THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE RUSSO-RUMANIAN OFFENSIVE--1917
By the middle of January, 1917, the front in Rumania had become
stabilized on what was, in point of fact, General Alexieff’s shortest
line. This line had its right near Dorna Vatra[33] (the Russian left
before Rumania intervened) and traversed the Carpathian foothills until
it reached the Sereth Valley, north-east of the town of Focsani; thence
it followed the left bank of the river to its junction with the Danube
close to Galatz. East of this latter place the front was vague and
variable, the swampy region round the Danube’s mouth being a veritable
“No Man’s Land.”
Nearly a million Russian soldiers had, by this time, been sent into
Moldavia; they were organized in thirteen cavalry divisions and a
dozen army corps. The Rumanian Army had been reduced by losses and
disorganization to six weak divisions; these held a sector of the front
about twenty miles in length.
Winter weather and mutual exhaustion precluded the immediate
continuation of hostilities, and the opposing armies faced each other
under conditions of discomfort which could hardly have been worse.
During this period of comparative calm, it was possible to appreciate
the situation both from an Allied and an enemy point of view.
The Allies had, undoubtedly, lost prestige. Great Britain had forfeited
the confidence which had been our most precious asset in the earlier
stages of the war; the British Government was regarded by Rumanians as
the tool of French and Russian diplomacy, and our warmest partisans
found little comfort in benevolent intentions which were never
translated into deeds. The French burked criticism, to some extent,
by an immense display of energy. Hundreds of officers and men were
incorporated in the Rumanian Army, who by their spirit and example did
much to raise the morale of the troops. The Russians, to a greater
degree than ever, inspired distrust and fear. The Germanophiles in
Rumania had always been Russophobes; during this period they gained
many new adherents, both in the army and the business class.
Allied prestige, and more especially that of Great Britain, could have
been restored by a decisive success in a direction which would have
enabled Rumania to recommence hostilities, in the spring or summer,
independently of Russia. That direction was obviously Constantinople,
the key of the Near East; no other remedy for Rumania’s plight was
either practicable or just.
The loss of Wallachia had deprived Rumania of four-fifths of her food
supplies, almost all her petrol and her principal railway centres.
Moldavia had to support, in addition to the normal population,
thousands of refugees from Wallachia and, to a great extent, the
Russian forces. So defective were the road and railway communications,
that the supply services functioned only with the greatest difficulty
while the troops remained at rest. To attempt to even utilize this
region as an advanced base for offensive operations was to invite
defeat. Operations on a large scale for the recovery of Wallachia could
only have been carried out by using the Danube as a supplementary line
of communication; to do so, it was essential for the Allies to be
undisputed masters of the Black Sea, and this involved a reinforcement
of the Russian Fleet. While the Dardanelles remained in enemy hands,
the Black Sea was as much German and Turkish as it was Russian; naval
engagements were of rare occurrence and invariably indecisive.
Speculation was busy at Rumanian Headquarters as to the invaders’
future course of action. If further conquests were envisaged, their
position on the Danube conferred on them the power of turning the
left flank of the Sereth line by the occupation of Galatz, against
which place their communications by rail and river would have made
possible the rapid concentration of numerically superior forces. Once
in possession of Galatz, the invasion of Bessarabia could have been
undertaken, since the establishment of an Allied front on the line of
the River Pruth[34] would have been forestalled.
The Central Empires, however, made no serious effort to capture Galatz;
they appeared to be content with Braila and complete control of the
Danube Valley between that port and the Iron Gate. From a strategical
point of view their position was good. An immense force of Russians
was immobilized in Moldavia and held there by the threat to Odessa;
this force could only be freed for offensive operations by a complete
reversal of Allied policy in the Near East, a contingency not likely
to occur. In the meantime, the stocks of corn in Wallachia were being
transferred to Germany and restorative measures were being taken in
the oilfields, where the machinery and plant had been destroyed in
wholesale fashion during the retreat.
Famine was approaching in Moldavia and typhus was raging in the towns
and countryside, when the Allies convened a conference at Petrograd to
determine their future plans.
General Gourko had replaced General Alexieff as Chief of the Russian
Staff, owing to the illness of the latter. At the outset of the
Conference, Russia’s principal military delegate submitted an
appreciation of the military situation which, in so far as it concerned
Rumania, either displayed an inexcusable ignorance of the facts or
was intentionally false. He described new railway lines in Bessarabia
as approaching completion, whose construction could not be commenced
before the spring was far enough advanced to melt the ice and snow;
on such premises as these he based a plan of operations, which even
_Russian_ Generals on the spot described as suicide. The other Allied
representatives listened with grateful ears; for them, a Russo-Rumanian
offensive in the spring had many great advantages--it would relieve
the pressure on the Western front and help Cadorna on the Carso. They
argued that if the General Staff in Petrograd thought this offensive
could be made, it was the best solution of the problem, and all that
remained for them to do was to arrange for liberal supplies of war
material and guns.
It is difficult to believe that the Government of the Czar, had it
survived, would have permitted this offensive to take place; a few
ambitious Generals may have been in favour of it, but the rulers of
Russia had realized that autocracies which made war on the Central
Empires, were undermining the last barrier against the advancing flood
of democratic sentiment, and were, in fact, cutting their own throats.
Both at the Imperial Court and in Government circles, German influence
was gaining ground, and the Russian people as a whole were profoundly
pessimistic. Germany was considered irresistible, officers of high rank
admitted that if Mackensen invaded Bessarabia, salvation could be found
only in retreat. They talked of a retirement to the Volga even, and the
Rumanians listened with dismay.
In all human probability, the proposals for an offensive made to the
Conference at Petrograd were intended to deceive the Western Allies,
and to gain time for the final liquidation of Rumania. Already the
Russian Government controlled Rumania’s supplies of ammunition,[35]
and, by an adroit interpretation of Articles VIII and IX[36] of the
Military Convention, the Rumanian Army had, for all practical purposes,
been brought under the Russian High Command. The next step was to
assume control of the Rumanian civil administration. On the pretext
that the confusion and congestion on the Moldavian railway system would
preclude offensive operations, the Russian General Staff suggested a
wholesale evacuation of Rumanian elements from Moldavia into Russian
territory. This evacuation was to include the Government, the civil
population, and all military units not actually on the front. Apart
from its total impracticability with the communications available, the
object of this suggestion was sufficiently clear--it was the conversion
of Moldavia into a Russian colony. When that had been accomplished,
a separate peace could be concluded between Russia and the Central
Empires, and the prophecy of Baron von der Büsche[37] would have been
amply verified.
During the proceedings of the Conference there had been much talk of
revolution, but few of the Allied representatives believed in it.
Society in Petrograd scoffed at the idea of a political upheaval, it
was held to be impossible while the lower classes were so prosperous
and comparatively well fed. At the end of February the Conference broke
up, the British, French and Italian delegates left by the Murmansk
route, convinced that, at last, the Russian “steam roller” was going to
advance.
A few days later the Revolution began. The soldiers joined the
people. Their motives for so doing were natural and logical, they
should have been a lesson to those who were next to try to rule in
Russia, if vanity and false ideas had not conspired to make Kerensky
the puppet of occidental plans. Many senior generals supported the
Revolution. _Their_ motives were variously ascribed to patriotism and
ambition--when generals and soldiers act alike a distinction must be
drawn.
Western democracies gave an enthusiastic reception to the new order in
Russia--so much so that our Ambassador in Petrograd, of all men the
most innocent and above suspicion, was accused of complicity in the
revolutionary plot. Liberals spoke of the awakening of Russia, and
they were absolutely right. It was, indeed, an awakening of oppressed,
exploited people, and was thorough, abrupt and rude. Officials in
Paris and London were not without misgivings, but they perceived some
advantages in the situation--a central soviet at Petrograd, or even
a Republic, ruled by idealists, would be a more docile instrument
than the Government of the Czar. Superficially, they were right. This
shortsighted view was justified by events during the first four months
of confusion and excitement. Fundamentally, they were wrong. They had
misjudged the Revolution, and had not recognized that lassitude and
exasperation pervaded the Russian armies, and that men in this frame of
mind were better left alone.
The fate of Rumania had trembled in the balance when left to the
tender mercies of the men who ruled in Russia under the old régime.
The Revolution had brought a chance of respite, and admitted a ray of
hope. Great Britain and France could have helped the Rumanian people
by using their influence to insist on strict adherence to the terms
of the Military Convention. If this had been done, and if patience
and foresight had been exercised, the natural desire of the Army and
the Government, to take an active part in the reconquest of their
territory, might have been gratified on sane strategic lines. The
Rumanian Army might have been reorganized and re-equipped, and then
could have played a useful part in a concerted Allied plan.
This was not to be. The Allied plan was fixed and immutable. Though
everything had changed in Russia, this plan was the direct outcome of
Gourko’s fantasies: it consisted in a gigantic offensive operation,
without adequate communications and with ill-equipped armies, on
more than one hundred miles of front. The Rumanian forces were to be
wedged between two Russian armies and thus deprived of the power
of independent movement, while their rôle was limited to that of an
insignificant fraction of an incoherent mass. Ignorance and optimism
ruled the Allied Councils; they were to be as fatal to Rumanian
interests as Russian guile and greed.
I returned to Jassy from Petrograd towards the middle of March. The
Russian forces in Moldavia had caught the revolutionary infection;
their Commander-in-Chief, a Russian prince, had found prudence to be
the better part of valour and assisted at committee meetings wearing
a red cockade. Revolution softens the manners and customs of even the
most violent natures. Officers, who a few months before had kicked
their soldiers in the streets for not saluting, now, when they got a
rare salute, returned it with gratitude.
The Rumanian peasants remained faithful to their King and Government.
They had suffered much, but their pride of race and native sense
prevented them from flattering the hated intruders by imitating Russian
methods for the redress of wrongs. In Jassy, some Socialists who had
been arrested were liberated by their friends: these may have included
some Rumanians, but their number was not considerable and their
activities were not a source of danger to the commonwealth, which was
threatened only from outside.
On the front an extraordinary situation had arisen. Fraternization
between the opposing armies was general and unrestrained, except on the
Rumanian sector. The Russian soldiers were in regular correspondence
with their Austrian and German adversaries, by means of post-boxes
placed between the lines and verbal intercourse. Men, whose respective
Governments were still at war, fished in the waters of the Sereth.
“Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so.” No doubt
these anglers thought, with Isaac Walton, that they were brothers of
the angle. Barbed wire was put to peaceful uses, entanglements were
used as drying lines and were covered with fluttering shirts. The
revolution had accomplished something; it had given some very dirty
soldiers the time to wash their clothes.
A unique opportunity for propaganda had presented itself. The Germans
utilized it to circulate letters inviting the Russian and Rumanian
soldiers to desert their “real enemies”--France and England. These
appeals had no effect. The Russians received them philosophically; they
had, already, got a sort of peace and, in the front-line trenches, a
sufficiency of food. The Rumanians had other reasons for rejecting such
advice. Peace with invaders had no meaning for them, their only friends
were France and England. The peasants realized instinctively that
Russia was a foe.
In their impatience for offensive action, the Allies failed to grasp
some essential features of the situation, which might have been turned
to good account. The Russian armies were in a state of convalescence
after the first fever of the revolution, the majority of the men were
inert, if not contented, and no longer indulged in deeds of violence;
they were still influenced by the revolutionary spirit, but not in
a rabid sense. They were a source of contagion to the enemy but,
relatively, harmless to themselves. Fraternalization on the Rumanian
front was more hurtful to the Central Empires than to the Allies.
The Austro-Hungarians were war-weary and demoralized; inactivity had
encouraged hopes of peace and, after close on three years of war,
such hopes die hard. Even the Germans were disaffected, their iron
discipline had grown more lax. During one of my visits to the Russian
trenches, a German private brought a message from his comrades,
advising the “Soldiers’ Committee” to cease passing convoys along a
certain road, because “our pigs of officers may make us shoot.”
Disintegrating forces were at work among the enemy troops; they were
the product of social and political conditions and, whatever might be
their later repercussion, from an immediate and practical point of
view, they were more powerful aids to victory for the Allies than any
offensive on this front. A premature Russo-Rumanian offensive, with
unwilling Russian soldiers, could have but one effect--its futility
was evident to the humblest combatants in the opposing ranks; it could
only serve to rally doubters and, thereby, postpone another revolution.
That revolution was inevitable: it might have been precipitated by an
intelligent adaptation of Allied policy to facts.
So far as could be seen, the Allies had no policy at this period.
Statesmen no longer ruled. The German system had been followed by
making the General Staffs omnipotent. To men obsessed by one single
facet of a many-sided problem, the Russian Revolution was an incident
without significance beyond its bearing on the Western Front; for
them the Russian armies were machines, whose functions had undergone
no change as the result of revolution. They regarded an offensive on
the Eastern Front as a subsidiary operation, which would relieve the
pressure in the West: that was the aim and object of their strategy,
and everything was subordinated to the achievement of that end.
With very few exceptions, the Russian Generals who had retained
commands, after the abdication of the Czar, favoured the Allied
plan; it appealed not only to their personal ambition but also to a
conviction, which they shared with many others, that further slaughter
would allay political unrest. The most influential member of the new
Russian Government was Kerensky, an idealist whose support for any
enterprise could be secured by flattering his vanity, which, as with
many democratic leaders, had assumed the proportions of disease. The
motives of this man were comparatively disinterested, but he was young
and inexperienced. He became the most ardent advocate of the offensive
plan and turned himself into a recruiting sergeant instead of directing
the affairs of State. Brains and calm judgment are seldom used in
war. It is much easier to enrol thousands of simple men to serve in
what the Russians called “Battalions of Death” than it is to find one
man possessed of sense. Kerensky raised many such battalions and, to
do him justice, he did not deceive the victims of his eloquence more
completely than himself.
In Rumania hope alternated with despair in regard to future operations;
the former was spasmodic and inspired by the French Military Mission,
the latter was bound to invade any reflective mind. Certain Rumanian
Generals were frankly optimistic in regard to the reconquest of
Wallachia, others professed to be so to gain the approval of the
French. With either of these two types discussion was impossible; it
would have been cruel to rob them of any source of consolation by
insisting on the truth.
General Ragosa, who commanded the 2nd Russian Army, expressed himself
emphatically against a renewal of offensive tactics by Russian troops,
before they had been equipped on the same scale as other armies. He
declared that Brusiloff’s much advertised offensives had been conducted
without due preparation or regard for loss of life, and that though
that general had gained much personal glory, he had broken the spirit
of his men. The attitude of the rank and file more than confirmed
this view; the revolutionary soldiers lacked neither patriotism nor
courage, but they had come to suspect and hate the blundering, ruthless
generals who held their lives so cheap. They knew that on the Western
Front slaughter was mitigated by mechanical devices, whereas they were
regarded as mere cannon fodder and of less value than their transport
mules. When French and British officers urged them to make further
sacrifices, they put a searching question: “Do your soldiers pull down
barbed wire entanglements with their bare hands?” Such questions were
disconcerting to fervent foreign propagandists, and did not stimulate
their curiosity to hear other unpleasant truths. In spite of the fact
that “Soldiers’ Committees” had been established in almost every
unit, and were largely, though not completely, representative, these
spokesmen of a mass of inarticulate opinion were neglected by the
partisans of immediate offensive action, who seemed to have forgotten
that the Russian Revolution had ever taken place.
Once again, the Western Powers were asking the armies on the Eastern
Front to do what their own armies would not have been allowed to do.
Their motives were selfish and their propaganda false: when ignorance
is wilful it becomes immoral, when combined with mediocrity of mind,
it fails to recognize the natural limitations of a situation and has a
boomerang effect. Wise men, however immoral they may be, know where to
stop; the stupid, when unrestrained by fear or scruples, push blindly
on and never seek enlightenment, they cause more suffering by their
folly than the most cruel tyrants by their vice.
At the beginning of July the offensive began; by some it was called the
“French” offensive, and the name was not inapt. It came as a surprise
to the enemy Army Commanders, who had not expected this solution of
a problem whose political aspects were causing them grave concern.
The Austro-Hungarian and German soldiers could still be counted on
to retaliate if attacked; this sudden onslaught put an end to the
fraternalization between the armies and could be dealt with easily by
even an inferior number of well-led and well-organized troops.
The history of these ill-fated operations is too well known to need
recapitulation. By the end of July the Russo-Rumanian offensive had
collapsed completely. The Russian forces were everywhere in retreat,
the Rumanians, after making a twelve-mile advance and fighting with
great gallantry and determination, were forced to withdraw to the line
from which they had started, owing to the retirement of the Russian
armies on both their flanks.
A total misconception of the internal situation in Russia had brought
about a military disaster of unprecedented magnitude. The Russian
armies had ceased to exist as fighting forces, the soldiers had flung
away their arms and offered no opposition to invasion, all Western
Russia was at the mercy of the Germans, who had only to advance.
With the disappearance of all military cohesion, the political
situation in Russia became desperate. The dumb driven herd had, in
the end, stampeded and put the herdsmen in a fearful quandary, from
which there was no escape. Millions of men had demobilized themselves
and roved about the country or poured into the towns; they had been
brutalized by three years of war and showed it by their deeds. Six
months before the Russian people had lost confidence in themselves.
With a new form of Government new hope had come, but now that hope was
dashed. Russian Democracy had been tried and failed. Kerensky and his
fellows had destroyed an evil system, but had put nothing but rhetoric
in its place. They had convinced themselves that they were Russia’s
saviours, and had not realized that revolutions which are caused by
war have but one object--a return to peace. They might have saved the
situation by a temporizing policy; far greater men have not disdained
inaction based on calculation, and Russia’s history had shown that in
her wide and distant spaces lay her most sure defence. Instead, the
leaders of the Revolution, having no Russian policy, had embarked on an
enterprise which every thinking Russian knew was foredoomed to failure;
thereby they had destroyed the trust of the people in their Western
Allies, who had become objects of resentment, for having urged the last
offensive without regard for ways and means.
To distracted soldiers, workmen and peasants in all parts of Russia,
the Bolshevist doctrine made a strong appeal; it promised not only
peace, but a form of self-government, and these leaderless, misgoverned
men snatched eagerly at the prospect. Lenine and Trotsky had long
perceived the real need of the Russian people, their international
theories effaced any sentiment of loyalty to the Allies, and, after
sweeping away the last vestiges of Kerensky’s Government, they asked
Germany for an armistice.
In Southern Moldavia, the Rumanians still held their ground, covering
the crossings of the Sereth. They were completely isolated--on one
side anarchy, on the other a ring of steel. The situation of this
dismembered country was tragic and appalling; in the words of the
Prophet Isaiah, Rumania was “as the small dust of the balance.” Her
fate was linked with that of Russia, she was small dust indeed,
compared to that ponderous mass.
The impatience of the Western Powers had exposed Rumania to the
machinations of a haughty, overbearing ally and an enemy in disguise.
From these the Revolution had delivered her, but only in the hour of
defeat and on the eve of irretrievable disaster. She was to drain the
cup of bitterness down to its very dregs, and, at the bidding of the
Bolshevists, to conclude a separate peace.
It has been said that the Bolshevists betrayed Rumania. This accusation
is unfounded and unjust. The Bolshevists were the outcome of a
pernicious system, for which the Revolution had found no remedy;
Rumania had undoubtedly been betrayed, but the betrayal was not
Lenine’s work. When he assumed control in Russia, Rumania’s plight was
hopeless, and, at least, he left her what she might have lost--the
status of an Independent State.
The Alliance had lost a limb which spread across two Continents and
bestrode the Eastern world. Its strength had been exaggerated, but
it had rendered priceless services at the outset of the war. At last
it had broken down from overwork, directed by men who had neither
understood its functions nor realized that it was something human,
though different from the rest. The Russian people had not changed with
a change of Government, but the same men were abused as traitors under
Lenine, who had been praised as patriots and heroes when subjects of
the Czar.
The amputation had been self-inflicted, and the limb was left to rot.