THE GALICIAN FRONT
Dated:
ROVNA,
_June 26, 1915_.
In a few weeks a year will have passed since the Imperial German
Government began issuing its series of declarations of war against one
country after another--declarations which as time elapses are assuming
the aspect of hostilities not only against individual countries, but
against practically all that modern civilization had come to represent.
During that time each of the Allies, and all of the world besides, have
been studying the geography of Europe and the armies engaged in the
great conflict. Of all these countries and of all these armies, I think
that the least known and the least understood are the country and the
army of Russia.
It has been my fortune to be with the Russians since last September,
during which time I have travelled thousands of versts both in
Poland and in Galicia. I have visited eight out of their eleven
active armies, and been on the positions in most of them, and it is
not an exaggeration to say that I have met and talked with between
five hundred and a thousand officers. Yet I feel that I am only now
beginning to realize what this war means to Russia, and the temper that
it has slowly but surely developed in her armies and in her peoples.
Never I think have the stamina and the temper of a country been more
fiercely tested than have those of Russia during the campaign which
has been going on in Galicia since May last. All the world realizes
in a general way what the Russians had to contend with, and all the
world knows vaguely that Russia has a front of 1,200 versts to protect,
and appreciates in an indefinite kind of way that such a line must
be difficult to hold. But though I have been here for eleven months,
I never formed any adequate conception of how great was this problem
until I undertook to cover the Front, from its far fringe in Bukovina
to its centre on the Warsaw Front.
During the past two months it has been all but impossible to follow
movements with any clear understanding of their significance. We
have all known that the Russians were retiring from position after
position before overwhelming attacks of the enemy; and with very few
exceptions, the world has concluded, and the enemy certainly has,
that flying before the phalanx of the Austro-German legions with their
thousands of massed guns, fed with clockwork regularity with munitions
and supplies brought up by their superb railway systems, was the
wrecked and defeated Russian Army, an organization that it would take
months of rest and recuperation to lick into the shape of a virile
fighting force once more. I have never shared this opinion myself, for
we who were in Manchuria ten years ago learned to know that though it
was quite possible to drive the Russians off the field, it was equally
impossible to destroy their _moral_ or break their spirits. A month
after Lio Yang the supposedly defeated Russians took the offensive
at Sha Ho and came a cropper. Again in January another offensive was
developed and failed. They were ready once more at Moukden and lost
badly. By September had peace not intervened they would have fought
again. Even the Japanese were beginning to feel the discouragement of
the Russian persistency in refusing to accept defeat as final. The
Manchurian campaign was unpopular, not in the least understood, and yet
the Russian moujik hung on and on month after month. The Japanese knew
their mettle and admitted it freely.
For a year now we have had the Russians again at war. But this time
the situation is quite different. The war touched the slow lethargic
rather negative Russian temperament from the start, by its appeal to
their race sympathies, which is the one vital chord that can always
be touched with a certainty of response, in the heart of every Slav.
From the first month, the popularity of the war has grown steadily,
until to-day it has the backing of the entire Russian people, barring
isolated groups of intriguers and cliques controlled and influenced
by German blood. I have talked with officers from every part of this
Empire, and they all tell me that it is the same in Siberia as it is
in European Russia. The moujik in his heavy, ponderous way is behind
this war. No matter what pessimism one hears in Petrograd or Warsaw,
one can always find consolation as to the ultimate outcome by going to
the common people, those who patiently and stoically are bearing the
burden. This is the strength of Russia and this is why Russia and the
Russian Armies are not beaten in Galicia, are not discouraged and have
not the vaguest idea of a peace without a decision any more than the
Englishman, the Frenchman or the Belgian.
In so vast a theatre as this, it is utterly impossible to form clear
and definite opinions as to what has taken place even in the past
year, and it may be imagined with what difficulty one can predict
the future. But there is one thing in war that is greater than an
advance or a retreat, greater than a dozen battles, and greater than
the speculations of experts, and that thing is the temper and stamina
of the men and the people who are fighting the war. Given that and one
can look with comparative equanimity upon the ups and downs of the vast
tactical and strategical problems which develop now in East Prussia,
now in Poland and again in Galicia. There was one great strategic aim
of the Germans in their Galician movement, and that was to crush the
Russian Army, hand back to Austria her lost province, and then hurry
back to the west to attack England and France. It is true that Germany
has driven the Russians from position after position; it is true that
she has given back Lwow to the unenthusiastic Austrians, who with
trembling hands accepted it back as a dangerous gift, and it is true
that the world looks upon the recapture of Galicia as a great moral
blow to the Russian arms. Thus far has Germany achieved her ends. But
she has not destroyed the army, she has not discouraged the troops,
and with the exception of one army, now repaired, she did not even
seriously cripple it.
The plain facts are, that by a preponderance of war munitions which
Russia could not equal, supplied over lines of communication which
Russia could not duplicate, Germany forced Russian withdrawals before
her, for men cannot fight modern battles with their fists. The glory of
the German advance will be dimmed when the world really knows exactly
what Russia had in men and in arms and munitions to meet this assault,
the greatest perhaps that has ever been made in military history.
Indeed the surprise of the writer is not that the Germans won but that
they did not crush the army before them. This retreat from the Dunajec
will form a brilliant page in Russia’s history, and an object lesson to
the whole world of what a stubborn army composed of courageous hearts
can do by almost sheer bravery alone. The Russians have come through
their trial by fire. Barring one army they have probably suffered
far less in personnel than the loss they have inflicted on their
enemy. They have reached, or approximately reached, another point of
defence. Their spirits are good, their confidence unshaken, and their
determination to fight on indefinitely, regardless of defeats, is
greater than it ever was before.
The Germans have failed in their greatest aim--as the case stands
to-day. One cannot doubt that the high authorities in Berlin must
realize this truth as surely as the military brains do on this side
of the line. The Germans have shot their first bolt, a bolt forged
from every resource in men and munitions that they could muster after
months of preparation. The Russians have recoiled before it and may
recoil again and again, but they always manage to prevent it from
accomplishing its aim. At the moment of writing Germany faces the
identical problem that she did two months ago, excepting that she now
occupies extra territory, for the most part in ruins. The problem
before her is to repeat the Galician enterprise on an army infinitely
better than the one she broke in May. If she can do this she will
have the identical problem to meet on some other line in another two
months, and after that another and another. It is simply a question of
how much time, men and resources Germany has to spend on these costly
victories, if indeed the next proves a victory, which is doubtful. She
may do it once, she may do it twice, but whenever it may be there will
come a time when she can do it no more, and when that time comes Russia
will slowly, surely, inexorably come back, step by step, until she has
regained her own, her early conquests, and has Germany on her knees in
the East. It is futile to speculate as to time. It may be months and it
may be years. But it is most surely coming eventually.
THE GERMAN DRIVE IN GALICIA