armies holding our defensive line from the northern limits of the battle
front to beyond Ypres was necessarily a secondary one, but their task
was neither light nor unimportant. While required to give precedence in
all respects to the needs of the Somme battle, they were responsible for
the security of the line held by them and for keeping the enemy on
their front constantly on the alert. Their role was a very trying one,
entailing heavy work on the troops and constant vigilance on the part of
commanders and staffs. It was carried out to my entire satisfaction, and
in an unfailing spirit of unselfish and broad-minded devotion to the
general good, which is deserving of the highest commendation.
[Sidenote: Great number of raids.]
Some idea of the thoroughness with which their duties were performed can
be gathered from the fact that in the period of four and a half months
from July 1, 1916, some 360 raids were carried out, in the course of
which the enemy suffered many casualties and some hundreds of prisoners
were taken by us. The largest of these operations was undertaken on July
19, 1916, in the neighborhood of Armentieres. Our troops penetrated
deeply into the enemy's defenses, doing much damage to his works and
inflicting severe losses upon him.
[Sidenote: Main objects of offensive achieved.]
The three main objects with which we had commenced our offensive in July
had already been achieved at the date when this account closes, in spite
of the fact that the heavy Autumn rains had prevented full advantage
from being taken of the favorable situation created by our advance, at a
time when we had good grounds for hoping to achieve yet more important
successes.
Verdun had been relieved, the main German forces had been held on the
western front, and the enemy's strength had been very considerably worn
down.
[Sidenote: Ample compensation for sacrifices.]
Any one of these three results is in itself sufficient to justify the
Somme battle. The attainment of all three of them affords ample
compensation for the splendid efforts of our troops and for the
sacrifices made by ourselves and our allies. They have brought us a long
step forward toward the final victory of the allied cause.
[Sidenote: German failure at Verdun.]
The desperate struggle for the possession of Verdun had invested that
place with a moral and political importance out of all proportion to its
military value. Its fall would undoubtedly have been proclaimed as a
great victory for our enemies, and would have shaken the faith of many
in our ultimate success. The failure of the enemy to capture it, despite
great efforts and very heavy losses, was a severe blow to his prestige,
especially in view of the confidence he had openly expressed as to the
results of the struggle.
[Sidenote: Eastward movement of German troops checked.]
Information obtained both during the progress of the Somme battle and
since the suspension of active operations has fully established the
effect of our offensive in keeping the enemy's main forces tied to the
western front. A movement of German troops eastward, which had commenced
in June as a result of the Russian successes, continued for a short time
only after the opening of the allied attack. Thereafter the enemy forces
that moved east consisted, with one exception, of divisions that had
been exhausted in the Somme battle, and these troops were already
replaced on the western front by fresh divisions. In November the
strength of the enemy in the western theatre of war was greater than in
July, notwithstanding the abandonment of his offensive at Verdun.
[Sidenote: Somme offensive relieved Verdun.]
It is possible that if Verdun had fallen large forces might still have
been employed in an endeavor further to exploit that success. It is,
however, far more probable, in view of developments in the eastern
theatre, that a considerable transfer of troops in that direction would
have followed. It is therefore justifiable to conclude that the Somme
offensive not only relieved Verdun but held large forces which would
otherwise have been employed against our allies in the east.
The third great object of the allied operations on the Somme was the
wearing down of the enemy's powers of resistance. Any statement of the
extent to which this has been attained must depend in some degree on
estimates.
There is, nevertheless, sufficient evidence to place it beyond doubt
that the enemy's losses in men and material have been very considerably
higher than those of the Allies, while morally the balance of advantage
on our side is still greater.
[Sidenote: Enemy resistance feebler.]
During the period under review a steady deterioration took place in the
morale of large numbers of the enemy's troops. Many of them, it is true,
fought with the greatest determination, even in the latest encounters,
but the resistance of still larger numbers became latterly decidedly
feebler than it had been in the earlier stages of the battle. Aided by
the great depth of his defenses and by the frequent reliefs which his
resources in men enabled him to effect, discipline and training held the
machine together sufficiently to enable the enemy to rally and
reorganize his troops after each fresh defeat. As our advance
progressed, four-fifths of the total number of divisions engaged on the
western front were thrown one after another into the Somme battle, some
of them twice, and some three times; and toward the end of the
operations, when the weather unfortunately broke, there can be no doubt
that his power of resistance had been very seriously diminished.
[Sidenote: Prisoners and guns taken.]
The number of prisoners taken by us in the Somme battle between July 1
and November 18, 1916, is just over 38,000, including over 800 officers.
During the same period we captured 29 heavy guns, 96 field guns and
field howitzers, 136 trench mortars, and 514 machine guns.
* * * * *
The war fell with special severity upon the people of the poorer classes
in Russia, many of whom, upon the advance of the German and Austrian
armies, were compelled to flee from their homes in a practically
destitute condition. A graphic description of the pitiable plight of
these unfortunate people is given in the following pages.
RUSSIA'S REFUGEES
GREGORY MASON
Copyright, Outlook, January 19, 1916.
[Sidenote: A Russian freight train with passengers.]
Near Moscow, on a siding of the railway that runs from Moscow to Warsaw
through Smolensk, was a string of thirteen freight cars, the short,
chunky Russian kind--barely half as long as the American--looking as
flimsy, top-heavy, and unwieldy as houseboats on wheels. No locomotive
was tied to the string, and from the windward side, where the cars were
whitewashed by the biting blizzard that had already stopped all traffic
with its drifted barricades, they had the desolate look of stranded
empties. But the leeward door of each car was open a few inches,
permitting the egress of odors that told any one who chanced to pass
that the big rolling boxes were loaded with human freight, closely
packed and long on the journey.
[Sidenote: Old women at work.]
I pushed the door of one car back and looked in. At first in the
semi-gloom nothing was visible, but gradually, against a crack in the
opposite car wall that let through a streak of gray light with a ribbon
of snow that rustled as it fell on the straw-covered floor, there grew
the dull silhouette of two old women, who sat facing each other in the
straw, laboriously pounding corn into flour in a big earthen bowl
between them.
[Sidenote: Emaciated children and dead babies.]
The young Pole who was with me climbed into the car and probed its
recesses with a spear of light from a pocket flash-lamp. The old women
stopped pounding to lift toward us wrinkled faces that expressed fear
and hate when the tiny searchlight was turned on their dim, blinking
eyes. Another pair of hags in a far corner, propped against a bale of
hay and bound together like Siamese twins in a brown horse-blanket,
moved their eyes feebly, but nothing more. They were paralyzed. A score
of children that had been huddled here and there in the straw in twos
and threes for warmth's sake came slowly to life and crowded around us,
lifting a ring of wan, emaciated little faces. Three, too feeble to
stand, sat up and stared at the strange light. The bodies of four small
babies moved not at all--were, in fact, lifeless.
[Sidenote: Refugees from Poland.]
[Sidenote: Herded like cattle by soldiers.]
These people were refugees from a rural part of Poland, made homeless by
the Russian military decree which ordered the destruction of all
buildings and the removal of all civilians from the rearward path of the
Muscovite army as it fell back before the battering attacks of the
Germans from Warsaw to Dwinsk. For ten days these four old women and
twenty-seven children had been in that car, with no fire, few warm
clothes, and only a little dried meat, corn flour, and water to sustain
life in them. This the meager fare had failed to do in the case of the
four youngest. Since they had been herded into that cold box like cattle
by soldiers at the station to which they had driven or walked from their
blazing homes, they had been moved eastward daily in the joggling car,
which traveled slowly and by fits and starts, unvisited by any one, not
knowing their destination, and now too low in mind and body to care.
[Sidenote: Children forget their families.]
The two old creatures who were paralyzed when they had been dumped into
the car were now apparently dying; several of the children swayed with
weakness as they stood, clutching at the biscuits and sweet chocolate
which we drew from our pockets. Five of them were grandchildren of one
of the paralytics, three designated one of the wrinkled flour-makers by
the Polish equivalent of "granny," but none of the others knew where
their parents were, and six of them had forgotten their own family names
or had never known them.
[Sidenote: Moscow and Petrograd overcrowded.]
The other twelve cars were like this one except that all of them had at
least two or three--and usually six or seven--feeble, crackly-voiced old
men with their complement of women and children, and one contained three
young fellows of twenty who had probably smuggled themselves into the
car and who cringed when my Polish interpreter lunged on them with his
rapier of light and retreated into a corner where two cows stood with
necks crossed in affection. These youths knew they had no business in
that car, for even in the chaos of retreat the word had been passed
among the civilian refugees: "Women, children, and old men first in the
cars; young men can walk." But there have not been enough cars even for
the weak, the very young, and the very aged, and thousands, perhaps tens
of thousands, have found their graves along the slushy, muddy roads they
were following toward Petrograd and Moscow from the occupied provinces
of Poland and the Baltic. These people in the freight cars at least had
had transportation and a crude kind of shelter. But of the two million
refugees who are overcrowding Moscow and Petrograd, to the great
detriment of the health average of the two Russian capitals, many
thousands came there several hundred weary miles on foot. And others,
less determined or weaker, are still straggling in or are lingering by
the way, some of the latter dying and some finding shelter in small
towns between the twin big cities and the front.
[Sidenote: Millions of refugees.]
[Sidenote: People of all ranks and stations.]
Some estimates place the number of Russian refugees at from ten to
fifteen million; thirteen million is the estimate of the Tatiana
Committee, one of the most influential relief organizations in Russia,
named after the second daughter of the Czar, who is its honorary head.
By race the refugees are principally Poles, Jews, Letts, and
Lithuanians, but they come from all ranks and stations of life, rich and
poor alike, now all poor, thrown from their homes with nothing but the
clothes on their bodies by the grim chances of war.
[Sidenote: Thousands must starve and freeze.]
In times of peace and prosperity the sudden impoverishment of such a
large mass of people would tax the relief and charity of Russia to the
limit; but now, when all food prices are from one hundred to three
hundred per cent higher than before the war--when even the well-to-do
have difficulty to get enough bread, sugar, and coal--it is inevitable
that thousands of these homeless ones should starve and freeze to death.
Thousands have already suffered this fate, but hundreds of thousands,
perhaps a million or more, will die this way before spring unless relief
comes quickly and bountifully from abroad, for Russia cannot cope with
the emergency alone. Unless Russia's allies or neutrals begin at once to
pour into Russia a stream of food to fill the stomachs of these hungry,
homeless ones, this will be the bitterest winter in Russian history, a
winter whose horrors will far transcend the terrible winter of 1812,
when Napoleon ravaged Poland and sacked Moscow.
[Sidenote: Great Britain must bolster weaker allies.]
Great Britain, who is holding up some of her weaker allies in many ways,
sweeping mines from the White Sea for Russia, and with France bolstering
the remnant of the Belgian army in Flanders, is doing much to alleviate
the suffering of Russia's refugees by unofficial action. The Great
Britain to Poland Fund, organized and supported by such prominent
Britons as Lady Byron, Viscount Bryce, the Duke of Newcastle, the Earl
of Rosebery, and the Lord Mayor of London, at the instance of Princess
Bariatinsky, who is better known as the famous Russian actress, Madame
Yavorska, is feeding between 4,000 and 7,000 refugees daily at
Petrograd, Moscow, Minsk, and at several small towns close to the front.
[Sidenote: The Petrograd "Feeding Point."]
[Sidenote: Sheds for shelter.]
The Petrograd "Feeding Point" is a long, hastily built shed of
unfinished lumber a stone's-throw from the Warsaw station. This site was
well selected, for the long stone railway station, open at both ends
like an aviation hangar, is the center of refugee population in the
Czar's city. Not only were several hundred homeless men, women, and
children sleeping on the cold stone floors of the draughty station, but
other hundreds were lying about in odd corners here and there, in empty
trucks and freight cars, lying within a few feet of where the crowded
refugee train had left them, with no hope or ambition to make them move
on. Still other hundreds, more fortunate than these, were sheltered in
three sheds, similar to the "Refugees' Restaurant" in their unfinished
board construction, which had been built by the Government. Each of
these sheds, about thirty by sixty feet in dimensions, housed between
two and three hundred persons. This crowding was made possible by the
presence of platforms built one above another in triple or quadruple
deck "nests" about the room, where people of both sexes and of all ages
slept, cooked and ate such food as they could beg, and lay all day long
with expressionless, bulging eyes, half stupefied in the stifling stench
of the place.
[Sidenote: Lines before the feeding stations.]
Twice a day a line formed before the door of the feeding station of such
persons as were known to have no private food supply, and when the door
opened they surged in, getting brass tickets at the threshold which each
one exchanged in the far end of the room for a large square piece of
Russian _chorny khleb_--black bread--and a steaming bowl of good old
English porridge served to them by the bustling ladies of the British
Colony. Only enough were admitted at a time to fill the double row of
board tables, yet every day from 1,000 to 1,400 were fed.
[Sidenote: The gayety of hungry youth.]
It was interesting to stand at the elbow of the buxom, indefatigably
good-natured English lady who wielded the porridge spoon and watch the
long, hungry file which melted away toward the tables when it reached
the tall, bottomless urn that held the fragrant, steaming cereal. First
came a dozen boys and girls who had lost their parents but not the
irresistible gayety of hungry youth in the presence of food.
[Sidenote: A one-time rich man.]
[Sidenote: Bitterness toward the Government.]
They took their bread and porridge without even a mumbled
"_Spassiba_"--thanks--and shouldered each other for seats at the tables.
Then came a blind old man led by his two grandsons. His thanks were
pathetically profuse. Next another graybeard, carrying an ivory cane and
wearing a handsome fur coat, the only indications of his recent high
station in provincial society except the unmistakable reserve and
dignity of gentility. After him was a handsome Lett, who had been a
station agent in Courland till his station was dynamited in the Russian
retreat. None of the children gave any thanks for the food; in fact,
hardly any one did except the very old. The attitude of the others
seemed to be that of people who were getting only a small part of their
just due. Perhaps that was because they may not have realized that they
were being fed by England, not by Russia, and toward Russia all of them
were bitter even those who lived in the shelters the Government had
built. This bitterness was indicated by the refusal of most of them to
accept work proffered them by provincial or municipal officials.
[Sidenote: No wish to begin over.]
Their attitude is that, inasmuch as the Government has deliberately
wiped out their homes and destroyed their means of livelihood, it is the
Government's duty to support them in comfortable idleness. They seem to
feel that it is adding insult to injury to ask them to begin over again
in a new environment and work for their living. I asked a young Lettish
railway man, living in one of the board barracks near the Warsaw
station, why he had refused an offer of employment in the railway yards
hard by.
"Why should I work for Russia?" he asked, bitterly. "Russia has taken
from me my pretty home, my good job, and my wife and two children, who
died on the road in that awful blizzard recently. Why should I work for
Russia?"
"But you will starve if you do not," I suggested.
[Sidenote: Gloomy resignation.]
"_Nichevo!_"--it doesn't matter--he muttered, in gloomy resignation.
[Sidenote: A great mistake.]
[Sidenote: Everything destroyed.]
The majority of the refugees feel the way this man does. I do not refer
to the refugees who left their homes voluntarily through fear of the
advancing Germans, but to that greater number who were forced to leave
by the compulsion of their own Government, which deliberately destroyed
their homes as a military measure. Every Russian, even the military
officers who were responsible for this policy of destruction, now
realize that the adoption of that policy was one of the greatest
mistakes Russia has made during the war. For it has cost her the support
of a large and important body of Letts, Poles, Jews, and Lithuanians.
The theory was that to leave large masses of civilians behind the
forward-pushing German lines would provide Germany with a large number
of spies, as well as with sustenance for its armies. To some extent,
too, it was believed that buildings left standing in the Russian retreat
might serve as protection and cover for German artillery. So everything
was destroyed--farm-houses, barns, churches, schools, orchards, even
haystacks. Whenever the Russian lines retracted before the unbearable
pounding of the terrible German guns, they left only a desert for the
Kaiser's men to cross.
[Sidenote: Loss too great to be compensated by gain.]
War is not a parlor game. A great deal of destruction is inevitable in
the nature of war, and sometimes in wars of the past commanders have
deliberately laid waste large sections of beautiful country to handicap
the enemy, and the results have justified this destruction. A ten per
cent social and economic loss is gladly borne by a nation at war for a
ninety per cent military gain. Perhaps a commander is even justified in
inflicting a forty-nine per cent social and economic loss on his country
for a fifty-one per cent military gain. But the deliberate ravaging of
Poland and the Baltic provinces was a ninety per cent social and
economic loss for a ten per cent military gain--something that is never
justifiable.
[Sidenote: Relief should meet refugees.]
It is very difficult for a general to remember that there are other
factors in war besides the military factors, and we must not be too
severe in our criticism of the Russian General Staff because it saw only
the ten per cent military gain and overlooked the ninety per cent
political and economic loss. The order which made a desert of thousands
of square miles of the best territory in Russia was countermanded,
anyway, but not until the harm had been done. But now the only concern
of Russia and of the friends of Russia should be to confine the damage
to the irremediable minimum. To that end it is necessary to handle the
great streams of refugees intelligently. The influx into Petrograd and
Moscow should be stopped. Relief organization should go out from these
cities toward the front, stop the refugees where they meet them, and
there make provision for them to spend the winter. To this purpose
hundreds and thousands of sleeping barracks and soup kitchens like those
in Petrograd must be built along the provincial highways. Thousands of
these people will never again see the familiar environment where they
have lived all their lives, even if Russia regains her lost provinces.
But more of them will be able to return eventually, and there will be
less suffering among them this winter, if they are stopped where they
are and are not allowed to flow into the two Russian capitals, so
terribly overcrowded already, and into the colder country north and east
of Petrograd and Moscow.
[Sidenote: Russia unable to handle situation.]
I understand that this policy has been adopted by the Tatiana Committee.
But Russia alone cannot handle the situation; she must have generous aid
from outside.
[Sidenote: America a synonym for service.]
A young American, Mr. Thomas Whittemore, who was in Sofia when Bulgaria
went to war, left there declining an invitation of the Queen of Bulgaria
to head a branch of the Red Cross, because his sympathies were with the
Allies, and is now in Russia working out a programme for the relief of
Russia's refugees under the auspices of the Tatiana Committee. He is out
on the roads in an automobile constantly, meeting the incoming human
flotsam and jetsam of war, and his recommendations will have the weight
of authority. America has become a synonym for service in France,
Belgium, and Servia, but thus far America has done next to nothing for
Russia. Shall America, who responded so splendidly to the appeal of
Belgium and Servia, ignore the needs of the stricken people of Poland
and the Baltic provinces, whose sufferings are greater than the
sufferings of the Belgians, certainly as great as the sufferings of the
Servians?
[Sidenote: War's most moving sight.]
There are many pathetic things in war--soldiers wasted with disease,
blasted in arm and leg with explosive shell, withered in eye and lung by
the terrible gas; but none of these things is so moving as the sight of
little children, homeless, parentless, and with clothing worn and torn
by travel, sleeping in empty freight cars, cold railway stations, or on
the very blizzard-swept sidewalks of Russian cities, and slowly dying
because they have no food.
* * * * *
Rumania hesitated long before entering the war. The sympathies of her
people were strongly with the Allies, for military and economic reasons
connected with German domination of her resources made her actual
military participation with the Allied Armies difficult and dangerous.
The decision, however, was made in the late summer of 1916, and an
attack was made by the Rumanian army against Austrian forces. This was
followed by successes which continued until Bulgaria began hostilities
against the Rumanian army. Shortly after, a German army under General
Mackensen against Rumania was started which ended in the capture of
Bucharest in December, 1916.
THE TRAGEDY OF RUMANIA
STANLEY WASHBURN
Copyright, Atlantic Monthly, December, 1917.
[Sidenote: What it meant for Rumania to fight.]