Polish civil officials there, including a Polish Governor, as at present, he felt certain that all western Galicia would be on their side. I left him a little tobacco and took the address of one of his colleagues in Cracow. Heavy firing from the south was all the time audible.
We returned to Kielce, passing regiments of all kinds. On our way back to Radom my motor broke down, and after sitting for three hours amidst marshy ground, with wounded; transports and villagers passing and occasionally hearing stray rifle shots, I had to return again to Kielce for the night. The discomfort of this contretemps disappeared before the unconquerable wit and good humour of my French colleague, M. Naudeau, who improvised little songs on our mishap.
The next day, the 5th, there was nothing left but to return to Radom, occupying three seats which a Russian general, a man of charming simplicity, kindly put at our disposal in his motor. The strength of the Russian advance was everywhere before our eyes. The great stream was still flowing on. There were troops of all kinds—we inquired the name of each regiment, which they always gave in a kind of jovial chorus; there were food transports, field kitchens, pontoons and, not least important, the post. At one point we saw a large body of Austrian prisoners sitting by a wood and drinking water with their very small escort. These men helped some of our motors over difficult places. Streams, their bridges broken down, were still being crossed by the great onflowing current of men and wagons, only with more ardour than before. Teams of white horses, which, because of their conspicuousness, are only allowed to serve in the transport, were dashing through the mud and water with a fervour as great as if on the field of battle. At one place a bread wagon dropped all its cargo and turned over on its side, but horse and driver, evidently not noticing, carried it on into the stream with no diminution of pace—one wheel high in the air and the other broken beneath the wagon. Our General spoke frequently with the men; and we all helped one another through difficult places, on each occasion with a hearty "Once more thank you, brothers," from the General. Nothing will remain with me longer than these endless irregular lines of big, sleepy, almost stupid-looking faces moving at a walk which might last for ever, and all in one direction and all with set eyes, a people that lies down to sleep at the roadside, that breakfasts off stale biscuit soaked in water, that carries nothing but what it can put to a hundred uses, that will crouch for days without food in flooded trenches, that can die like flies for an idea, and is sure, sooner or later, to attain it, a people that never complain, a brotherhood of men.
In Radom I found our Russian orderly from Kostroma fraternising with the Polish servants, joining in their work and singing them songs of the Volga. I told him he was another Susanin who had led the foreigners into the marsh. We were soon on our way back to Warsaw.
November 25.
I have dealt with the Russian advance from Warsaw and Ivangorod, by which the Russian front was carried forward some one hundred and seventy miles in all from the original defensive line on the Bug and the communications of the Austrian and German armies were threatened in the neighbourhood of Cracow. This movement was necessarily completed by an advance of the Russian forces on the San.
After their first successes in Galicia the Russians had advanced as far as the Wisloka, but the German attempt on Warsaw from the west and south and a strong Austrian and Hungarian counterstroke on Galicia made advisable a temporary strategic withdrawal of the Russian line to the San, while all available forces helped in repulsing Germans further north. For nearly a month the Russian defensive line held good against superior Austrian forces on the San and in the south. Report says that bounteous rewards were offered to the Austrian troops for the reconquest of Lvov; and the Russian occupation of eastern Galicia was seriously endangered. The San varies in breadth from fifty to a hundred and fifty yards and is lined with marshes. Across this narrow obstacle Russians in trenches maintained an unbreakable resistance, repulsing all Austrian attempts at crossing.
I have seen many of the wounded of this long defensive struggle. Their temper is the same conquering spirit that has carried the general advance. I stayed at their hospital some days. A group of slightly wounded, mostly young men with bright, radiant faces and strong, lusty voices, sat up in bed recounting to me, one after the other, individual feats of daring done by their comrades. Throughout there was the feeling of individual superiority to the enemy tested by the heaviest conditions and sometimes by the wiping out of nearly all one's company or squadron. Most were wounded in the left arm or left leg in the trenches. Five or ten of the company would fall every day. The most exposed were the telephonists. Others fell in daring reconnaissances in boats across the river. All testified to the far heavier losses inflicted on the enemy. One simple young fellow crippled in a leg described how one did not in one's first day's fighting like to look out of the trenches. Then he showed how one began to peer about, and later one took no notice of bullets whistling round one, because of the sense that the army would surely go forward. One bright day he said to me, "It must be fine in the trenches to-day." This is the spirit of them all.
At last, when the Russians to the north had advanced and Sandomir had been taken, the word came to go forward. The river was crossed at night and the enemy driven from the trenches and neighbouring villages and further back. The advance was triumphant at all points. The Austrians were driven southward and westward. Some were pressed against the Carpathians, with two difficult passes which would hardly admit the passage of artillery and field trains; others were pressed back on Cracow where the line of the whole Russian advance is now complete.
The Russian impact on Cracow promises, first, a settlement of the destiny of western Galicia, where the population is Polish and very ready to respond to the appeal of Grand Duke. Next, a gap is made between the Austrians and Germans who are already retiring in mutual dissatisfaction in different directions, and whose political interests must more and more differentiate. Further advance through this gap will be on Slavonic territory, as southern Silesia up to the River Neisse is mainly Polish or Bohemian, and the Czechs in general are largely Russophil and quite hostile to Germany.
The Germans are doing all that is possible to make diversions on other sides. Stopped and driven back on the side of Mlawa, they have made a serious effort on both sides of the Vistula, near Plock, but have been decisively repulsed, the inhabitants giving effective aid in bridging the river. They are now attempting to force a strong wedge into the Russian front between the Vistula and the Wartha; but so far the Russian line, which is everywhere continuous and is reinforced wherever necessary with strong reserves, has successfully outflanked every local German advance.
Meanwhile a double Russian advance on East Prussia from east and south is overcoming the numerous obstacles and making rapid progress, avoiding and enveloping the thickset fortified line of the Mazurian lakes. Here, too, the subject population is chiefly Polish.
Retreating German troops in Poland, previously transferred from the western front, expressed to the inhabitants great despondency, even saying, "This is our last judgment" (Das ist unser Weltgericht). Many prisoners have displayed a similar mood.
November 28.
A Russian Field Hospital
A large, low, white building with a grassy court and outhouses; four large tents stand in the court; on the centre of the main building a white canvas band that bears in rough black letters the inscription: First Etape Lazaret of the Imperial Duma.
After a wonderful star-lit journey in a formanka or double-horsed cart with a courteous and humble old grey-haired peasant, I come on this building about half-past two in the morning. The last part of the journey was adventurous; the driver at one point wished to strike work, which resulted in a wait of nearly an hour; the way had to be asked of a group of soldiers with blackened faces seated round a camp fire, and of three sentries of the étape marching through the night with fixed bayonets, who challenged, "Who goes there?" and received with some hesitation the answer, "Our side" (svoi). One of them lowered his bayonet to be ready for any further emergencies. In the end I was guided to the lazaret, where I had a cordial welcome from the two sanitars on duty and was accommodated with a bed in one of the large tents, which was empty and ready for moving.
The Duma Lazaret was equipped chiefly by the energy and liberality of Prince Volkonsky, Vice-President of the Duma and one of its most respected and popular members. All parties are associated in the work; and Prince Volkonsky, who is a Conservative, has had the valuable help of the eminent Radical, Dr. Shingarev, who earlier earned a wide reputation as the organiser of the sanitary system in the province of Voronezh. Meetings of a committee are held in the Duma, and lately two other lazarets have been equipped and dispatched, one to the Prussian front and one to the Caucasian.
The first Duma lazaret was one of the earliest to arrive behind the front during the tremendous fighting in southern Poland and in Galicia. At Brody on the road to Lvov it gave preliminary treatment to thousands of wounded in the course of a few days. Later it was moved to Lvov, Sokal and Belzec, where I now found it. It had picked up on its road stray dogs which it had named after their places of adoption—Brodka, Rava, and Belzec.
The lazaret was equipped for two hundred patients, but at the time of my visit had only forty, as it was about to be moved further to the front. Operations were performed daily, to be ready for the move. I saw one poor fellow, very frail and no longer young, just after his leg was amputated; he was calling in a piteous way to his mother. In one ward the patients were in a late stage of convalescence from typhus, and in another lay one of the sanitars of the lazaret. In a far corner lay a poor fellow with a wound in the head; his case was hopeless, and he was communicated by the priest in an interval of consciousness.
The central wards were full of strong, lusty men, most of them young, some with bad wounds but nearly all getting the better of them. They were in many ways like dormitories of big schoolboys, all of them good comrades—during my stay of some days I only heard one altercation and that was mild and very short. They lived a chance corporate life of their own; and when I went round with cigarettes, there was always some one to see that tired or sleeping comrades got their share. There was very little groaning and no complaint; the men felt their wounds in the long night time, and sometimes one would mention that his wound was smarting. One Armenian, a weak-looking lad of the gentlest disposition, lay striving to bear his pain. "Oh!" he said as he fought it; and then, with closed teeth, "No matter; it doesn't matter; our Emperor ought to be rich; it had to be done—to beat the Germans; it doesn't matter."
Usually, however, the wound would only be mentioned in a side sentence in a narrative—"and then I got this," or it would be the occasion for a story of strong life and effort and the triumph of "ours." There was a peculiar delicate courtesy about the halest and strongest, who would shift their wounded limbs with an inviting gesture of the hand, making room for me to sit on their beds; and then there would rise a general stream of narrative where all joined in without ever seeming to interrupt each other, each telling of some daring feat of a comrade against all odds. One will not forget the figures leaning up in bed and the young, radiant faces; many of these men were cripples who will never fight again, but everything about them was full of health and fresh air and victory.
A young trooper told me of the actions of his regiment against the Hungarians. They have, it appears, a particularly mobile horse artillery, served with great accuracy by horsemen who fire with the left hand. They enticed the regiment up with displays of white flags and suddenly rent them with a murderous fire. For all that, as in practically all these narratives, in the end the Russians triumphed.
Others described the long defensive work on the San, with its narrow stream and muddy banks, and the final irresistible advance. There were two young men, one from Chernigov and one from Tauris, who beckoned to me each day, and with whom I spent several happy hours. When I asked for their addresses they wrote them down in form, beginning in the one case with "Wounded in arm" and in the other with "Wounded in leg." "Wounded in leg" was a sunny youth who, when we were photographed together, made quite a careful toilette. He was the boy who called out "What a splendid day! It's fine to-day in the trenches!" These two discussed with me all sorts of subjects, including the English sailors and the Grimsby fishermen, who appealed to them as "going for boldness." Another more elderly pair, one like a jolly farmer and the other like a brown-bearded stationmaster, worked out with me on the map the progress of the Russian army. Simplicity was the note of all, and it would have been hard to convince them that it was they more than any others who were now under the eyes of Europe.
There was another still more elderly couple that had an out-of-the-way interest. They were two old men, one of sixty-six and one of seventy-two, who had been shot by the Hungarians for sheltering Russian soldiers. One of them, a picturesque-looking person with round head and furry grey hair, told me of how he was locked up in his attic and then called down to be shot, while his womanfolk were reviled and struck. His leg was broken, but was mending. Both these poor old men were full of plaints and, after the Galician manner, insisted on kissing one's hand each time that one talked with them.
One of the most sympathetic figures in the lazaret was the priest, a man of the age and with many of the features of a Russian picture of the Christ. He was a monk from the famous Pochayev monastery in Volyn, sent hither by the Archbishop Eulogius. His was an entirely un-selfconscious nature, gentle, good and whole; and the care that he gave to the dying was like the best of man and of woman combined. I had some talk with him of the Uniats, that oppressed people under the heavy hand of Jewish taskmasters, which had held through centuries to its roots of parish organisation thrown out by the early Brotherhood of Lvov. We glanced in at one of their services in the quaintest little wooden church, where the singing was congregational and like a sad plaint.
Our priest every day read a short Orthodox service in the central ward, and on Saturday and Sunday served the full Mass in one of the largest tents. Some six of the soldiers were trained singers; the priest himself did not chant, and the words of the service came with all the more reality, especially the frequent allusions to the "Christ-loving army." At one point the priest went through the wards to repeat a part of the service; for, as he said, "our soldiers are deeply religious, and the patients will feel that they are left out." At the end all in the tent kissed the cross, and the priest then went to hold it to each of the patients in turn. He told us that at the mobilisation and before battle communions were frequent and that fasting was in such cases excused.
It was while I was here that the order to move forward arrived. The remaining wounded were arranged for in neighbouring hospitals; warm blue vests were served out to all for the journey. "We have much to be thankful for," said one soldierly fellow who looked like a sergeant and took a lead among the rest. "Our Emperor has indeed fed and clothed us." Everything was packed, the large farm buildings were left deserted, and the hospital moved forward in the track of Radko Dmitriev.
The Country and the War
I have just made a journey across Russia. The average opinion seems to be the same everywhere. The feeling expressed is quiet and sober; no boasting of any kind is heard anywhere; news of the war is treated on its merits, and anything that seems unsatisfactory is faced and is given its reasonable value. As to the ultimate issue, complete confidence is felt, and, in this feeling, satisfaction with what has been done and the determination to go through with the matter seem to have an equal share. Every one is clear that there can be no stopping half-way with the task unfinished; and the task, as it presents itself to the average man or woman, is that the crisis thrust upon us must not occur again. I say "thrust upon us" because, with average people even perhaps more than in official circles, and with the peasant more than all, there is the strongest feeling that peace has been wilfully disturbed by Germany, and that Russia was left no option but to hit back as hard as she could. A peasant cabman, fraternising with me on our alliance and promoting me in the course of our conversation to the second person singular, summed up the common instinct very well by saying: "How disagreeable He is" ("He" is always the enemy); "he makes himself nasty to every one," which is surely the chief reason why "He" is having a bad time of it now. "He might have smashed you or the French," my cabman goes on; "us he can only hit about a bit (pobit)," and his attitude is that of a big, kindly animal that is provoked into defending itself and others. "Pobit" is the ordinary expression of the soldiers for the work they have to do. A peasant servant puts it stronger and is sorry that I am not going to "spike" (kolot) any Germans, especially as she has made up her mind that they are going to kill me. "You had better tell me what to do with your things," she says, "for you're not going on a pleasure trip"; and she reminds me of this as I start by asking, "But when you're killed, though?" I quote this because this good woman has a brother in the Siberian rifles, of whom so many are lying under the great wooden crosses outside the wrecked village of Rakitna, and no doubt she judges of my chances by his; but she talks of him with the same equanimity. Beneath all this, there is the full and silent sense of all the sacrifices that are asked and a silent pride in making them. I have never heard this take words with the peasants, though it is behind everything they say; but it comes out often with those who have any responsibility for others and most of all with any who are in close touch with the common soldier. Those speak the strongest and simplest of him, who are only telling a friend their daily experience of him; and the selflessness of his courage and endurance keeps coming back on them as something that astounds and even confounds them.
All the life of the country that lies behind the line is centred in it. The nearer one comes up to the line, the more does one feel in the moral atmosphere a sense of satisfaction, of ease of mind. In the line itself all sense of self disappears, and the big band of brothers lives for its daily work and divides up everything in common. It is wonderful how far little resources can go when they are put together; one produces some chocolate, another a little store of comfits, a third hands round a flask, another supplies the cigarettes and another the matches, and a little feast is thus improvised by the half-light of a candle; all these stores are renewed at chance and are expended without reserve.
But it is farthest of all from the front that the sense of the war is most painfully felt, and that because it has to seek ways of finding its satisfaction. For this it seeks continually. Every now and then, in the capitals and all the big towns, a week is set aside for some special object: for the collection of warm underwear for the men in the trenches, for Christmas presents for the troops, for the families left behind, for the widows and orphans, for the supply of means for the crippled. At these times, which are constantly recurring, every tram or train is boarded and every restaurant is traversed by the collectors, who for each donation pin on a little special badge to secure the donor from any further importunity; but the badge is quite disregarded both by donors and collectors, and one sees many who have paid their due several times over. Thus the public is taxing itself over and over again for every need that it can think of.
The posters have a nervous force, such as the Petrograd one that begins and ends in large letters with the words "It's cold in the trenches." Several of them bear the signatures of members of the Imperial Family, one of the most simple and telling coming from a sister of the Emperor who is engaged in ordinary hospital work among the wounded. Another striking appeal, for the widows and orphans, is simply a twofold picture. Along the top in pale blue with a sullen sky of winter dawn above, a number of scattered soldiers, big and clumsy and heavily clothed, are running forward over a rough, flat field, with the lumbering run of a Russian porter at a railway station, their bayonets lowered and all with set faces; from a copse in the distance come puffs of smoke; and in front of the men, close behind his chief, who has already fallen, an officer has his hand thrown up in the air as a bullet carries him over. Underneath sits a group of dark-haired figures; a young wife with set and brooding face, and two young boys at once with fear and spirit in their eyes. I have asked that some of these posters should be sent to England, in case any could spare from their nearer needs something for the countless bereaved of Russia.
Every non-military unit of society is looking for a way of its own of helping. Mary Dolina, who might perhaps be called the Mrs. Kemble of Russian opera, has, with her many helpers, now given over thirty concerts of national and patriotic music for widows and orphans. The artists of Russia, banded together with special imperial approval, are giving movable representations in restaurants or in public squares, where, as in all other cases, the full collection goes to the army. The Press of Moscow is meeting to organise a day on which the Press will make a united effort for the same object. And then there are the collections for claims that make a special appeal, such as the devastated homes of Poland, Belgium and Serbia. The superscriptions adopted in these various endeavours are quite simple and usually take the form of offering a present—for instance, Petrograd to Poland, Moscow to Poland and Belgium, Artists to Soldiers, and so on. All this wealth of various charity is co-ordinated, and regularity of service is secured by committees of the most representative kind under the chairmanship of one or other member of the Imperial Family. The Emperor himself is constantly paying visits to the army with abundant supplies of medals for all the heavily wounded.
Among the links between front and rear are the frequent short visits to the capitals of those chief organisers of the Red Cross who must be everywhere. Prince George Lvov, one of the most admirable of Russian public workers, who organised relief during the famines and led the Civil Red Cross in the Japanese War, passes from Lemberg to East Prussia, or from Warsaw to the Caucasus, seeing as much as can come under one pair of eyes, and returning to Petrograd and Moscow to find ways of meeting each new need. Nicholas Lvov, a former Vice-President of the Duma, whose brother has fallen and whose eldest boy has been killed by shrapnel before Cracow, passes constantly between Petrograd and Galicia. Alexander Guchkov, the organiser of Red Cross work on the Warsaw front, who is constantly in the front line and was reported prisoner at Lodz, pays flying visits to Moscow. And all these glimpses of the realities of the war draw closer the ties between the army of defenders at the front and the country that is waiting to meet every sacrifice and to fill every gap. Russia will close the ranks till the work is done; and she can go on doing this after it has become impossible for our enemies.
December 18.
In Kiev, though there is every sign of its being in the minds of all, materially the war is hardly felt. It is in fact wonderful how little effect of this kind it seems to have made on the body of Russia. On the other hand, the atmosphere of nervous tension begins to disappear the moment one begins to get really near to the front. In the Red Cross offices at Kiev I found the same straining toward the front as elsewhere, only much calmer because these were people who had a big war work to do. Hospitals meet the eye in the streets at every turn.
Once in the train for Galicia it was again the war atmosphere and simplicity itself. The talk was all of people engaged directly or indirectly in it. A graceful old lady with a very attentive son was on her way to get a sight of her husband, one of the generals. A young officer, whose wound has kept him out of it for three weeks, is on his way to the front before Cracow. A fresh-looking young man, at first unrecognisable to his friends with his close-cropped bullet head, tells how he went on a reconnaissance, how he came on the Austrians, how their first line held up their muskets and when the Russians had passed on fired on their rear, how nevertheless practically all came back safe and sound. It was told with a kind of schoolboy ingenuousness and without suggestion or comment of any kind on the conduct of those concerned. Then followed an account of a war marriage, at first put off and then carried out as quietly as possible. All the friends of every one seemed to be at the war.
At the old frontier some of the buildings near the station were wrecked by artillery fire, and the railway was lined with a succession of solid hospital barracks, with the local commandant's flag flying over one of them. There was plenty to eat at the station; and though we moved on very quickly, every one from our crowded train managed to find a place in the Austrian carriages, chiefly because every one was ready to help his neighbour. The corridors jammed with passengers and kits, we moved on through the typical "strips" of Russian peasant culture, a pleasant wooded country, passing a draft detachment on the halt which waved greetings to us. My companion, Mr. Stakhovich, a phenomenally strong man and imbued by a fine spirit, was talking of the indifference of the Russian peasant to danger; he regarded it as an indifference to all sensations; anyhow they go forward, whatever the conditions, as a sheer matter of course. With the ordinary educated man the mind must be kept occupied with work if unpleasant possibilities of all kinds are to be kept out of it; but General Radko Dmitriev, to whom we are going, will jump up from a meal, however hungry, when there is a chance of getting under fire.
We draw up in the great station at Lvov. To the right of us stretch endless lines crowded with wagons, especially with sanitary trains. In the lofty passages and waiting-rooms are sleeping troops with piled muskets, some wounded on stretchers tended by the sisters of mercy who are constantly on duty here, and a crowd of men, all soldiers, coming and going. One passed many Austrian prisoners, of whom another enormous batch was just announced to arrive; and elsewhere a Russian private explained to me the excellent quality of the Hungarian knapsack, which he and his comrades had turned into busbies. One man was asleep inside the rail opposite the ticket office. He did not seem to mind how often he was woken up.
In the town everything is quiet, and life goes so naturally that no one could take it for a conquered city. In the country this might have been expected because far the greater part of the population is Little Russian; but in Lvov the Russians are only about 17 per cent. and the predominant element is the Polish (60 per cent.), the rest being Jews (20 per cent.) or Germans (3 per cent.). The university, the Press and the bulk of the professional class are Polish. This result is in character with the place, which has a peculiarly pleasing atmosphere of its own. But it is also a great tribute to two quite different influences: to those Poles who, though in no way tied to Russia, have preferred to all other considerations the corporate interests of their fellow-countrymen, and to the wise and sympathetic administration of the Russian Governor-General, Count George Bobrinsky.
December 22.
Lvov is taking on more of the character of a Russian town. Many of the Jews have left. The Russian signs over new restaurants, stores, etc., meet the eye everywhere. Of the Little Russian party which supported the Austrians, many have now returned and are making their peace with the new authorities. The Russian soldier is quite at home in Lvov, as one sees when the singing "drafts" swing past the Governor-General's palace; the Austrian prisoners in uniform, who are allowed liberty on parole, seem equally at their ease. Numbers of Russian priests are pouring into Galicia, but not fast enough for the Uniat villages which have embraced Orthodoxy; as soon as they arrive, peasants come with their carts and take them off to their parishes, without waiting for any formal distribution. The Uniat creed and ritual are practically identical with the Orthodox, so that the difference between the two was purely political. At the new People's Palace of Nicholas II, I saw a number of children, principally from families that had suffered severely at the hands of Austrian troops, receive Christmas presents on the day of St. Nicholas, who is the Russian Santa Claus. Archbishop Eulogius, in a very effective little address, told them that the biggest Christmas present which they were receiving was the liberty to speak their own language and worship in their own way in union with their Russian brothers.
Starting for the army, I spent a night of strange happening in the great railway station, as our train was delayed till the morning. At one time I went, in the frosty night, to look for it at the goods station, where there were endless rails and wagons, and found it after a long search. In the big restaurant four little boys made great friends with me, one of fourteen in uniform and spurs who had been serving as mounted scout with a regiment at the front, and one of thirteen who had attached himself in the same capacity to a battery. Both were small creatures, and the first was a remarkable little person, with all the smartness and determination of a soldier, relieved by an amusing childlike grace and courtesy. He said to me in a confidential voice, "I see you are very fond of little children," and he ordered with pride lemonade and chocolates for us both. He said the men at the front could last a week to ten days, if necessary, without any food but sukhari (army biscuit), so long as they had cigarettes. His imagination had been caught by the aeroplanes over Peremyshl, and also by the Carpathians, which he described with an up and down movement of the hand. He had a great disgust for anything mean and a warlike pride in the exploits of the soldiers of his regiment. His model was a boy, now a young man, who had been through the Japanese War. "If a general comes past," and he made a salute to show the extreme respect felt for his hero. Many a time in that long night, while the weary heads of doctors and sisters of mercy were bent in sheer tiredness against the tables, he would come and sit by me and ask me to read the war news to him, or to tell him about the English submarines. He left me with the smartest of salutes in the early hours of the morning.
Our train is an enormous one with endless warm carriages (teplushki) for the wounded. The staff of sanitars and sisters, working for the Zemstvo Red Cross, live in a spotlessly clean carriage, and there are special carriages for drugs, stores, kitchen, etc. They are simple and interesting people, and, as I am now in the Red Cross and have many interests in common with them, they kindly made me up a bed in their carriage, where we discussed Russia in all its bearings.
We carry a group of passengers who have all made friends after the Russian way. A colonel and his wife are going to fetch the body of a fallen comrade. Another colonel, a delightfully simple man with close-cropped hair, thin brown face and bright, clever eyes seems to know all the Slavonic languages and has much to say of the Austrians. He has seen twenty of them surrender to a priest and his clerk who came on them in a wood, made the sign of the cross and told them to come with them. In another place twenty-two Austrians were captured by two Russians. The Austrian officers put quick-firing guns behind their own rifle pits for the "encouragement" of their men, on whom he has seen them fire. They make their gunners fire every two hours in the night as a kind of exercise. He has seen them form their men in close column under fire and march them about up and down along the line of the Russian trenches. The Austrian artillery seldom takes cover; the Russian directs its fire on the enemy rather than on his batteries. In one place, heavy Russian artillery at a range of seven miles demolished an Austrian field train and two battalions who were lunching in the square of a small town. He is full of life and confidence, and all that he says breathes of fresh air and of work.
Our train made its way through to the furthest point up. We had to stop several times to let through the ambulance trains already charged with wounded, which take precedence. We had to go very slowly over several repaired bridges; and this was no simple matter, as we had twenty-seven long and heavy coaches. Some of these repairs were complicated pieces of work, as the bridges were high above the level of the rivers. At point after point, and especially on the Austrian sides of the rivers, we passed lines of carefully prepared trenches, and in one place there was a masterpiece of artillery cover, with every arrangement for a long stay.
The damage done by the artillery fire was sporadic—here a smashed station building, there a town where several houses had suffered. But there was nothing indiscriminate; and the Polish population, which showed no sign of any hostility to the Russians, seemed to find the war conditions livable.
As in other parts, I was specially struck by the easy relations existing between the inhabitants, the Austrian soldiers and their Russian captors. There were exceptions. I had some talk with a few Austrian Germans from Vienna. They were simple folk and seemed to have no grudge against the Russians; and the circumstance in their position which they felt most—they were only taken the day before yesterday—was that this was Christmas Eve, the "stille Nacht, heilige Nacht" of the beautiful German hymn, and that they were far from home among strange people. They kept apart as far as possible not only from their captors but from their fellow prisoners from Bohemia and Moravia. These last seemed at least quite comfortable, smoking their long pipes and leisurely sweeping the platforms. They were quite a large company. They understood my Russian better than my German. When I asked them how they stood with the German troops, instead of the sturdy "Gut" of their Viennese fellows, they answered with a slang word and a gesture. When asked about the Russians, they replied in a quite matter-of-course way: "We are brothers and speak the same tongue; we are one people." For any difficulties, the Poles often prove good interpreters. It is very different for the Austrian captive officers, who often cannot understand their own men.
These Czechs confidently assured me that any Russian troops that entered Bohemia would be welcomed as friends; and they claimed that not only the neighbouring Moravians and Slovaks but also the Croats further south were to be taken as feeling as they did. The Bohemians and Moravians seem to be surrendering in the largest numbers of all; and though the Viennese claimed that large numbers of Russians had also been taken, I cannot regard as anything but exceptional the enormous batches of blue uniforms that I passed on the road here. I asked these men about their greatcoats and was not at all surprised when they said they felt cold in them. It is nothing like such a practical winter outfit, whether for head, body or legs, as that of the Russian soldier.
We came very well over the last part of our journey. I was sorry to part with the friendly sanitars, who all seemed old acquaintances by the end of the journey and invited me to take up my quarters permanently with them. Theirs was more than ordinary kindness, as they had shared everything they had with me, including their little sleeping apartment. The bearer company under their orders is all composed of Mennonites, a German religious sect from South Russia which objects to war on principle and, being excused military service even in this tremendous struggle, seems to be serving wholesale as ambulance volunteers.
As there were none but soldiers about, these men helped me out with my luggage; and through the window of the First Aid point in Tarnow station, I saw another acquaintance waving me a welcome. This is the last point that the railway can serve; and my friends will go back with a full burden, which will keep the medical staff busy day and night all the way. One of my new companions, who has been out to a village to get milk for the wounded, has seen the shrapnel bursting; and the guns are sounding loud and clear near the town as I write this. It is here that the most seriously wounded must be treated at once, as a railway journey would simply mean death for them. This is brought home to one, if one only looks at the faces of the workers. Yet with this huge line of operations, and the assaults which may be made at any point of it, at any moment the nearest field hospitals may need to send off any wounded who can be moved without delay. Though the work is being done with danger all round, less thought is being given to it than anywhere that I have been yet.
Christmas Eve: peace on earth and good will toward men. And all through "the still night, the holy night," the sound that means killing goes on almost continuously. How can any one say prayers for a world which is at war, or for himself that is a part of it? May God, who knows everything, help each of us to bear our part and not disgrace Him, and make us instruments to the end that He wishes.
December 26.
Christmas day I spent in the hospitals. In one ward, at a local Austrian hospital, and full of wounded, I found that almost every one of the line of patients was of a different nationality. Going round the room, one found first a Pole of western Galicia, then a Russian from the Urals, next a Ruthenian (Little Russian) from eastern Galicia, next a Magyar from Hungary, and against the wall a young German from Westphalia. After him came an Austrian-German from Salzburg, a Serbian from southern Hungary, another Ruthenian, an Austrian-German from Moravia, an Austrian-German from Bohemia, and a Moravian from Moravia.
I spent a couple of hours here, talking sometimes with each of the patients, sometimes with all. The Pole knew only Polish and the bearded Russian, who had a bad body wound, was too tired to talk much. Of the Ruthenians one was a frail, white-faced boy from close to the Russian frontier who seemed, like most of his people, subdued, and confused with the strangeness of his position in fighting against his own people; the other was a lumpish boy without much intelligence. The thin, bearded Hungarian, who knew no German but a little Russian, was mostly groaning or dozing. The Salzburg Austrian was dazed and drowsy, but at intervals talked quietly of his pleasant homeland.
The German stood out from the rest. He was a bright, vigorous boy of twenty, had gone as a volunteer and was tremendously proud of the spirit of the German army. He had fought against the French during four days of pouring rain, mostly in standing water. The Bavarians, who seemed to have quarrelled with the other troops in that part, were making war atrociously, he said, knifing the inhabitants, insulting the women and destroying all that came in their way. He was later moved to the Carpathians, where one German division fought between two Austrian ones. They advanced in snow without field kitchens, and were not allowed to touch the pigs and poultry that they passed. However, they had enough to eat; and they were hoping to surprise their enemy, when the Russians fell upon them and left only the remnants of a regiment, many of the officers also falling. He himself was wounded in both legs, and was brought here in a cart.
Every German soldier has a prayer-book and a song-book. They constantly sing on the march, and find it a great remedy against fatigue. Songs of Arndt and Körner are very popular, and there is a new version of an old song, which is perhaps the greatest favourite; it begins—
"O Deutschland hoch an Ehren,
Du heil'ges Land der Treu,"
and it goes on to speak of the new exploits in east and west. There are any number of volunteers in Germany; the women are all joining the Red Cross; and the population is busy with every kind of work for the army; but when I asked whether the people were keen for the war, he answered with astonishment, "The people? The people thought that the war was not to be avoided; but that was at the start; now it is different." He asked if there were many other Englishmen in Russia, and when I answered that there were some, he said, to my surprise, "The English are everywhere, they are a fine people—nobel." He also asked me on the quiet whether, when he was well, he would be sent to Siberia. He had been told that the Russians were terrible, but had written home to say that he had found them nothing of the sort.
Much of our talk turned on the Austrian army. The German said that it didn't stand firm "unless it was properly led, by Germans." In Bohemia and Moravia the regiments were mixed, Slavs and Austrian-Germans, and, according to the Moravian soldiers, were constantly quarrelling; all the officers were Austrian-Germans, and even some of the Hungarian regiments seemed to be commanded by Germans. The young Serbian spoke of frequent quarrels and even brawls between Serbian and Hungarian fellow-soldiers. The great wish of all was that the war should end. When I said that the end was not in sight, the German exclaimed, "More misery, more misery;" a second said, "Oh, Jammer, Jammer" (lamentation), and a third had tears in his eyes.
In another ward I heard more of the Bohemians. There Prussia is the antipathy. There appear to be Czech officers only in the reserve. After the outbreak of war, the Austrians made wholesale arrests among the educated Czechs, quite apart from party politics, and were particularly severe on the gymnastic volunteer organisations (sokols), which are popular among all the Slav nationalities of Austria. The Bohemians had not had time to find their legs under the new possibilities created by the Russian successes, but the Russian troops would be sure of a cordial welcome there. The whole of my informant's regiment had surrendered en masse; and even in the mobilisation of 1909, a Prague regiment had refused to march against Russia and several of the men had been shot. I was told that the Austrian army was much weaker in reserves than the Russian.
I ended the day at the railway station, where the Russian wounded just brought in were being attended to, while the cannon sounded from time to time not far off. Several lay on stretchers in the corridors and others on pallets in the ambulance room, all still in their greatcoats and with their kits lying beneath them. I had no conversations here; there was too much pain, one could only sit by the sufferers or perhaps help them to change their position. First aid had been given elsewhere, but this was the stage when the wounds seem to be felt most. There was wonderfully little complaining. Most were silent, except when a helping hand was needed. One man shot through the chest told me that "By the grace of God, it was nothing to matter." It was always a satisfaction to the men that they had been wounded while attacking. A general walked quickly round, distributing cigarettes, which he put in the men's mouths and himself lighted.
In the night the cannonade sounded close to the town, but seemed farther off again next morning.
To-day I also went round a hospital with the dressers. The work was quickly executed, but much of it was very complicated. One does not describe such scenes, not so much because of the ugly character of many of the wounds, nor because of the end impending over many of the patients. To this last the Russian soldier's attitude is simple—gilt es dir, oder gilt es mir. He will speak of it as "going to America," the undiscovered country. But all these things come to be forgotten in the atmosphere of work. Here all the resources of life are going forward in their own slow way, for they can have no quicker, handicapped and outpaced in their struggle to keep up with the work of death. You work early and late, do what you can, and try to be ready for the fresh work of to-morrow.
December 27.
General Radko Dmitriev is a short and sturdily built man with quick brown eyes and a profile reminiscent of Napoleon. He talks quickly and shortly, sometimes drums on the table with his fingers, and now and then makes a rapid dash for the matches. The daily visit of the Chief of the Staff is short, because, as the General says on his return, simple business is done quickly. Every piece of his incisive conversation holds together as part of a single and clear view of the whole military position, of which the watchword is "Forward."
It is only the heavy rains that have saved the retreating Austrians from further losses. The roads are so broken up and so deep with mud that any quick movement is impossible. This gives the occasion for a useful rest. The cold weather—and it is freezing now—will be welcomed on this side; and the Russian winter kits, which have already been served out, are immeasurably better than the thin blue greatcoats of the draggled and demoralised Austrians.
Numbers of Austrian units are so reduced that they are only shadows of what they were, and some seem to have disappeared altogether. The ordinary drafts came in some time ago and are now exhausted—such is the testimony of Austrian officers. The new Russian recruits, on the contrary, will join the colours shortly.
From the beginning of the war, Bosnians, who are really Serbians, surrendered in large numbers. Then the Poles began to come in, and now the Bohemians. The Hungarians are sure to go on to the end; but the Roumanian and Italian soldiers of Austria have also come over very easily. In front of Cracow a Russian officer under fire came on a whole number of Bohemians, who were singing the "Sokol" songs and shouted a greeting as they came into the Russian lines.
These wholesale surrenders have, I think, an extremely interesting political significance. When governments turned the whole people into an army, it was clear that the army was also being turned into the people; but it was not clear how the people could express itself when under army discipline. These surrenders, in their general character and in their differences of detail, are a picture of the feelings and aspirations of the various nationalities which are bundled together under the name of Austria.
January 1, 1915.
At this Staff, as at the General Staff, life was very simple. We all met twice a day for a plain meal without any alcohol; there was plenty of conversation, but it was that of men engaged in responsible work; any news from outside was welcome, especially from the western allies, and there was full appreciation and sympathy for their hard task.
There was plenty of news from other quarters of the Russian front, and one could have a much juster and fuller perspective of how things were going than anywhere behind the army; the two things which stood out even more here than elsewhere were, on the one hand, the immensity of the sacrifices which have been asked and are being cheerfully made by Russia, and, on the other, the sense of quiet confidence as to the ultimate result.
These things were of course talked of here with greater detail. There is a photograph of a battlefield, not with a few straight lines and some scattered dead, but with zigzag lines all close together and simply heaps of Austrian dead (the Russian dead had already been removed). From the attack of one German division on this side, one thousand corpses were counted. The Germans and also the Austrians advance in close column, which may give moral support to the men, but results in terrible losses, as compared with the more individualistic advance of groups of eight to ten on the Russian side. In bayonet fights practically no quarter can be given, and sometimes the men can only use their rifles as clubs. The Austrian army is already no more than a relic of its former self, though it still makes some vigorous moves and covers every retreat with a tremendous cannonade, often resulting in the capture of the guns and men thus left behind. It must not be forgotten that Russia has had to deal with practically all the forces of two of the three allies (Austria and Turkey), as well as with an ever increasing proportion of the forces of the third (Germany). But she is going steadily through with her work, and already it is possible to see more clearly both what has been achieved and how the remainder of the task can be attempted.
After some days in a cottage with some friends, living largely by candle-light and discussing the great social changes which are to be expected in Europe after the war, we were joined by V. S., who had walked in through the thick mud a distance of some twenty miles. V. S. is a young and clever Conservative, who has sat in several Dumas, always a strong and witty enemy of revolution, but never content to sink his conservatism or patriotism in any commonplace formula. He went to the front at the beginning of the war and was wounded in the trenches simultaneously by shrapnel and by bullet. He is now partially recovered and is working energetically for the Red Cross, superintending the removal of the wounded from the front.
V. S. left the neighbouring town in a motor with some Christmas presents for the General. He had only come halfway when his benzine gave out, and, as none was to be got anywhere near, he left the motor with the chauffeur and made the rest of the journey on foot. He had to plough his way through rivers of mud, and when the early night fell he took shelter in a Polish cottage. When he reached us next day he was dead beat and slept for hours.
As soon as his main business was done, we set out together yesterday morning in a long boat-like cart with three horses and a soldier driver; our plan was to find the motor and return to the town, sending back the General's presents in our cart. For some hours we made a sort of slow progress, rolling about in a way that exceeded the North Sea at its nastiest; however, we had time to talk over many subjects that interested us both. We pulled up at the Polish cottage, where V. S. had a most affectionate welcome from the children, and we lunched on bread and milk. We were not out of sight of the cottage when our axle broke; and after finding that there was no smith, and no other cart to be had, we loaded our benzine and chattels on the horses and left the cart at the cottage with a note explaining what was to be done with it.
For several more hours we tramped on in the mud with our pack horses; it was quite impossible to follow the track of the road closely; it was thick with mud too deep to walk through and often the fields were a sort of swamp. At one point we turned in to a Jewish cottage and ate more bread and milk, while our old host asked ceaselessly when the war would end.
At last we found the motor and the chauffeur, and, after a cottage dinner, started on the short remainder of our journey; but we were by no means at the end of our troubles, and this, I was told, was to be expected, because a hare had run across our track. We were going along, dodging the huge and deep ruts in the chaussée, when, close up to one of the hugest and deepest, a cart coming the other way compelled us to make a sudden turn, and we were landed on a kind of plateau between two deep holes with our wheels almost off the ground in them.
We had tried almost all the ordinary expedients in vain, when a long train of soldiers began to pass us with artillery. Appeals of "Brothers, come and help us," brought about a dozen of them to our aid, and they performed prodigies of strength, pushing forwards or backwards, and at one point even raising the whole motor from the ground. Sometimes they counted "one, two, three," sometimes they sang a bargee's chanty, and each of them put the best of his wits to our service; but at last, just after one of them had said "Let's do something a bit more together," the officer in command felt it his duty to call them back to their work, and our brown-coated brothers left us in the semi-darkness while the guns boomed a few versts away.
The chauffeur meanwhile had set himself like a hero to raise the motor out of the ruts. V. S. and I found a cottage with a pile of bricks outside, which we took with the explanation "Needed." After several journeys to and fro we collected a little brickyard; and V. S., though his back was paining him, came dragging a huge log and a tree stump to use for leverage. He still found a free hand to shake mine with the words: "A Happy New Year; it finds us hard at work but full of spirits in spite of everything." The new year began well: the lever acted, the chauffeur made a sort of macadam of his own, and we sailed over the obstacle and on to our destination, which we reached at 1.30 a.m.
These are the conditions of weather and roads under which Russia has to press back the enemy; but she never lets him alone, for she knows that on persistent pressure depends the issue on the allied front.
January 3.
Yesterday I walked out to the lines, which are about four miles out of Tarnow. The railway runs quite straight to the little river which is the Russian front at this point; so I followed the railway embankment, meeting small bodies of troops on the way and a few sentries guarding the bridge over the Biela. It was a beautiful crisp December day, with a blue sky, distant views and a good foothold. To the left lay a long low plateau abutting on the river and crowned with a wooded village and a little church. In front was flat ground, rather marshy, with scattered villages close up to the broken railway bridge. The smoke from burning houses rose at different points to either side of the foreground, and high rugged hills bounded the view. Making my way to some rising ground, I for a time sat in an arbour beside a dismantled and deserted house, with the panorama of plain and villages stretched in front of me, listening to the swirl of the enemy's shrapnel and to the booming replies of a Russian battery. I made my way round to this battery; the men were engaged in improving their underground shelters, which were lined with straw, well heated, and furnished with shelves for a few belongings, including even books, and, anyhow, provided a refuge against frost and bullets. Water was near, and the soldiers' washing was hanging out to dry outside. We couched in the straw and talked of the western front till the word was given to fire. The officer gave the directions and the guns were discharged smartly. A German shell, which broke near us, was greeted with a cry of "Bravo!"; and when the officer announced that the practice was "excellent" the men all cheered. I had more talk in the telephone pit and in the officers' shelter; there was absolute composure, and the men were anxious to move forward again, having been here for over two weeks; I was asked to share any little delicacies that these hermits possessed.
Exchanging good wishes "for health and success" I made my way on through the villages toward the broken bridge. One of a group of soldiers, when I asked the way to the lines, simply pointed, saying "Here, close by." A long line of high earthworks ran close to the stream, on the other side of which were the Germans, their sentry being about 1000 yards away. I entered a hut and drank tea with the battalion commander, an old gentleman in a jersey, who, with charming apologetic gesture, offered me some white bread and chocolate. The telephone gave word of my coming to the staff of the regiment, to which I was piloted over the marsh by a soldier. The Germans shoot at almost any mark, or, even, at hazard, in the darkness; but very few are wounded in this way—this day none, and the day before only one. Scouts go out from time to time and sometimes find a searchlight turned on them. It is a waiting position.
The colonel, a good-looking young man of great simplicity and vigour, entertained me at supper, and we talked late into the night. Everywhere one feels the winning spirit. After the last great halt, on the San, the men went forward with a tremendous rush, and the enemy's rifle pits were filled with dead. Again the talk turned chiefly on the French and English front, and on the necessity of carrying the war to a real settlement. No one can understand why the Germans challenge such enormous losses by their attacks in close columns. Late at night I made my way back to the town; every now and then a few isolated shots rattled in the darkness.
January 5.
I set out late in the evening for a forward ambulance post attached to a famous fighting division. Our party consisted of two soldiers, a niece of Count Bobrinsky, who took such a notable part in the Duma visit to England, and myself. The young Countess, who was enveloped in tarpaulins, is one of the hardest workers in the ambulance. Our cart was stacked with necessaries for the soldiers; on the wall of the courtyard German soldiers had scribbled in large letters expressions of their self-satisfaction, such as "Austria and Germany fear God, and nothing else in the world," and sundry contemptuous allusions to "der Nikolai, der Georg und der Französe."
From the time when we left the lights of the town we had to go mostly on foot, negotiating difficult bits of road and ploughing our way through fluid mud. We passed over high ground and close to the front; all round us was the glare of camp fires and in the distance the flash of projectors. In the darkness we were constantly meeting trains of carts.
At last, on the slope of a hill, we turned into a Polish hut. It had two fairly large apartments, with a big stove and an earthen floor. In the inner room lived the six sisters of mercy: in the outer we were an interesting and strange collection; along one side lay a big bed, on which, crosswise, sat or slept the Polish peasant, his wife, two daughters and little son; in a corner, on a heap of boxes which he had to arrange each night, slept the young priest, the monk, whom I had met before, and one of the most spiritual men whom I have known; the two sanitars and myself made our beds each night beneath the windows (one of which was smashed), removing them each day to make room for the dinner-table. By the stove, or anywhere else, our soldier servants slept on straw.
Not two hundred yards off, but only to be reached by crossing two deep gullies of mud, lay the lazaret of the division, quartered in a white-walled village school. These quarters, I was told, were luxury compared to most of the ordinary stopping places; but we were in a very different atmosphere from the admirably equipped hospitals further back. The wounded arrive all day in large carts or on foot; they come straight from the First Aid stations, which are close up to the actual fighting line; there are no beds, only pallets of straw, on which the men lie down while waiting their turn. They have not yet lost the sense of the battlefield or reached the stage where they are fully conscious of their wounds. They take their places one after another in the cottage chair—in which one of them died yesterday as soon as he had sat down—and the young divisional doctor, with the help of the sisters, removes their first rough-and-ready bandages, and gives them such quick treatment as may enable them to be sent further. It is, of course, the seriously wounded of whom one sees most here, for many of these get no further, dying here, or on the road. From one of them the doctor removed an enormous splinter of shrapnel completely embedded in the body; the largest bombs of all, which the soldiers call "portmanteaux," make terrible wounds.
Here all day and all night the doctors and sisters work at the wounded as they come in. The senior sister, a lady of the most remarkable capacity, takes about one night's sleep in five, but is always as fresh and bright as can be. Her husband, a member of the Duma, travels over Russia for the better organisation of the Duma field hospitals. The transport is in charge of one of the sanitars, the son of a Moscow business man, who has a particularly clear head for work. The whole party, three of whom talk excellent English, are drawn close together by their work; and there is the atmosphere of complete unselfishness which one feels so strongly in anything connected with the Russian soldier. As to our soldier servants, it is clear that their constant preoccupation is to make themselves useful to anyone.
January 6.
We lie at the head of a little valley, some few miles from the Divisional Staff. As the troops move forward new questions are constantly arising; and our transport sanitar, Nikolay Nikolayevich, discusses the possibilities of getting better access for the wounded to the hospitals. We are pressing back the enemy into the Carpathians, and there are halts in front of difficult hill positions. The advance through swamps of mud makes tremendous demands on the men, who have to lie for days in rifle pits full of water; at times a well-chosen and well-entrenched position holds the Russians at bay at a distance of a few hundred yards or less, in one case fifty, and yet they will not go back. "Und auf den Carpathen sind die wege beschneit," often recur to me, these lines of one of the laziest of German student songs, which is a kind of renunciation of all effort.
Nikolay Nikolayevich and I rode over through the snow to the Staff of the Division. He is a charming and simple man, very like one of our own best-known Generals both in face and manner. He lives in a small hut, which is kept very clean. We lunch and discuss transport, and I am asked to carry certain suggestions to the town. On our way back, accompanied by two Cossacks, we pass through Tuchow, a little township half in ruins, and I notice that, as on our way out, some one is still strumming on a piano in a house of which only the walls are standing. The cannon has carried away a large tree and left deep pits near the road.
Driving in the evening to the town, I find groups of wounded, for whom there is no place on the carts, wandering forward in the darkness. The men choose among themselves which I shall take with me: "Let him with the nose go," for one of them has had his face smashed up; the rest move on contentedly, and my passengers give me a word of thanks, which would make any one feel ashamed of himself. This is their Christmas Eve.
It is very wonderful, this self-denying patience of the Russian soldier, and it is too big a thing that one should get tired of speaking of it. A doctor at work here tells me how constantly it is impressed upon him. A man whose chin he has had to remove simply says: "Thank Heaven, now you've tied me up, and I am all right." Another, after his leg has been taken off, as soon as he is able to speak, says: "Ah, but it was a fine fight at Krasny; they gave it us, but we gave it to them too." Another, when he is brought in for operation, is only taken up with the thought that he meets in the operating room an Austrian officer to whom he has attached himself as guide and friend. Anything else that is human comes before any thought of self. I am quite certain that one of the greatest things that this war is doing is its revelation to Europe of the simple goodness of the Russian peasant in the person of the Russian soldier. He is more than the unconscious hero of the moment. The qualities of the real Russian people are going to take their proper place among the best factors in the future of European civilisation.
January 8.
In our halupa (hut) we had those intimate and speculative conversations which seem so natural to Christmas Eve. Monk and Intelligents were on common ground. Only once Father Tikhon put down his foot when one of the party expressed indifference as to the other life. "No," he said, "joking apart, that's not good, least of all in time of war"; and the rebuke was accepted as gently as it was given.
Our Russian Christmas began with the burial of a wounded soldier who had died in the night. In a little waste patch in the snow, near the lazaret, the priest stood in his gorgeous vestments and bowed deep over the new grave, while two soldier choristers sang the beautiful prayers for the dead.
In the evening there was a Christmas Eve service in a room of the lazaret, which Father Tikhon and the soldiers had spent no end of trouble in turning into a chapel. The room was crowded with soldiers, and there was an improvised choir. The simple directions of the priest and the strangeness of the surroundings only added to the deep atmosphere of reverence.
I completed the night service in our hospital in the town. Here the first-floor landing had been turned into a chapel. A matronly sister from Moscow, one of the simplest souls in this work-a-day gathering, served as clerk. The leader of the choir was a young Social Democrat doctor, who had suffered for his convictions at the time of the second Duma; and among the choir were all who had had a training in church singing, which reaches such a high standard in Russia. The singers included sisters, sanitars, soldiers and several of the convalescent wounded, who were wrapped in their long grey dressing-gowns; and one wounded man had been laid on his stretcher among the choir in order that he might take part in the singing. Afterwards we all had cakes and tea; and a conversation as to what England could do, and what would follow in Europe, lasted well into Christmas Day.
We have here with us Bishop Tryphon, of Moscow, who, like the Bishop of London, asked leave to accompany the army, and is now the Superior, or Rural Dean, of one of our Divisions. The Russian army has a staff of army chaplains with an Arch-Presbyter or Chaplain General, as in England; but many priests have enrolled specially for the war. Some have been killed, others wounded, others taken prisoner; some have been specially honoured for serving the Liturgy to regiments under fire. I am told that Father Tikhon's first sermon under fire was wonderfully simple and impressive. One regimental priest told me how a shell burst in his quarters, blowing a medical attendant to bits and leaving himself with a bad contusion.
Bishop Tryphon took a prominent part in the entertainment of our Bishops in Moscow, and sends them by me a message of greeting and good wishes. He arranged a solemn Christmas Day service, with trained singers who were serving in the army. He later visited the hospitals, giving short and plain addresses, and his blessing to each branch of the Red Cross work in turn. There was a great Christmas tree in the station, where presents were distributed to four hundred wounded. Gifts were also distributed under fire by the hospital workers to the soldiers in the trenches some miles from the town.
In the evening I took part in a Christmas gathering in one of the big hospitals. Everyone's health was drunk in turn by Christian name, the whole being woven into a long song. Afterwards we sang songs of the Volga, and some stayed on talking till five in the morning, resuming their work a few hours later.
January 10.
Returning to our halupa in the little village, I rode over in the night to the General to convey the results of my journey. It was almost pitch dark and the road was in most places a simple swamp of mud, sometimes with gaping holes in the causeway or with beams or trunks of trees lying about; and though I had a soldier and a lantern, the ten miles took over four hours. Next morning we left the halupa: the dismantling process made the hut look more desolate, and while our things were being packed, the peasant family sat on their bed, looking on like moony spectators at some rustic entertainment. They showed more than satisfaction with their payment, which they expressed after the local fashion by kissing every one's hands; but they had now to expect the arrival of a fresh batch of strangers.
Our forward move of a few miles was carried out with great expedition; but our carts made quite a long train, and the movement of even a small ambulance section is in itself, under such conditions, almost an exploit. Just in front of me went our Austrian field kitchen with three separate cauldrons, which is found very useful. In a few hours we were installed in our new quarters, a great improvement on the halupa, within a stone's throw of the divisional lazaret and the now reopened railway station. From beyond a near wooded hill came the sound of almost continuous firing.
We were now close behind the line of the front ambulance points. At the station, which we put in order for their reception, there was a constant dribbling stream of soldiers who had come almost straight from the front. Most of them had walked in with their kits, and many seemed almost unconscious of their wounds. Their conversation was of comrades who stood at other points in the line, of the relative distance of the enemy and of the conditions of work in the rifle pits.
Through the thick mud the Russians are driving the Austrians upward over the deeply indented country of the Carpathian region. The enemy entrenches himself strongly, making much use of complicated wire entanglements which can only be carried with a rush. Thus, the heavily clad Russians, whose efforts have pushed the enemy all this way, have sometimes to dig themselves in as best they can at a few paces from the enemy—1000, 500, 100 or even 50. The rifle pits are full of water, straw makes hardly any difference, and as soon as a head is shown it is shot at; many of the wounded have fallen at the moment of rising from the trenches. The Austrians continue a rumbling fire nearly all night. On the other hand, some of our men have seen the shells from the heavy Russian artillery falling plump in the middle of the enemy and have seen how they scatter under the fire of the Russian machine guns. The Russians use less ammunition with much more effect. I have met several Russians who have had at different points fifteen or seventeen days on end of this soaking trench work. One officer, who had had two long doses of it, had contracted rheumatism in one place and bronchitis in another and was resting in a hospital with the hope of getting back as soon as possible. A wounded soldier asked Father Tikhon to write a request that he should be sent back to his regiment as soon as possible. One man at the station, twice wounded in hand and in chest, asked that this time he should be sent to recover in his native town.
The station was very soon in order. One of the sisters went round distributing clean underwear. "Change while you can, children," she said; "we shall give you some tea and soup, and pack you into the train, and send you straight off to Russia"; and in a few hours the first train had arrived and the station was cleared for further work. In the dusk, the military ambulance men set out again to collect more of the wounded under fire.
What is happening is, shortly, this. The Russians, who had first to deal mainly with the Austrians, leaving the Germans to us, have now got within sight of the end of this part of their task. A first-class military power has been so pounded and smashed and has been repulsed in so many vigorous counterstrokes that it is coming to have only a secondary importance. Meanwhile the bulk of the Russian forces is now devoted to meeting the incessant and desperate initiative of the Germans. Russia's new defensive front on this side runs in a straight line to the point where it covers the Russian conquest in Galicia. It is now being extended further south to the natural barrier of the Carpathians. The interval made necessary by the operations in the north is not being wasted by the victorious troops in the south. When we get to the end of the Austrian efforts and have a mountain barrier to safeguard us on that side, these forces will be able to act with much more effect against the Germans. Russia, by accounting for Austria and concentrating her attack on Germany, will have done more than her full share of the work in the common cause. "Honour is not to be divided," said Ney when he stormed the heights of Elchingen; and it is in this spirit of generous rivalry that the Allies move forward.
By a little arrangement room was made in our small quarters for a New Year's feast, to which the divisional doctors were all invited. Father Tikhon had turned the local hall of the Sokols into a Russian church, and the evening service was crowded with soldiers. There was great delight in unpacking the gifts and delicacies received from Petrograd, and soon the guests began to arrive. It was all the simple talk of men accustomed to great privations: some of it turned on a comparison of unpleasant bivouacs; for instance, one told of a night spent in driving wind and rain on an open slope by the light of a burning village; he hoped the wind would blow over some of the warmth from the flames, till at last shelter and sleep were found in a ditch. Another officer was drowsing in a hovel when the door was opened, there entered a strong smell of coarse tobacco and a heavy weight fell on him; he woke in the morning to find a soldier asleep across his knees. An artillery officer, a fine-looking man, told of the tremendous work of the mobilisation and of the strain which war life puts upon the hardest nerves. Regimental doctors have, of course, had to work under fire for weeks on end. Every one discounts the heavy German mortars which in the field do very little damage in comparison with their expense. As to the Austrian bullets, one doctor says that it takes a man's weight of bullets to wound a man. When the trenches are near they come pouring in a sort of continuous rain. One man who insisted on standing up had thirty-six bullets through him directly. When the distance is a hundred to two hundred yards, especially where there is no natural cover, continuous sniping goes on. The line not being straight, but varied by all sorts of indentations, due to the lie of the ground and to the Russians' desire to get as close as possible to the enemy, the former at many points crouch in the temporary and flooded holes which they have scratched out for themselves, perhaps all the while under a cross fire. Men are killed going out with long scissors to cut the Austrian wire entanglements. Many a man has fallen in a crawling excursion to dig up a potato. The sniping becomes a kind of game, and it was described as such by two Russian soldiers, of whom one had knocked over nine Austrians and the other sixteen. The Austrians fire a lot of random shots in the night which are in most cases a sheer waste of powder; but it was hard on a man who was relieved after a week's rifle pits to be hit by a bullet in the night on his way back, as far as a mile from the front.
The last hours of the Russian Old Year I spent in a goods carriage. My companions kept reckoning whether we should reach the town by midnight. Twelve o'clock was well past when the train drew up heavily a verst from the station and we were told that it would go no further. We scrambled out into the snow, when suddenly from the lighted station there rose in full orchestra, strong and triumphant, the most beautiful and the most religious of national anthems. It was played three times, and the notes may even have been carried to the neighbouring Germans beyond the river. This was our Russian New Year: and in the station a colonel was dismissing his men with the words, "For this year I wish you health and victory."
Next day the stretch of railroad that we had traversed and the carriage in which we had supped was cannonaded by the biggest German shells. The bombardment went on all day and night, the huge "portmanteaux" making tremendous holes and falling for the most part far wide of their only mark, the railway, and carrying ruin and mutilation to many of the inhabitants, who are thus encouraged by the beaten enemy to remain Austrian subjects. There is hardly any object in this bombardment, which is put down to the Germans and has roused great indignation among the many wounded Austrian officers and men who are lying here in hospital. Not a soldier has been touched; but wounded civilians, men, women and children, have been brought in to the different hospitals.
January 16.
The bombardment, which was continued yesterday, has created a certain excitement here, but nothing approaching to panic. The big "portmanteaux" are very ugly things and make an unpleasant noise, but only two shots can be said to have produced any results worth mention. The prevailing mood is one of vigour and interest.
I have had some informing conversations with wounded officers of the enemy. They indicate a definite mental attitude very different from ours. I see no trace of religious enthusiasm and little of nationality in the wider sense. The Germans have the greatest confidence and pride in their army. They tell me that two million volunteers were inscribed at the beginning of the war—an enormous fact, if correct. The attitude of the German women is such that no man who can serve dares to remain at home. My informants fully realise that for Germany the war is a matter of life and death. They have served on the western front and described the French fortresses as extremely strong ("brillant"). The Bavarians are terrible in warfare and spread alarm among the population. The losses of the first move through Belgium were enormous. The Belgians are described as excellent soldiers, and large German losses are put down to them. In the march on Paris the reserves and the commissariat could not keep up. The retreat is accepted as an unpleasant necessity. There was a certain pedantry among my informants in insisting on the need of turning the allied right wing, whatever should happen at other points. They claimed that the Germans were now in Calais.
Large losses against the Russians were admitted, but it was claimed, without any real evidence, that the Russians had lost more. Again, there was a kind of machine-like insistence on the need of attack in columns with reserves close up—as this was "our tactics." The Germans had so far been saved by the default of any real Russian winter, which would have ruined the German transport and artillery and robbed their operations of all effect. What struck me most was the absence of any real intelligence as to the political issues in debate. My informants were, for reasons of humanity, in favour of a status quo peace.
Some Austrians gave an interesting account of the origin of the war. The Austro-Serbian quarrel was not political but personal. The Serbian dynasty, failing to obtain any satisfactory recognition from Austria, was credited with a personal hostility against the late Archduke, who was described as in general a friend of the Slavs. Proof in support of this view of his end had been widely circulated in Austria in December. The personal quarrel between the reigning houses of Austria and Serbia had been turned by the insistence of the Emperor William into an occasion for a European war, specially directed against Russia, into which Austria had been hurried against her will. Her present position now was described as very precarious.
To a Hungarian officer I put the question whether the war had produced any real poetry in Hungary. He answered that there had been some rough-and-ready effusions among the working classes, whom he described as militant in their habits in time of peace and always ready for any war, especially with Russia. But the educated classes were not well disposed either to war or to this war.
It is rarely that one meets among these wounded of the enemy any other disposition than a strong desire for peace. I should add that several of them have asked me to communicate to their relations that they were being treated with the greatest kindness in Russia; "I am lovingly tended," wrote one of them. An Austrian colonel, a fine soldier and gentleman, told me he should never forget the "Anständigkeit" (decency) of all the Russians with whom he had had to do since his capture. Even Germans who at first are challenging and hostile, are softened by the true humanity with which they are surrounded in the Russian hospitals.
January 22.
The town has been bombarded for several days on end, beginning with the Russian New Year, January 14. The Germans had given a foretaste on our own Christmas Eve. They dropped from an aeroplane a paper bearing the words: "We ask you not to shoot on December 25; we will send you presents": the text of the telegram I had from the Commandant of the town, to whom it was taken. For all that, and though the Russian artillery was instructed only to reply, five heavy bombs were fired into the town and some of the inhabitants were wounded.
There were other Christmas "presents" which I have seen, sent by the Austrians with a parleyer and a white flag. With other objects of no importance were six matchboxes full of matches and containing also short manifestoes printed in Russian and addressed to the troops. They were signed "Your unfortunate Tsar, Nicholas"; and they informed the Russian soldiers that the Emperor knew the war would ruin Russia and had sought to avoid it, but had been forced into it by the Grand Duke Nicholas and the "perfidious" Russian generals, against whom the soldiers were invited to turn their arms. I have not often seen a document so conspicuously lacking in humour.
Punctually at midnight of January 13, one Russian regiment received two large shells bearing on their case the words "Congratulations on the New Year." The next day the town, though it had no troops in it, was shelled severely, and this bombardment was kept up for several days. The chief mark, and a very legitimate one, was the railway; here there fell in all six large bombs, making holes some twenty feet in diameter and ten in depth. But the great majority of the bombs fell in other parts of the town; and two of them rattled close over the roof of two different hospitals while I was in them, and the splinters of a third flew into the lodging of the workers of another lazaret.
In one of these hospitals, a local one now served by the Russian Red Cross, a large proportion of the patients are wounded of the enemy, including officers, most of them too badly hit to be removed without danger to their lives; and these were greatly agitated by the shells passing so near to them. Hurried councils were held by the different Red Cross authorities. One hospital, where the shells continued to fall quite near, left the town. The most serious cases were moved to the local hospital, where the Russian Red Cross courageously decided to remain. Here are also to be found many local inhabitants, wounded by bullets and shrapnel in the town or in neighbouring villages under fire; and one room is mostly filled with little Polish boys, all of them wearing a little silver religious medal round their necks. Here, too, are the inmates of a Polish hut who were injured by the explosion of a hand grenade; in a space of about twelve feet square, some sixteen persons were thus wounded; the father is dead and the mother and one of the children are out of their minds.
These are all cases that have come under my notice; and of course there are many others. Yet it is wonderful how the inhabitants remain in their huts under fire in the hope that the worst is over or in despair of finding any other shelter. From one such hut, after the last and finally crushing shot, there issued an old man of nearly seventy with a pipe in his mouth and entirely unharmed. I remember that on my first visit to Lvov, I heard a barrel organ repeating about fifty times the beautiful Polish national hymn: "From the Smoke of Fires"; in the Lublin province, on a line of some seventy miles, I found almost every other village half demolished. It is everywhere Poland that suffers; and it will be hard if some new life for this unhappy people does not rise out of their present ordeal.
There must be endless espionage in this town. An Austrian was found by one of our priests at the top of a tower working a telephone, and to the priest's question he replied that he was "sending word as to fires," which was no doubt strictly true. If so, it is a pity that the shots were not better directed. There is no question that the guns at work were not Austrian but German. General Radko Dmitriev came without delay to the town, and distributed the George medal for bravery among the workers of the Red Cross.
January 23.
I have been visiting some of the Regimental First Aid stations. In principle each regiment of four battalions should have five doctors and a captain of bearers. The bearers are selected from each company and can be supplemented by soldiers who volunteer for this service. They must be sound and strong; in peace time they march with their companies, carrying the rifle, and meet for a course of instruction twice a week. They are expected to gather under their captain before an action and to go out to the field to pick up the wounded only at night time, or after the action is over. In the present war it is seldom possible to maintain the full complement of regimental doctors. As battles have continued for weeks on end, it has been quite impossible to limit the bearers' work to less dangerous times; and it has been found most convenient to send them to the trenches with their respective companies, as they could then get to work as soon as they were wanted, and could also know the least dangerous track from their companies to the first-aid points. Ordinarily four bearers are assigned to one wounded: but as the track under fire is often long and exposed, it is sometimes necessary to send out eight men together, to carry by turns. They are supposed to have a leader, but in practice any one gives a lead, and if good it will be followed. The mortality in this service is considerably higher than in the ranks, as this is largely a war of cover, and these are the men who are most deprived of it.
Every Russian soldier is supplied with a packet containing lint, two compresses and a fastening pin. The object of the first bandaging is simply to stop the flow of blood and keep out dirt; and the wounded man is bandaged on the spot by himself, some comrade, or a feldsher (a trained medical assistant), one of whom is in the trenches with each company.
During the seventeen days of fighting on the San, the wounded had to be carried by relays over a long exposed slope and in many cases over the river. It was found possible to divide the distance into different sections; but the workers in each section were under fire, and so was the regimental point, which might sometimes be in a hut, but was more often a patch of open ground, with a tent stretched over it, or with no covering at all. There were instances where wounded and bearers alike were crushed by a shell on their road; for the Austrians poured endless artillery volleys on to given points. For all that, when the Russian trenches were examined after the battle, it was found that the bearers' work had been carried out completely, and that all the wounded had been removed.
The tremendous mortality of this war has put a specially hard strain on this service. Yet it is one of those which it would be most difficult to supplement with volunteers. Untrained men would be almost certain to be killed off soon; and indeed the appearance of bearers on the field is at once an indication to the enemy of the positions of the troops.
It has been found quite impossible, with the present range of artillery, to keep the regimental points in security. The work has therefore to be dispatched with the greatest expedition. The regiments, for mobility, dispense with any superfluous material and appliances and send their patients as soon as possible to the divisional lazaret, where the first really serious treatment is received.
Lazarets further back have often, as I have previously mentioned, been under fire. Austrian prisoners tell me that they have often seen their artillery fire on field hospitals; and from Russian observation points it has several times been noticed that the Austrian fire has been opened on what could only be a hospital field train. One of the subjects discussed with me by wounded officers of both sides is the possibility of securing further respect for the Geneva Convention and even a further definition of its regulations; but at present the overpowering stress under which we all live seems to be carrying us to the total disregard of any limitations at all.
January 27.
After a talk with the Divisional General, I set out for a visit to the regiments at the front. My orderly told me with pride that this was the best fighting Division in the army; certainly it has that reputation in other quarters and has three times in this campaign done decisive work against superior odds. It has rushed the Austrians from point to point, and would do so still unless they had taken refuge in the hill country before the Carpathians, where every hill has to be won in turn. Its General, an old man full of fire and energy, has received three wounds, which, as he says, make for him a calendar of the war.
The way lay between pleasant fir-clad hills, and late in the evening I reached the X regiment, with quite a good-sized house for its headquarters. The Colonel, who was very simple and businesslike, lived with his staff in the dining-room by a kind of half-light and with picnic fare, of which, as always in Russia, much more than his share was pressed upon the guest. The talk was that of comrades at serious work. These men will all go to the end, but they don't find it necessary to say so. When one said something about finishing at Berlin, a young officer put in with a smile: "Do you know, if we do, I expect none of us will be alive by then?"