4, French lines adjacent to the Alsace-Lorraine frontier.]

The culminating phase of the battle began on the 29th, when overwhelming

masses of the enemy stormed the centre of the Ypres salient, held by Haig's

1st Corps and the 7th Division, and forced our troops back on Gheluvelt.

The ground was recovered before nightfall, but fighting of the fiercest

character continued all round and beyond the salient, the critical sector

of the 31st extending from Gheluvelt to Messines, on the south, where the

1st Cavalry Division was heavily pressed, and the London Scottish received

their costly baptism of fire. The Germans got into Messines that day, but

were hurled out again, and the line in this sector was completely restored

by nightfall. The climax of the crisis had been reached shortly after

midday in the Gheluvelt area, when the 1st Corps, after doing more than

could be expected of any men in their prolonged stand against the heaviest

odds, was at last broken, part of the 1st Division falling back rapidly

along the Ypres-Menin road, with the Germans at their heels. "I felt",

afterwards wrote General French, who was not more than a mile or so away at

the time, "as if the last barrier between the Germans and the Channel

seaboard was broken down", and he spent the worst half-hour his life had

ever known. The situation was saved by Brigadier-General FitzClarence,

V.C., commanding the 1st Guards Brigade of the 1st Division, who, on his

own initiative, and in the nick of time, ordered the 2nd Worcesters to

counter-attack. The Worcesters, who were in reserve to the 2nd Division,

rushed up to fill the gap, and, saving the South Wales Borderers, drove the

Germans out of Gheluvelt and re-established the line, which was completely

restored before dark. FitzClarence was killed only a week or two later in

the same part of the field.

The third phase of the battle of Ypres lasted from 1st Nov. to the 10th.

Its most dangerous hours were at the very beginning, when both Messines and

Wytschaete were lost, and only the timely arrival of the French 16th Corps,

which partially restored the situation, and the devoted bravery of

Allenby's Cavalry Corps, staved off this new threat of disaster. It is

impossible here to follow all the confused operations in the remainder of

this phase, in which fighting continued with varying intensity, and mingled

success, all along the line from La Bassee to the sea.

The outstanding feature of the fourth and final phase, which extended from

11th Nov. to the 21st, was the succession of heavy assaults by the pick of

the Prussian Guard, ordered by the Kaiser personally to carry the Ypres

salient at all hazards. It failed, but not before the Germans had pierced

the front along the Menin road in the first clash of arms on the morning of

the 11th, a battalion of Royal Fusiliers being practically wiped out in

gallantly disputing their passage. Haig met the situation "with the same

grim determination, steadfast courage, and skilful forethought"--the words

are those of Lord French--"which had characterized his handling of the

operations throughout". The line was re-established, but only after fearful

losses on both sides. The 1st (Guards) Brigade mustered at night only 4

officers and 300 men.

The French and Belgians were also attacked all along their line between

Ypres and the sea--where British monitors swept the coast with shells for 6

miles inland--but the enemy was held off, save at Dixmude, which he

captured and held. Between Dixmude, which had been stubbornly defended by

Admiral Ronarc'h and his French marines, and Nieuport the sluices of the

Yser had been opened by the Belgians, and the low-lying country across

which the Germans were striving to force a way so flooded as to render all

their efforts futile.

It was during this final effort of the Germans to reach the Channel ports

in 1914 that Lord Roberts arrived at the front to visit the Indian Corps,

who had withstood some heavy assaults on the old line of the Second Army,

between Armentieres and La Bassee. Lord Roberts had scarcely fulfilled his

mission, inspiring the troops with his presence at a critical time, when he

was taken suddenly ill on 13th Oct. and died on the following day.

North of Armentieres the British 3rd Corps under Pulteney, which held the

line thence towards Messines, had its share of fighting on the left bank of

the Lys, and though its deeds in maintaining its positions were

overshadowed by the epic struggles in the salient, its minor battles played

their part in the victory of First Ypres. The great battle died down with

the failure of the supreme effort of the Prussian Guard. Rains and floods

and mud combined to call a halt in the struggle for the Channel ports, and

the Western front was now established for the winter. There were

occasionally attacks by the Germans at Ypres and Festubert, and more than

one attempt on their part to cross the flooded Yser on rafts; but all to no

purpose; and before the end of the year (20th Dec.) a five days' battle

between the Indian troops and the Germans round Givenchy left matters much

as they were before, the British positions, with the aid of British troops,

being held. The French also broke the monotony of trench warfare with

encouraging advances in Alsace, towards Noyon, in the Argonne, and

elsewhere, but no vital changes took place in the general situation.

_Eastern Front, 1914_

Foiled in their grandiose plans in the West, the Germans were forced to

rest content with their valuable territorial gains in France and Belgium,

and remain on the defensive there while they turned to the more threatening

situation on the Eastern front. As already noted, the Germans had

under-estimated the rapidity of the Russian mobilization. They had not

anticipated an offensive on that front until they could spare as many

reserves as necessary from the West, and the forces left to guard their

vulnerable frontier of East Prussia were as inadequate to stay the

unexpected advance which the Grand Duke Nicholas, who was in supreme

command of the Russian armies, ordered under Generals Rennenkampf and

Samsonoff, as were the Belgians to prevent the march of the Germans across

their territory. By 25th Aug. the Russian armies, whose advance had begun

as early as the 7th, had pushed so far ahead that all East Prussia seemed

in danger of falling into their hands. General von Francois, commanding the

German troops, had been driven into Koenigsberg, the cradle of the Prussian

monarchy; Gumbinnen, Justerberg, Allenstein, Soldau, had all been captured;

and the hopes of a flight to Berlin before the Russian 'steam-roller'--too

often raised in the early stages of the war--seemed not unlikely to be

realized.

Germany's hour of danger, however, produced the man who was destined to

play a ruling part in the remaining phases of the struggle--Paul von

Hindenburg, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, then on the retired list.

Hindenburg knew the topography of East Prussia by heart, and had commanded

army corps in manoeuvres along that frontier for many years. Appointed at

this critical moment to supersede General von Francois, he collected

160,000 men from every available source, and by means of Germany's

unequalled strategic railway system had concentrated them in a favourable

position between Allenstein and Soldau for delivering the blow which would

cut the communications of the southern army under Samsonoff, and smash it

piecemeal in the treacherous marshes of the Masurian Lakes, the tracks

through which, though well known to Hindenburg, were a veritable tangle to

the Russians.

Tempted by their initial triumphs, the Russians had themselves courted

disaster by placing themselves in precarious positions. Samsonoff's

southern army had not only lost touch with the northern force under

Rennenkampf, which had occupied Insterberg on the 23rd on its march on

Koenigsberg, but had also failed to secure either Allenstein or Soldau.

Hindenburg was quick to seize every advantage, and his lethal thrust on the

26th, when he retook Soldau and outflanked the Russian left, was followed

by a similar enveloping movement on their right before they realized what

had happened. Masses of German guns came up and completed the move. Too

late the Russians fled along the only road left open to them--by way of

Ortelsberg and Johannisberg, across a narrow slip of land between the

marshes. Save for little more than one corps, which succeeded in escaping

along this route before it was closed, practically the whole of Samsonoff's

army was wiped out in this decisive battle of Tannenberg, as the victors

named it. Samsonoff himself was killed by a shell on 31st Aug. Altogether

the Russians lost in killed and wounded some 30,000; no fewer than 90,000

were taken prisoners.

Hindenburg, whose Chief of Staff was General von Ludendorff--already

distinguished in the war as the leader in the assault on Liege--at once

became a national hero throughout Germany. The Central Powers, however, had

little further cause for rejoicing on the Eastern front in 1914, once

Hindenburg had been enticed to the Niemen by the rapid retreat of

Rennenkampf after the Tannenberg _debacle_. The Grand Duke Nicholas had

sent General Ruzsky from Galicia to retrieve the situation, and the new

leader made as good use of the Niemen River--a formidable obstacle to cross

with its width of some 200 yards--as Hindenburg had done of the Masurian

Lakes. The operations, which ended in the failure of the Germans to cross

the river, and their heavy defeat at Augustovo after a sanguinary nineteen

days' battle beginning on 1st Oct., restored confidence to the Russian

army.

General Ruzsky had already made his mark in the opening campaign in

Galicia, where the Austro-Hungarian armies, after invading Russian Poland

at the opening of the war, were driven back in a series of mighty battles

which left the Russians in possession of Lemberg and all Eastern Galicia.

Brussiloff was meantime sweeping on towards the Carpathian passes, while

Ivanoff, commanding the Russians in Poland, forced back the invading armies

under Dankl and the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand beyond the Vistula and

Cracow. Przemysl alone held out in Galicia, and this was invested by the

Russians towards the end of September, when the Germans, far to the north

on the Niemen, were rapidly losing the advantage and prestige they had won

at Tannenberg. Hence Germany's increasing need for help from the Western

front.

In order to check the Russian advance on the key position of Cracow,

Hindenburg was now called from the East Prussian front to take over the

supreme command of the unified German and Austro-Hungarian armies in a

crushing blow at the Russian centre in Poland. Hindenburg's advance on

Warsaw was planned by his Chief of Staff, Ludendorff, to keep pace with a

parallel advance of the Austro-German armies in the south, intended to

raise the siege of Przemysl and turn the Russians out of Lemberg. The

combined forces of the Central Powers amounted to some two million men,

outnumbering the Russians by at least half a million, and outgunning them

completely. It speaks volumes not only for the fighting spirit of the

Russian armies at this period of the war, but also for the strategy

inspired by the Grand Duke Nicholas, that in both the first and second

battles of Warsaw the combined Austro-German armies were both outfought and

outmanoeuvred. "The Grand Duke Nicholas", to quote from Lord French's

tribute to his leadership some years later, "proved that he possessed that

highest of military gifts--the power of renunciation, of 'cutting down', of

sacrificing the less essential for the more."

Foreseeing the danger of Hindenburg's march on Warsaw, the Grand Duke

promptly recalled the first great Russian advance on Cracow, and the armies

concerned were safely withdrawn behind the Vistula and the San before the

enemy could cut the main line from Warsaw to Kiev. Ivanoff's army in

Galicia conformed to the general movement. While thus suggesting the

abandonment of Poland and a general retirement on Brest-Litovsk, the Grand

Duke placed a field army in defence of Warsaw, assisted by Japanese heavy

artillery, and prepared a great counter-offensive from the north-west,

under cover of the guns of Novo Georgievsk.

Hindenburg's main blow was delivered at Josefov, higher up the Vistula,

with the intention of taking Warsaw in the rear. Ruzsky had been brought

down to take command at Josefov, and here repeated the disaster which he

had recently inflicted on the Germans at Augustovo. This time he lured the

enemy across the river before falling on him in difficult country, and cut

him to pieces. Rennenkampf was equally successful with the counter-attack

from Novo Georgievsk, striking so hard that the German left centre was

forced back from the Vistula with heavy losses. With both flanks

turned--for Ruzsky had followed up his victory by himself crossing the

river at Novo Alexandriev, and driving the Germans back first to Radowa

(15th Oct.) and then to Kielce (3rd Nov.)--Hindenburg had no alternative

but to seek safety within the German frontier, and prepare another

counter-stroke. The only success of the first advance on Warsaw was

achieved by the Austrians under the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand and Generals

Woyrsch and Dankl, who succeeded in temporarily relieving Przemysl and

recovering Jaroslav. Hindenburg's retreat, however, compelled them to

withdraw in conformity to that movement. Przemysl was again invested, the

Austrians again fell back in Galicia, and the Russian advance on Cracow was

renewed, the Grand Duke Nicholas having set his heart on reaching that

convenient gateway both to Berlin and Vienna before the end of the year.

The second Russian advance on Cracow commenced with the second German

advance on Warsaw, and both operations naturally reacted on each other. The

Russians were at the very gates of Cracow by 5th Dec., but were then

checked by an Austro-Hungarian counter-offensive which threatened both

their flanks. The loss of the Dukla Pass (12th Dec.) forced a general

retreat on this front, and was followed by the loss in turn of the Lupkow

and Uszok Passes. By 20th Dec., however, the Russians, who had fallen back

behind the River Nida, turned on their pursuers and drove them north again

until they were once more in possession of the Carpathian passes.

The Germans were no more successful in their second advance on Warsaw than

the Russians had been in their march on Cracow. Hindenburg's urgent call

for reinforcements, which had helped to relieve the pressure on the Western

front in those critical days round Ypres, enabled him to attack all along

the line on 18th Nov. The main assault was delivered by von Mackensen on

the line held by Ruzsky from Gombin, on the Vistula, to Uniejov, on the

Warta. Ruzsky's retreat to the Bzura in face of Mackensen's terrific onrush

was one of the brilliant episodes of the war. It continued, with an

increasing bulge, until Mackensen, on 23rd Nov., burst right through this

and split it in halves. The halves held, and began to close up, with two

German army corps all but bottled up within. But for some blunder in

timing, for which Rennenkampf was held responsible, their only way of

escape would have been cut off. As it was, after three days of desperate

fighting, the German corps fought their way out--but only in remnants.

The Russians themselves had suffered heavy losses and were running short of

ammunition, and when Hindenburg retaliated by blow upon blow in every

sector, the Grand Duke Nicholas shortened his front, evacuated Lodz, and

defended Warsaw from behind the Rawka and the Bzura. Here he sustained

repeated onslaughts for nearly three weeks, the fiercest fighting taking

place between the 19th Dec. and Christmas Eve against Bolimov and

Sochaczew. In the end the Germans failed to hack a way through to Warsaw,

just as they had failed a few weeks previously in their efforts to break

through to Ypres and the Channel ports on the Western front. They were

still 35 miles from the Polish capital at the close of 1914.

_Opening Campaign in Serbia_

In the meantime the Austro-Hungarian armies, which had somewhat atoned for

their earlier failures by their successes in the recent advance which had

temporarily relieved Przemysl, were making little headway in their campaign

against Serbia. That heroic little nation, though sadly depleted in her

manhood by two years of Balkan warfare, was more than a match for her

mightier neighbours in the opening stages of the European War. Austria's

first punitive expedition, heralded by the bombardment of Belgrade on 29th

July, was easily checked, the main invading forces being withdrawn to meet

the new situation on the Russian front. Serbia and Montenegro thereupon

invaded Bosnia, and an unproductive campaign of withdrawals and advances

led, towards the end of October, when Turkey threw in her lot with the

Central Powers, to an Austrian invasion of Serbia in earnest. At first the

Austrians, an army corps strong, and advancing in three columns, carried

all before them. Valjevo fell on 29th Nov., and Belgrade ten days later. In

withdrawing, however, the Serbians, ably led by the Crown Prince, Marshal

Putnik, and General Mishitch, were falling back towards their bases and new

supplies of ammunition; and in the battle of Rudnik, or 'Battle of the

Ridges', which followed, turned on their pursuers and practically destroyed

them. The battle lasted three days, at the end of which the remnants of the

Austrian army corps, with the victorious Serbians hard on their heels, were

in full flight to the frontier, leaving behind them 15,000 prisoners and 19

guns. All told their casualties amounted to some 80,000 and the bulk of

their guns before the survivors were back in their own country, across the

Danube, the Drina, and the Save.

_First Months of the War at Sea_

At sea the first months of the war had seen the Germans very discreetly

sheltering in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, leaving it to submarines,

mine-layers, raiders, and a few commerce-destroyers to do as much damage as

possible and reduce the disparity between its own force and that of the

Allied fleets.

The first naval action of any importance took place in the Bight of

Heligoland, on 23rd Aug., when a force of destroyers, led by Commander

Tyrwhitt in the new light cruiser _Arethusa_, with another light cruiser,

the _Fearless_, and a flotilla of submarines under Commodore Keyes, served

as a lure to draw out the Germans. They drew first a German force of

destroyers and two cruisers (_Ariadne_ and _Strasburg_) from Heligoland.

The _Arethusa_ greatly distinguished herself in the general engagement

which followed, but, though she played the main part in driving the Germans

back, she was so badly cut up that she had to be taken in tow at the end of

the action. This was not until the Germans, deceived into the belief that

the British ships were unsupported, sent out their heavier cruisers, the

_Mainz_, _Koeln_, and _Aurora_, just in time for Beatty's battle-cruisers,

which arrived at the critical moment, led by the _Lion_, to settle the

issue by sinking the three enemy cruisers above mentioned, besides a number

of their destroyers. No British units were lost. Apart from this engagement

the war in home waters for the next few months resolved itself into such

isolated incidents as the sinking of the three old sister cruisers

_Aboukir_, _Hogue_, and _Cressy_ by the German submarine commanded by Otto

Weddigen (22nd Sept.); the destruction of four German destroyers by the

British light cruiser _Undaunted_, supported by destroyers, on 17th Oct.;

and raids by fast German cruisers on Yarmouth (3rd Nov.), on Scarborough,

Whitby, and the Hartlepools (16th Dec.), the first of which led to the loss

of the German cruiser _Yorck_ while crossing the minefield at

Wilhelmshaven.

The scattered units of the German navy in other seas were gradually bottled

up or destroyed. The Dreadnought _Goeben_, and the light cruiser _Breslau_,

which were in the Mediterranean on the outbreak of hostilities, succeeded

in evading the British fleet and reached the Dardanelles, where they played

no small part in persuading the pro-German Turks, a few months later,

openly to side with the Central Powers. Other German warships caught by the

war in more distant waters included the light cruiser _Emden_, on the China

station. The _Emden_ disappeared for six weeks and then turned up in the

Bay of Bengal, bombarding Madras on 22nd Sept., and capturing some twenty

British steamers in the same month. On 28th Oct. she sank a Russian cruiser

in Penang Roads, as well as a French destroyer, but twelve days later (9th

Nov.) ended her eventful cruise off Cocos (Keeling) Islands, where she

called to destroy the cable and wireless station. The telegraphists on the

island sent out a warning message which reached the _Sydney_, a British

cruiser of the Australian squadron then escorting Australian and New

Zealand troops to the war. Within three hours the _Sydney_ arrived on the

scene, and having the range of the _Emden_ with 6-inch guns to 4.1-inch

guns, forced the German cruiser ashore. After losing 7 officers and 104 men

the _Emden_, burning and half-sunk, surrendered.

[Illustration: Map to illustrate the BATTLE OF THE FALKLAND IS.

Map illustrating approximately--from Admiral Sturdee's Dispatch--the Battle

of the Falkland Islands from start to finish. The map must not be regarded

as showing the proper scale of distances, &c.]

More dangerous than the _Emden_ was the German cruiser squadron under

Admiral Graf von Spee, which concentrated in the South Pacific from

Kiao-Chau and elsewhere. The squadron consisted of the twin cruisers

_Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, each of 11,400 tons, 22 knots speed, and an

armament which included eight 8.2-inch guns; and three smaller cruisers,

_Dresden_, _Nuernberg_, and _Leipzig_, each of 3500 tons, and carrying ten

4.1-inch guns. On 1st Nov. von Spee fell in with the weak British squadron

under Admiral Cradock, who had been sent in August to protect the South

Pacific trade, and was expecting reinforcements to cope with the German

concentration. Cradock's squadron consisted of old ships like the cruisers

_Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_; the light cruiser _Glasgow_, and the armed

liner _Otranto_; the pre-Dreadnought battleship _Canopus_, which had been

left behind for repairs, being some twelve hours away. Outsteamed and

outranged--though the _Good Hope_ (14,000 tons) had two 9.2-inch guns on

board--with the setting sun silhouetting their surfaces against the sky,

they were no match for the Germans, who made the most of the added

advantage which their inshore position gave them, obscuring their outlines

when, as the light began to fail, they drew nearer to Cradock's ships and

opened fire. The _Good Hope's_ two 9.2-inch guns could not find their

target in the fading light, and were soon put out of action by von Spee's

flagship, the _Scharnhorst_, whose eight 8.2-inch guns, like those of the

_Gneisenau_, which meantime was engaged in a similar duel with the

_Monmouth_, now had the British at their mercy. The 6-inch guns of

Cradock's ships, almost awash in the rolling seas, were useless. At 7.50

p.m. the _Good Hope_ blew up, but not before Cradock had ordered the

_Glasgow_ to get away with all speed and warn the _Canopus_. The useless

_Otranto_ had been ordered away before the battle opened. The _Monmouth_,

after being silenced and set on fire by the 8.2-inch guns of the

_Gneisenau_, was finally sunk by the _Nuernberg_. No survivors were picked

up by the Germans, either from the _Good Hope_ or the _Monmouth_. With

Cradock perished in this naval disaster off Coronel some 1500 officers and

men.

Meanwhile the _Glasgow_, making full use of her 25-knot speed, had warned

the slow old _Canopus_, and together they made their way back to the

Falkland Islands to await developments. Four days later Lord Fisher, who

had just succeeded Prince Louis of Battenberg as First Lord of the

Admiralty (20th Oct.), dispatched Admiral Sturdee with a squadron bent on

avenging Cradock, and protecting the valuable base and coaling-station of

the Falklands. Sturdee's squadron included the two first battle-cruisers

built--the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_, each of 17,250 tonnage, with a

speed of 27 knots, and eight 12-inch guns, besides sixteen 4-inch guns and

five torpedo tubes. There were also four lighter cruisers--_Carnarvon_,

_Kent_, _Cornwall_, and _Bristol_; and to these were added the _Canopus_

when Sturdee reached the Falklands on 7th December. The _Glasgow_ had

already been picked up in the South Atlantic. The superiority both in

number and weight of guns was now overwhelmingly on the side of the

British.

Von Spee, who claimed to have suffered little loss in his victory off

Coronel, had returned in the meanwhile to Valparaiso to refit, leaving

again for the Falklands on 15th Nov. His programme apparently was to do as

much damage as possible to the British base and coaling-station at Port

Stanley; account for the _Canopus_ and _Glasgow_, which he expected to find

defending the port; and thence make for South Africa in support of the

rebellion there. Only some twenty-four hours before he approached Port

Stanley Admiral Sturdee had arrived, and the news sent by the signallers on

the island at 8 a.m., that the unsuspecting enemy was approaching, found

the crews grimy from coaling, but alert and ready. Von Spee sent the

_Gneisenau_ and _Nuernberg_ ahead to shell the wireless station, but a

salvo of 12-inch shells from the _Canopus_ in the harbour at 9.20 a.m.

caused them to change their course. It was not, however, until 9.45 a.m.,

when the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ put out to sea with the _Glasgow_

and _Kent_, that the presence of the battle-cruisers was revealed to them.

It was then too late to escape. The German ships were no match for the

British battle-cruisers either in speed or gun-power. With the conditions

of Coronel thus reversed, Von Spee, abandoning the attempt to run as

hopeless, decided to die fighting, and met his death as gallantly as

Cradock had done some five short weeks before. Both the _Scharnhorst_ and

her sister the _Gneisenau_, battered by the two British battle-cruisers,

who were later joined by the _Carnarvon_, until they were mere helpless

hulks, fought to the last before they capsized, the first at 4.15 p.m., the

second just after six. Boats were ordered out to save survivors, and some

200 Germans were picked up from these and other ships that were sunk. The

_Leipzig_, pursued by the _Glasgow_ and _Cornwall_, kept up a running fight

for three hours, and then, hammered to pieces, hauled her flag, but

afterwards sank. The _Nuernberg_, after a longer chase, suffered a similar

fate at the hands of the _Kent_, sinking an hour after surrendering. Only

the _Dresden_ escaped, seeking refuge at Juan Fernandez, but three months

later she was called to account there by the _Kent_ and _Glasgow_ (14th

March, 1915), when, after a five minutes' action, she was blown up by her

commander.

With no enemy fleet at sea the task of the British navy was reduced to

guarding British commerce from submarines and raiders, keeping watch and

ward in the North Sea, and conveying troops to and from the widely

scattered theatres of war. Every month added to Britain's commitments in

various parts of the globe. All hope of an early peace had vanished by the

end of 1914.

_Mobilizing the Empire_

Happily for the British Empire, Lord Kitchener had from the first

anticipated a long-drawn struggle. His call for volunteers "for three

years, or the duration of the war", showed how clearly he realized the

gravity of the situation. One of his first demands had been for another

half-million men to go on with, and history has recorded how nobly the

young manhood of the nation responded to his call. All the Dominions and

Overseas possessions rallied to the Motherland with equal enthusiasm. We

have shown how Indian troops--fighting for the first time on European

soil--had already stepped into the breach on the Western front. The

Canadians, nearest at hand, were the first of the Dominions to follow suit,

but Australia and New Zealand, before their campaigns in Egypt and

Gallipoli--and subsequently in France and Flanders--had already occupied

Samoa, the Bismarck Archipelago, and other German islands in the Pacific.

_South Africa, 1914_

South Africa, on the outbreak of hostilities, had offered to carry the war

into the German territory of South-West Africa, but General Botha had first

to crush a revolt of Colonel Maritz's force; and this was succeeded by a

more formidable rising in the Orange River Colony under De Wet, and in the

Transvaal under Beyers. The response to Botha's call to arms proved the

striking loyalty of the rest of the Union, and with the force thus mustered

the South African Prime Minister completely defeated the rebels before the

end of November. De Wet was captured, and Beyers was drowned in attempting

to escape. The colonial campaign which followed will be dealt with

subsequently.

_1915 on the European Fronts_

_The Russian Campaign._--The heaviest burden of the war on the main fronts

was now borne by Russia. Having failed to force a decision in the West,

Germany looked to the Eastern front for compensating triumphs, confident

that she could maintain her defensive positions against the Franco-British

armies until such time as, with Austria-Hungary's help, she had brought

Russia to her knees. It was also necessary to overawe Roumania and any

other hesitating Balkan state that might be disposed to throw in its lot

with Russia and her allies. Russia herself was provoking this reversal of

German strategy by her renewed advances both on the Carpathian and East

Prussian fronts. Hindenburg made two attacks on Warsaw early in the year

(February and March), one by way of the Narew and the other by that of the

Niemen, but both failed, thanks chiefly to the indomitable spirit of the

Russian infantrymen, ill-equipped though they were. It was not until

Mackensen's great 'drive' began on the southern flank in Galicia that

Germany's new strategy revealed itself. Russia had then reached the

culminating point in her military career. Besides holding up the German

offensive in Poland, she had made herself mistress of all East Galicia,

Przemysl having fallen to General Selivanoff on 22nd March after an

investment of five months, thus releasing 100,000 men to reinforce the

armies under Ivanoff, Dmitrieff, and Brussiloff--then battling for the

passes which led through the Carpathians into the Plain of Hungary.

Przemysl alone yielded 126,000 Austrian prisoners, including the commander,

General von Kusmanek, and 1000 guns. Between that period and the middle of

April, when the Russians claimed possession of all the Carpathian heights

along a front of 70 miles from south of the Dukla Pass to north of the

Uszok Pass, another 70,000 Austrian prisoners were taken.

It was a dazzling, but an illusory triumph. The Russians had been

deliberately led by the Austrians--under instructions from the German

Higher Command--into their hazardous Carpathian adventure as part of the

secret preparations for Mackensen's mighty blow elsewhere. Von Falkenhayn,

then Chief of Staff, afterwards gave the credit for the plan to the German

General Head-quarters. Germany, with all her factories turning out

munitions of war far in excess of anything that the Allies could then

muster, had been accumulating guns and ammunition for this purpose for

months past, together with poison-gas and liquid fire, and a total force of

some 2,000,000 well-armed men. Russia, on the other hand, though she might

oppose this force with fully as many men, was coming to the end of her

resources, and her troops were ill-equipped to meet the massed guns of the

artillery brought against them when the German phalanx, after minor thrusts

to left and right to cloak the real designs of the German Higher Command,

began its overpowering advance on 1st May against the Dunajec lines, where

Dmitrieff's Russian army believed itself securely entrenched. Mackensen's

guns, opening up a way for the strongest army yet mustered under one

general, blew the Dunajec lines to fragments. The Russian infantry clung to

their positions to the last moment, but their rifles, often empty, were

useless against high-explosive shells, or the waves of poison-gas which

preceded the advance of Mackensen's shock troops.

[Illustration: Map to illustrate the German Attack north of Warsaw in

February, 1915]

On 5th May, with its front wholly turned, Dmitrieff's shattered army

withdrew as best it could from the Dunajec lines to the San River. All

Russia's gains in Galicia were destined to be sacrificed in similar

fashion. Brussiloff's advance through the Carpathians was at once arrested;

by 14th May, when Everts' army on the Nida had also fallen back, all the

passes had been evacuated, though not without appalling losses. In the

Bukovina, however, the Russian army under General Lechitsky maintained a

stubborn resistance south of the Dniester until 27th June, when it fell

back to the Gnila Lipa. It was high time to retreat. Przemysl had again

fallen into Austro-German hands (2nd June) as the first outstanding result

of Mackensen's advance; Lemberg followed suit on 22nd June; and Halicz,

abandoned by Brussiloff, fell on the day on which Lechitsky's army

retreated from the Dniester to the Gnila Lipa. The end of June saw these

positions abandoned and a further retreat in progress towards the line of

the Lublin-Cholm railway.

Not cheaply were these spectacular triumphs won by the advancing armies of

Mackensen and the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand. Their troops had been twice

thrown back on the Dniester before that river had been finally won--a

passage which cost them, all told, some 150,000 men; and in the successive

retreats which followed, the Russian infantrymen turned repeatedly on their

pursuers to prove that they were still capable of enforcing a price for

every yard of ceded territory.

Mackensen's 'drive' was only part of the German Higher Command's plan for

destroying the Russian armies in 1915. While the Austro-German phalanx was

thus thrusting its way towards the Lublin-Cholm railway line, a

simultaneous movement was in progress in the north, which had for its first

objectives the great fortresses of the Polish salient, and Warsaw itself.

Here Hindenburg, who was still in supreme command of the Austro-German

forces on the Eastern front, had no longer General Ruzsky opposing him,

Ruzsky having handed over the Russian northern command to Alexieff owing to

ill-health. No matter how bravely the Russian infantrymen fought, or how

ably they were led, they could not stand up against the hurricane of shot

and shell which now blasted a path for the fully-equipped armies of von

Below, von Eichhorn, von Gallwitz, von Scholtz, Leopold of Bavaria, and von

Woyrsch. Prasnysz was won by von Gallwitz after a fierce battle in the

middle of July, the Russians retiring to the shelter of the Narew

fortresses guarding Warsaw from the north-east. Mackensen's advance to the

south was resumed the next day, and the Grand Duke Nicholas, foreseeing the

peril of this double threat, realized that his only hope lay in flattening

the Warsaw salient and thus shortening his line. This sealed the fate of

Warsaw, which was entered by Prince Leopold of Bavaria on 4th Aug.

Ivangorod fell on the following day; Kovno on the 17th; Novo Georgievsk on

the 19th. These losses, though deplorable, were not vital while the Russian

armies still retained power to retaliate and recoup. Hindenburg strained

every nerve to crush them once and for all. Ossowiec fell on 22nd Aug., the

Russians resuming their retreat from the Niemen and Bobhr. Brest-Litovsk

had already been threatened by the converging movement of Mackensen and

Prince Leopold of Bavaria. Seeing no hope of saving it in the face of the

continued pressure, the Grand Duke Nicholas evacuated this most easterly of

the Polish quadrilateral of forts on the 25th, having previously stripped

it, as in the case of the other evacuated fortresses, of all war material.

Hindenburg strove to complete the discomfiture of the main Russian armies

by a fresh advance on his extreme left, where von Below was ordered to push

through Courland towards Riga, with Petrograd as the ultimate goal in the

following year. On this front the Russians had already been forced to

relinquish Memel, just across the German frontier, as well as Libau. German

naval forces had shared in the operations on the Riga coast-line, and when

von Below, after carrying Mitau, some 30 miles from Riga itself, met with

prolonged resistance, they made an ill-fated attempt to capture the port

from the sea. This was on 18th Aug., when the Russian fleet appeared on the

scene while the German naval contingents were attempting to land in

flat-bottomed barges at Pernau. The landing forces were annihilated, and

the German ships beaten off with a loss of two cruisers and eight

torpedo-boats. The Russians only lost an old gunboat in this one-sided

action.

The naval operations, however, had little effect on the main issue. Russian

fortresses continued for another month to fall like ninepins before the

Austro-German armies. Grodno was evacuated at the beginning of September,

and though General Everts escaped from Brest-Litovsk with his supplies and

guns, he could not hold up Mackensen's irresistible march on Pinsk, even in

the Pripet marshes, which were dry at that season of the year. Pinsk was

occupied on 16th Sept. Nowhere was the pressure relaxed. In the south,

where the flood-tide of the Teutonic advance had never set so strongly, the

attack on the Volhynian fortresses had been vigorously opposed by Ivanoff;

but Boehm-Ermolli entered Lutsk on 1st Sept., and the Austrians recaptured

Brody on the same day.

The vital blow at this stage was being delivered in the north, where von

Below, bent on reaching Riga for his winter quarters, was marching on the

Dvina lines with the immediate object of crossing that river and turning

the whole Russian front as far as Dvinsk. The extreme left flank of the

Germans fought desperately for the Dvina crossing at Friedrichstadt, but

failed to make it good, and the danger-point shifted towards Vilna, the ten

days' battle for which was decided at Meiszagowla on 12th Sept. Though two

Russian divisions of the Imperial Guard were brought up to defend this key

position, they were powerless to hold it against the great weight of German

artillery. With its capture on 12th Sept., Vilna's fall became merely a

matter of days. Before the Vilna armies could make good their escape,

Hindenburg endeavoured to crown his triumph by outflanking them on both

sides, von Eichhorn's cavalry sweeping round from Vilkomir in the north,

and von Scholtz pressing forward, though less rapidly, on the southern side

of the salient.

[Illustration: The Germanic Slice out of Russian Territory at the end of

the Summer Campaign of 1915.]

In this supreme crisis on the Eastern front, Ruzsky, recovered from his

illness, returned to his command of the northern battlefields, and

signalized his reappearance--not for the first time--by changing the whole

complexion of affairs. Reinforcements enabled him in the first place

methodically to evacuate the Vilna salient under their protection.

Hindenburg endeavoured to counter this by rushing up cavalry

reinforcements, with 140 guns, to support his outflanking thrust in the

north, which, reaching Vidzy on the 16th and Vileika on the following

day--this being well to the rear of the Vilna armies--threatened

irremediable disaster to the retreating Russians. They were saved by the

series of flank-guard battles securing their one avenue of retreat, and

Ruzsky's counter-offensive from Dvinsk--a stroke so effective that the long

German cavalry arm was in itself now in danger of being cut off. Vidzy was

recaptured on the 20th; Smorgon, south of Novo Grodek, on the 21st; and

Vileika before the end of the month.

On 15th Sept. Lord Kitchener had publicly declared that the Germans had

"shot their bolt" on the Eastern front; and, so far as the immediate

destruction of the Russian army as a force in being was concerned, this was

true, though it was hard to believe while the wide sweep of the German

advance was in full force. Ivanoff's reaction was equally marked in the

south, where Brussiloff and Lechitsky took von Bothmer and Pflanzer-Baltin

by surprise. Before the end of September the Austro-Germans had not only

been pushed back to the Strypa, but had also lost both Dubno and Lutsk

(23rd).

Germany's great summer offensive was over, but Hindenburg tried hard to

secure good winter quarters in the north by a renewed advance on Dvinsk and

Riga. A frontal attack was launched on Dvinsk on 3rd Oct. and was a costly

failure. Ruzsky had defended Dvinsk with a semicircle of far-flung trenches

on the Verdun model, against which the German shock-troops and guns could

make practically no progress. After three weeks of vain endeavour

Hindenburg shifted the attack to Riga, with no better success and heavy

additional casualties. Thrust and counter-thrust succeeded one another with

little change in the general situation until the end of November, when,

after temporarily securing a crossing at Dahlend Island, south-east of

Riga, in the River Dvina, Hindenburg was forced to abandon the attempt as

futile. With the help of their fleet the Russians won their way back to

Kemmern; and in their counter-offensive from Dvinsk in the same month

recaptured Illutsk. All hope was then abandoned by the Germans of taking

either Riga or Dvinsk that year. The German effort in the south, below the

Pripet marshes, also slackened. Ivanoff not only maintained the ground he

had won, but scored several notable victories in the Strypa sector; but

both here and along the Styr, where Lechitsky was opposing Bothmer, there

was both give and take and nothing decisive--apart from the fact that

Roumania was saved by this evidence of Russia's recuperative powers from

choosing the wrong side.

In order further to influence the dubious attitude of Roumania, a fresh

Russian offensive in the Bukovina was begun in the last days of the year,

with Czernowitz as the objective; but as this rightly belongs to 1916 it

will be dealt with in our summary of the operations for that year. Though

Russia had not succumbed as a military power under the staggering blows she

had received in 1915, she had lost 2,000,000 of her best fighting men, and

the _moral_ of her army was never so high again. Falkenhayn has hinted in

his _Memoirs_ that the Germans knew that the blind faith of the Russians in

their rulers was already shaken before they started Mackensen's 'drive'. It

could not be expected to endure in face of the criminal neglect and

corruption which every day added to their hardships and losses at the

front. The Russian court at that period has been described as a mixture of

folly and intrigue, with 'dark forces' at work under pro-German influence,

led by the impostor Rasputin. The Grand Duke Nicholas, who was above the

treacherous influences now undermining all departments of the Russian

system, had been transferred to the command in the Caucasus in the most

critical hours of the Austro-Germanic advance, the supreme command of the

Russian armies being taken over by the Tsar himself (5th Sept.), with

Alexieff as Chief of Staff. The Tsar's motives were above suspicion; but he

lacked the efficiency and generalship of the Grand Duke, and stood for a

system which, under the searching test of war, was proving itself unworthy

of the continued sacrifices of his subjects. The sacrifices were repeated

in 1916, but the seeds were already sown of the red harvest which was to

lead to Russia's downfall and the end of the Romanoffs.

_The Balkans, 1915_

The progress of German arms in 1915 had decided Bulgaria to throw in her

lot with the Central Powers. Her price--fixed by secret treaty with Germany

in July of that year--was the whole of Macedonia possessed by Serbia, and

other valuable slices of territory. It was not until 12th Oct. that formal

war was declared by Bulgaria against Serbia, five days after the fresh

invasion of Serbia had begun under Mackensen's leadership, with two

Austro-German armies, one under General Koevess, advancing west of Belgrade

in a wide flanking movement along the old roads over the Save and the

Drina, and the other, under General von Gallwitz, advancing east of

Belgrade against the main Serbian forces. Against this new Mackensen

'drive', with fully-equipped forces larger than the whole Serbian army,

organized with all the Teutonic thoroughness which marked the same leader's

Galician triumph, the Serbians had no chance, though they fought, as ever,

with stoic resistance, and exacted a price for every inch of ceded

territory. While they were thus stubbornly retreating, Bulgaria threw in

two of her armies on the Eastern front, thus threatening, with the

advancing Austro-German forces, to enclose them in a wide loop. The tragedy

of it was that Serbia's allies were powerless to save her; and that Greece,

who by the terms of her treaty with Serbia should have gone to her

assistance as soon as Bulgaria attacked her, declined through King

Constantine to do so, notwithstanding the insistent advice of his Prime

Minister, M. Venizelos. Convinced, like King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, that

Germany was winning the war, King Constantine maintained to the end an

attitude which, though he chose to call it neutral, was never friendly

towards the Allies. Russia had her hands too full to go to Serbia's aid,

and though a Franco-British attempt was made as the net closed round the

encircled Serbians, it was too late to save the situation.

The story of the Serbian disaster of 1915, when the fall of Monastir on 2nd

Dec. robbed the Serbians of their last stronghold, is that of a desperate

flight across the frontier and over the mountains of Albania and Montenegro

to the Adriatic. Thanks to the Serbians' heroic efforts, the Austro-German

armies had not been able to close the net tight, and though the Bulgarians

followed hard on their heels, they could not quite complete their victory.

All told, however, the Serbians lost some 50,000 men, killed, wounded,

captured, or starved, in the retreat, together with their guns and

equipment. Their aged monarch shared the retreat and succeeded in reaching

Brindisi.

Meanwhile the Franco-British force, which, as already related, arrived too

late to prevent this final act of the Serbian tragedy, had established a

strong base at Salonika, notwithstanding Greek protests on the grounds of

neutrality. It was not until 14th Oct. that the combined force, under the

leadership of General Sarrail--the British column being commanded by

General Mahon--began to move up the Vardar valley, the British advancing on

the right towards Lake Doiran, and the French towards Strumnitza. Both

forces were soon in touch with the Bulgarians, and fought a number of minor

engagements in their forlorn hope of effecting a junction with the

hard-pressed Serbians. Besides being too late, however, the Franco-British

forces were not strong enough to effect their purpose, and when the

remnants of the Serbian army had been forced across the frontier towards

the Adriatic, they were themselves attacked by powerful Bulgarian columns.

The object of his expedition having been eliminated, General Sarrail

prepared for retreat to his base. The Bulgarians did their best to harry

his retirement. They launched a determined attack, which he repulsed with

heavy loss; and then endeavoured to isolate the two columns by an assault

on the British force at Lake Doiran. Though some 1300 casualties were

sustained in defeating this attack, the British, acting as flank-guard to

the French, enabled the retreat to be made jointly. By 13th Dec. the Allied

troops, having administered a severe check to the pursuing Bulgarians two

days previously, were across the Greek frontier in good order, and in due

course had entrenched themselves about Salonika.

With the fall of Serbia came the collapse of Montenegro, in circumstances

considerably less heroic than those which marked the Serbian retreat. The

key position of Mont Lovtchen was abandoned to the Austrians with little if

any show of resistance, and Cettinje, the capital, similarly entered by the

invaders. King Nicholas of Montenegro sought refuge in Paris; Prince Mirko

of Montenegro in Vienna.

The Serbian soldiers who survived the great retreat, numbering some 100,000

in all, were met on the Adriatic coast by units of the Italian fleet and

transferred to Corfu--to recoup and refit for the later campaigns which

were to lead to the recovery of their country.

_Italy, 1915_

Italy, whose warships were thus instrumental in salving the Serbian army,

had thrown in her lot with the Allies by declaring war against

Austria-Hungary on 23rd May, 1915. Austria had refused to offer adequate

'compensation' for her disturbance of the Balkans; and, moreover, the time

had obviously arrived to complete Italian unity. A few weeks previously

Italy had signed the Treaty of London, under which the Allies agreed to

satisfy most of her territorial ambitions when the time came to share the

spoils of victory an agreement which led to some of the most difficult

problems in the final peace settlement. To Italy's honour be it added that

she joined forces with the Allies when their prospects were none too

bright, when they were able to report little or no progress either on the

Western front or in Gallipoli, and Austro-German arms, on the other hand,

were beginning to carry all before them in Mackensen's great drive in

Galicia.

Italy was in no position to throw her whole weight into the struggle in

1915. Though her war strength was reckoned at a million men, her army was

ill-equipped with guns, especially with modern heavy artillery and

machine-guns, and her industrial resources were wholly inadequate to make

good the deficiency. The mountainous frontier which she had to defend, too,

gave every advantage to the Austrians. She succeeded in seizing three of

the passes, the Stelvio, Tonale, and Guidriari, on the east side of the

Trentino, and in blocking others on the west side, as the opening moves of

her campaign, the object being to secure her flank in the subsequent

offensive operations which aimed at Trieste by an advance across the

Isonzo. Though these operations succeeded in pinning to the Italian front

considerable forces of Austro-Hungarian troops which might have been thrown

into the Russian furnace, the Italian effort fell far short of its

objectives. General Cadorna, the Italian Commander-in-Chief, won a number

of small successes in deploying his Third Army on the right bank of the

Isonzo during June and July, securing the bridge-heads at Caporetto--the

scene of Italian disaster two years later--Plava, Gradisca, and Monfalcone,

thus holding the western bank of the river from Tolmino down to the sea.

But the Italians were now faced with powerful defences, buttressed by the

Carso Plateau in the south, which could only be carried at that time at

prohibitive cost. All attempts to capture these strongholds broke down, and

though a footing was gained on the Carso, and slight gains were constantly

reported from the Trentino, the operations along the Italian front settled

down before the year was out to the give-and-take fighting which

characterized the siege operations in the West.

_Western Front in 1915_

On the Western front neither France nor Great Britain was ready in 1915 to

undertake any advance comparable with the great offensives of the Central

Powers in the East. Russia in her agony complained that France was not

doing enough, but all the Allies' efforts this year were crippled by their

inability to supply the wholly unprecedented demands for munitions of war.

Great Britain was still struggling months behind to catch up a foe who had

been preparing for years. Mr. Lloyd George subsequently related how, in the

month of May, 1915, when the Germans were turning out 250,000 shells a day,

most of them high-explosives, Great Britain was producing a mere 2500 a day

in high-explosives, and 13,000 in shrapnel. The French, accustomed to

supplying the demands of armies on a Continental scale, had naturally done

considerably better than this, but even their most strenuous efforts were

inadequate to cope with the enormous output of the German arsenals. Mr.

Lloyd George retired from the Chancellorship of the Exchequer in order to

assume control of the newly created Ministry of Munitions, which in due

course more than made good all these defects. That, however, was not in

1915. Up to the end of that year, according to Lord French, "the scanty

supply of munitions of war paralysed all our power of initiative, and at

critical times menaced our defence with irretrievable disaster".

At the end of the first long winter of dreary trench warfare the British

Commander-in-Chief deemed it necessary to undertake an offensive in order

to prevent the _moral_ of his army from deteriorating. Hence the battle of

Neuve Chapelle, which, begun on 10th March, was fought with a small reserve

of ammunition accumulated for the purpose, and had to be broken off after

three days' struggle through lack of further supplies. The troops chosen

for the main assault were Rawlinson's Fourth Army Corps, with the Indian

Corps on the right. Following the preliminary bombardment, they quickly

overran Neuve Chapelle itself and made 1000 yards progress on a 3-mile

front. But to left and right the attacks were held up, and two further

days' fighting failed to add to the gains--purchased at the excessive cost

of 562 officers and 12,239 men. The total German losses, including 1680

officers and men as prisoners, were estimated as rather higher than this,

but the net result, though ranking as a British victory, was admittedly

disappointing.

Earlier in the year Lord French had endeavoured to convince Joffre that the

proper role for the British army to fulfil was an advance on the extreme

north in co-operation with the British navy. Joffre was unsympathetic,

though he held out hopes of co-operating in such an advance with the French

army at a later date. His plan for the 1915 campaign was to break through

the German line from the south at Rheims, and from the west at Arras. To do

this he must mass as many French corps as possible behind these points,

meanwhile keeping the enemy busy elsewhere in order to prevent him from

reinforcing the threatened positions. This general strategic idea, as Lord

French has pointed out, was the foundation of all the Allied efforts in the

West throughout 1915. It led to numerous local successes along many parts

of the line, but no real advance was made towards the main objectives.

These were not defined until the combined offensive was launched in

September.

The Germans themselves, though content to leave to the Allies most of the

attacking in the West in 1915, maintained a sufficiently active

offensive-defensive. While the French in Alsace were making a fresh advance

on Mulhouse at the beginning of the year, they counter-attacked at

Soissons, after bombarding the cathedral on 9th Jan. It was only after a

week's desperate fighting and heavy French losses--including a bridge-head

on the Aisne--that they were checked. In Champagne the French managed to

capture Perthes (8th Jan.), and strove valiantly but vainly to wipe out the

St. Mihiel salient. The most ambitious effort of the opening months of the

year was the British offensive at Neuve Chapelle, which, as already pointed

out, failed largely through lack of ammunition. In his report on that

battle the British Commander-in-Chief referred to the pressing need of "an

almost unlimited supply of ammunition"; and the lack of it was the real

explanation of the Allied failure in 1915.

Germany knew well enough how matters stood in this respect, and added

ruthlessly to the handicap which their own superior supplies gave them by

suddenly attacking with chlorine gas--the first use of poison-gas in the

war. This was on 22nd April, following a grim struggle south-east of Ypres

for Hill 60, the flattened remains of which, after five days' incessant

fighting, remained in British possession. Having been careful beforehand to

accuse the French of using poison-gas near Verdun on the 14th--a charge

without justification--the Germans launched it in dense volumes from pipes

previously laid down for the purpose north-east of Ypres. The attack was

preceded by a heavy bombardment, the gas-clouds following at 5 p.m. on the

22nd. The Allied line was held at this point by French Colonial and

Territorial troops, with the Canadian Division on their right. All

unprotected as they were against this diabolical form of warfare, the

French troops, gasping for breath, broke and fled. Many fell asphyxiated.

With a gap in the Allied line 5 miles wide, the Canadians suddenly found

their flank left in the air. Less affected by the gas than the French, they

were chiefly instrumental in saving the situation by a valiant resistance

until reinforcements could be sent to fill the gap.

The gap was evidently wider than the Germans either anticipated or

realized; otherwise the disaster might have been irretrievable. As it was,

the situation remained precarious until the 27th, when a counter-attack in

conjunction with the French recovered some of the ground, and a large

portion of the sorely tried Canadian Division was relieved by the Lahore

Indian Division. Altogether seven British divisions were involved in this

hard-fought battle, the net result of which was to bring the Germans 2

miles nearer to Ypres on a 5-mile front, and to give the Allies a worse

line to hold. Eight batteries of French field-guns were lost and four

British guns of position. These last were recaptured by the Canadians, but

the enemy had already destroyed them. In all the Allied casualties amounted

to nearly 25,000. The Germans estimated theirs at 16,000. In his report on

the gas-attack Sir John French declared that protest against this form of

warfare would probably be useless, and Lord Kitchener intimated in the

House of Lords on 18th May that retaliation might be inevitable.

Respirators more or less effective were supplied to the troops, and the use

of poison-gas, followed by liquid-fire--another German innovation--became

permanent additions to the horrors of modern warfare.

Before the new battle round Ypres died down--it lasted, indeed, until the

end of May--the storm centre shifted to the southern end of the British

line, where it joined hands with the French left. Here General French began

the battle of Festubert, undertaken to relieve the intense pressure on the

troops at Ypres, but also serving as part of Joffre's general plan of

attack in the direction of Lens and Lille. British and French alike were

launched against the German lines on 9th May, the British taking the

offensive between Rougebanc and Givenchy, and the French between Neuville

St. Vaast and Notre Dame de Lorette. The renewed struggle for Ypres,

however, had drawn heavily on the scanty British reserves of ammunition,

and the preliminary bombardment of forty minutes proved wholly inadequate

to crush the resistance offered by the enemy's numerous fortified posts

when the First Army advanced to the attack. This disastrous engagement, in

which the greatest bravery was displayed against overwhelming odds, cost

over 12,000 casualties. It achieved nothing in the field, but the lessons

which it taught led to the formation of the Coalition Government, with Mr.

Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions. The second stage of the battle of

Festubert, which began at midnight on 15th May, was more successful, the

enemy's front-line trenches being captured on a front of 3000 yards; but

the losses incurred in winning and holding the positions were

disproportionately high.

[Illustration: The Ypres Salient before and after the Second Battle of

Ypres, 22nd April-13th May, 1915]

The French effort began more auspiciously as a result of the longer and

more intense bombardment which preceded their attack on the 9th, but the

series of minor successes which they won round Souchez, after weeks of

incessant fighting, made little real impression on the defences of Lens.

The truth was that Germany had so expanded her war-material factories that,

with the aid of the Austrians, she could turn out sufficient shells and

guns for her main offensive on the Eastern front, and at the same time

overweight the Allies in the West.

Throughout the summer the line, though never quiescent, and often breaking

out in furious bombardments, minor attacks and counter-attacks, and raids

on both sides, remained little altered. The hardest fighting of all was

round the war-scarred salient of Ypres, still held, as in the first

gas-attack, by the Second Army, to which some of 'Kitchener's Men' were now

attached. It fell to this advance-guard of the New Army to bear the brunt

of the first attack on the British with liquid-fire, the Germans, who had

already used this new device of the _flammenwerfer_ against the French,

employing it in another desperate assault on the British lines round Hooge.

The New Army units fought with almost incredible gallantry, but were

blinded by the unexpected, burning sheets of flame, and while they were

still blind the enemy charged and took the first-line trenches on a front

of some 500 yards. The losses were avenged on 9th Aug., when the 6th

Division recovered all the captured positions, and 400 yards of German

trench into the bargain.

With the arrival of the reinforcing British divisions of the New Army,

General French was able to take over some 17 miles of additional front, the

British line thus extending over about 50 miles, with the Belgians on the

left holding the remaining 18 miles to the sea. This still left the French

army 500 miles to hold, from the British right to the Alps.

The summer of 1915 passed away without any great offensive on either side.

The Germans, now at the flood-tide of their sweeping advance against

Russia, were content to continue their vigorous offensive-defensive in the

West. Besides the fighting already referred to, there was incessant warfare

in the Argonne Forest, where the German Crown Prince was noisily active

throughout the summer, threatening Verdun, but making no serious advance.

The French continued the deadly trench-to-trench warfare in the Souchez

area and the 'Labyrinth' region nearer Arras, and steadily tightened their

hold on the reconquered corner of Alsace, consolidating their positions on

the Hartmannsweilerkopf, which had been the scene of continuous fighting in

the renewed advance towards Mulhouse. For the most part, however, the

French, like the British, were now storing up reserves of ammunition and

completing their dispositions for the joint offensive planned for the

autumn, when the main objects of Joffre's general strategic idea for 1915

were for the first time clearly defined, though unattained.

A great Allied offensive in the West had become increasingly necessary in

view of the prestige gained by the Central Powers, not only by their

tremendous advance into Russia, but also by the Allies' disastrous campaign

in Gallipoli, where the failure of the Suvla Bay landing--subsequently

dealt with in our account of the operations against Turkey--had just given

the enemy additional cause for rejoicing. Joffre's plan of attack, designed

"to drive the Germans out of France", was not ripe for execution until

towards the end of September. Even then, though General French had for

months been gradually accumulating troops and ammunition for the blow--the

British army now numbering nearly a million men--full strength in both

respects was still only half developed.

There were two main assaults in the combined offensive, launched on 25th

Sept., 1915, the chief of which was in the French centre in Champagne,

where de Castlenau, Joffre's right-hand man, attacked with Langle de Cary's

Fourth Army on a 16-mile front between Auberive and Massiges, the object

being to force the Germans back on the Aisne, and, if possible, cut off the

army of the German Crown Prince in the Argonne. Second in importance was

the Franco-British advance on the same day in Artois, General French's

object being to push through between Lens and La Bassee on the north, while

Generals Foch and d'Urbal, on his right, stormed the Vimy heights and

attacked Lens from the south. Secondary operations were carried out at

various other points in order to distract the enemy's attention, feint

attacks being made by Sir Herbert Plumer with the 5th Corps--part of the

Second Army--east of Ypres, where Bellewarde was temporarily taken; as well

as by those units of the First Army occupying the line north of the

Bethune-La Bassee Canal. Similar demonstrations were made at Bois Grenier,

and along the slopes of the Aubers Ridge, where British and Indian troops

alike fought heroically for ground which, though captured in the first

onrush, could not be held under the powerful fire concentrated against

them.

_Battle of Loos_

[Illustration: Map showing approximately the battle-lines of the First Army

under Sir Douglas Haig at daybreak and at nightfall on 25th September,

1915]

The main British attack was delivered by the First Army under Sir Douglas

Haig along a front extending from La Bassee Canal in the north to the

mining village of Grenay on the south, and is conveniently named the battle

of Loos. The task of the 4th Corps (Rawlinson), with the 47th (London

Territorial) Division on the right, the 15th (New Army) Division in the

centre, and the 1st Division on the left, was to carry, as its first

objective, Loos and the heights between Lens and Hulluch. The 1st Corps

(Hubert Gough), with the 7th Division on its right, the 9th (New Army)

Division in the centre, and the 2nd Division (Horne) on the left extended

to the canal, was to link up with the Fourth Army at Hulluch, taking in its

stride the Hohenzollern Redoubt and the formidable German fortresses in the

Quarries and Fosse 8. Had this general plan succeeded, and the Tenth French

Army on the British right advanced in line with it, a great gap would have

been made in the German positions in Artois, which, with a similar success

from the mightier French blow in Champagne, would at least have brought

relief to the hard-pressed Russians in the East, if it did not achieve all

that Joffre had hoped for it. As it was, the Allied victory, both in Artois

and Champagne, fell far short of its aims, and, save for insubstantial

advances, was fruitful chiefly in bloody experience.

An intense bombardment for four days preceded the main British advance, and

was followed by a gas-attack--used by the British on this occasion for the

first time.[2] Many parts of the German defences along the 7-mile front,

however, were far from obliterated when the infantry advanced to the

attack, especially on the left, where the 2nd Division was held up by

impassable wire defences. The 9th Division had a similar experience on its

left wing, where the undemolished defences of the Hohenzollern Redoubt

became a veritable shambles. On its right, however, the leading Scottish

battalions scored a fine success in reaching Fosse 8. On their right the

7th Division did equally well, capturing the Quarries and reaching Cite St.

Elie, north of Hulluch, though subsequently forced to rest on the Quarries.

In the meantime the 4th Corps, like the 1st, had been repulsed on the left

and victorious on the right. Held up on the left by unbroken wire and

undamaged German defences, the 1st Division could make no appreciable

advance on the Lens-Hulluch road, thus exposing the left flank of the next

division in line--the 15th (Scottish). The Scotsmen on their part had made

a magnificent advance, first sharing with the Londoners of the 47th

Division the honour of capturing Loos, and then rushing on impetuously to

Hill 70, and beyond as far as Cite St. Auguste, on the outskirts of Lens.

Had reserves been available at once to consolidate the gains thus won, Lens

itself might have been taken, and a door flung open leading to Lille. But

as it was impossible to say at which part of the long British line they

would be needed, Sir John French had retained his reserves far in the rear.

When at last they were forthcoming--the new 21st and 24th Divisions,

hitherto untried--they were put into the battle-line after nightfall, tired

and hungry after a heavy 8-mile march.

It was impossible to hold all the ground won during the day. Without

reinforcements, and no sufficient artillery support, the 15th Division had

already been forced to relinquish its hold on Cite St. Auguste, and fell

back to the western slopes of Hill 70 on the Lens-Hulluch road. Misdirected

and drenched with rain, the two tired reinforcing divisions could do little

to help amid the confusion of the battlefield. Their supporting attacks at

various points broke against the still intact German wire or simultaneous

counter-attacks by the enemy. One brigade alone (the 72nd) lost 78 officers

and 2000 men out of the 3600 with which it started. Altogether the losses

of these two divisions amounted to 8000. Along the southern section they

succeeded in maintaining contact with the 47th Division, and in the north

helped the Scots of the 9th Division to maintain their hold on Fosse 8; but

the Quarries, close by, were lost, and along most of this northern front

the day's gains were gradually whittled away.

Another heavy handicap was the fact that the French Tenth Army, on the

right of Rawlinson's Corps, had to postpone its advance until one o'clock

in the afternoon--the British attack had been launched at 6.30 a.m.--and

then was forced to direct the corps operating on its left in a

south-easterly direction. This involved a considerable gap on the British

right, when Rawlinson's men made their victorious advance. The Londoners of

the 47th Division, however, not only held on to Loos, but formed a strong

defensive flank which averted what might have been a complete disaster.

Apart from the captured positions, 57 German officers and 3000 other

prisoners had been taken during the day on the British front, together with

26 field-guns and 40 machine-guns.

On the following day the Germans counter-attacked in force and recovered

Fosse 8, but on the 27th the Guards Division, under the Earl of Cavan, was

sent forward and almost restored the earlier gains, including Chalk Pit

Wood and the slopes of Hill 70. It cost the Guards 3000 casualties to make

good the restored British line. They continued to hold it until the end of

the month, when they were relieved. The 15th (Scottish) Division had also

been withdrawn, after suffering no fewer than 6000 casualties. All told,

the British losses in the battle of Loos amounted to 50,000 men and 2000

officers, including three divisional commanders--Major-General Sir Thompson

Capper (7th Division), Major-General G. H. Thesiger (9th Division), and

Major-General F. D. V. Wing (12th Division)--each of whom was killed. A

series of costly counter-attacks on the enemy's part failed to make much

impression on the new British line, and mounted up the German casualties

until they were estimated at many more than those of the British. The

battle died down; the gains were consolidated; but the murderous struggle

at close quarters for the Hohenzollern Redoubt and its adjoining

entrenchments continued for weeks and months, an outstanding feature of

which was the attempt of the 46th (North Midland Territorial) Division to

carry the redoubt by storm on 13th Oct. The Midlanders' task was

handicapped, like so many British operations at this period, by inadequate

artillery preparation, and though they fought like veterans they could only

win the western side of the stronghold at a cost of 4000 casualties.

The advance of the 10th French Army on the right of the British was held up

in front of Souchez on the opening day of the combined offensive, but made

better progress on 26th Sept., when d'Urbal's troops made themselves

masters not only of long-contested Souchez, but also of Thelus, La Folie

Farm, and most of the Givenchy Wood. But the Vimy heights, notwithstanding

that some progress was made along their slopes, still barred the road to

Lens from the south. On the 28th the French 9th Corps, at the British

Commander-in-Chief's request, took over the defence of Loos, and the

British line was rearranged.

The main French effort in 1915, as already pointed out, was in Champagne,

where a solid week's bombardment paved the way for the great advance on

25th Sept. Inspired by Joffre's stirring Order of the Day, "Remember the

Marne: Conquer or Die!", the French troops carried all before them on the

greater part of the front. General Marchand's Colonial Division broke clean

through 2 miles of the main German defences, Marchand himself falling

severely wounded at the head of his men. The greatest advance was made on

Marchand's right, from Navarin Farm to the Butte de Tahure, where an

advance of 2-1/2 miles was made before the day closed. But the troops in

the centre were robbed of decisive victory by a double check on the wings.

On the right the two German strongholds at the Butte de Mesnil and the Main

de Massiges--comparable with the Hohenzollern Redoubt in their

strength--held out stubbornly until, after days and nights of ceaseless

combat, both fell into the attackers' hands. On the extreme left the

assailants could make practically no headway.

Thenceforward the French advance made little progress towards the main

objectives, though a breach was made in the enemy's second line in a fresh

attack on the 29th; and a third advance (6th Oct.) won the village and

Butte de Tahure. On 20th Oct. the Germans recovered the Butte de Tahure,

and in other counter-attacks prevented the French from developing their

first initial advance into the greater victory which Joffre had hoped for

it. The battle had yielded an impressive list of captures--the total number

of German prisoners being over 23,000 before the end of September, and the

captured guns 80--but the Allies' long line had not materially altered

before the autumn offensive gave place to another winter of tedious siege

warfare.

The year closed with the appointment of Joffre as Commander-in-Chief of all

the French forces, General de Castlenau taking over the immediate command

of the French troops in France; and the resignation of Sir John French--now

created a Viscount of the United Kingdom, and appointed to the Home

Command--after more than sixteen months of severe and incessant strain at

the front. Lord French was succeeded by General Sir Douglas Haig, who had

been singled out for promotion by his brilliant achievements since the

British army first landed in France.

_The Naval War in 1915_

Throughout 1915 the operations at sea contained no movements so striking as

some of those which marked the opening months of the war. The careers of

all the scattered German cruisers were over, the last of them, the

_Koenigsberg_, being finally destroyed in the Rufigi River, German East

Africa, by the shallow-draught monitors _Severn_ and _Mersey_, sent out for

the purpose from Great Britain. The German High Seas Fleet remained in

harbour, waiting for Lord Jellicoe to be tempted or goaded into some

imprudent disposition of his forces. Hence the sudden raids on the British

East Coast, begun in the closing months of 1914. They repeated them once

too often, on 24th Jan., 1915, when the raiders, consisting of 4

battle-cruisers, 6 light cruisers, and a force of destroyers, were

encountered off the Dogger Bank by the British battle-cruiser squadron

under Admiral Beatty, consisting of the _Lion_, _Tiger_, and _Princess

Royal_, as well as the _New Zealand_ and _Indomitable_, and the light

cruisers _Southampton_, _Nottingham_, _Birmingham_, and _Lowestoft_,

together with the _Arethusa_, _Aurora_, and _Undaunted_. Outmatched by the

13.5-inch guns of Beatty's 'Cat' Squadron of battle-cruisers, the Germans

made for home. In the hot chase which followed, the _Bluecher_, last in

line of the German battle-cruisers, was hit repeatedly, fell behind, and

was eventually sunk by a torpedo from the destroyer _Meteor_. Her survivors

were picked up by the _Arethusa_. Beatty's flagship, the _Lion_, which was

leading the pursuit, was partly disabled by a chance shot and had to be

towed home, Beatty himself following the chase at some distance in a

destroyer. Before he could pick up his place in the pursuit he met his

three battle-cruisers returning, these having broken off the action owing

to the increasing risk of straying into an enemy mine-field or of falling

foul of the mines which the retreating Germans were strewing in their path.

Two other German battle-cruisers had been set on fire by the British

shells, the _Seydlitz_ and the _Derfflinger_, but, with the rest of the

German ships, they made good their escape. Taught by this experience, the

Germans made no further naval raids on the East Coast.

In the following month (4th Feb.) Vice-Admiral von Pohl, Chief of the

German Admiralty Staff, proclaimed a submarine blockade of the whole of the

British Isles, declaring all the waters round Great Britain and Ireland a

military area in which Allied merchant-ships were to be destroyed and

neutral ships would incur danger of running the same risk. If the Germans

thought they could scare British shipping away by these means, they were

soon undeceived. They took heavy toll of peaceful shipping from the first,

and shocked the rest of the world by the lengths to which they were

prepared to go in developing this ruthless policy, but all their efforts

failed to paralyse British trade as they anticipated. The crowning tragedy

of this submarine campaign was the sinking of the Cunard liner _Lusitania_

off the south coast of Ireland on 7th May, 1915, with its loss of upwards

of 1000 non-combatants, including over 100 Americans. It was one of the

German crimes against humanity in general and Americans in particular which

brought the United States into the war on the side of the Allies in 1917.

_1916 on the European Fronts_

_The Western Campaign._--During the year 1916 the unity of command which

was postulated as an indispensable preliminary to the victory of the Allies

so long before it became a fact was achieved neither as between Britain and

France in the West and Russia in the East, nor even as between Britain and

France along the Western front. The most that can be said of the

co-ordination between the forces under the British and French

Commanders-in-Chief is that liaison was established between them, and that

as far as was possible each endeavoured to help the other by diverting to

itself the energies of the German forces. The Western fighting embraced two

main episodes: the powerful German attacks on Verdun, eventually

unsuccessful; and the Allied offensive on the Somme, in which by far the

greater share was borne by the British.

The year began with numerous German attacks widely separated in locality,

and intended to mask the main offensive while keeping the French and

British occupied. Hartmannsweilerkopf, in Alsace (2nd to 8th Jan.);

Champagne (9th Jan.); Givenchy, Arras, Neuville, Loos (14th Jan. to 6th

Feb.); Vimy Ridge, Frise, Soissons, Ypres-Comines area, and Tahure (9th to

20th Feb.) were among them.

On 21st Feb. the new battle of Verdun began. This enterprise, though

officially accredited to the German Crown Prince, was the design of General

von Falkenhayn. Verdun was one of the four fortresses, of which the other

three were Belfort, Toul, and Epinal, on which French armies defending the

capital and the country from an invasion from the east would base

themselves. The town lies sunk in the Meuse valley, and the German invasion

in 1914 flowed past it along the heights of the Meuse down to St. Mihiel.

At the beginning of the war Verdun was protected by an outer line of forts,

with batteries pushed out in a circuit of 30 miles. The forts were not,

however, strong enough in 1914, nor the perimeter of defence extended

enough, to withstand the new artillery that had reduced Liege and Namur,

and a fierce struggle went on during 1915 along the Meuse heights on the

east of Verdun and beyond the low hills on the western side of the town and

river, with a view to pushing out the defences all round. As previously

pointed out, much had been done in this direction by General Sarrail, but

not enough to deter von Falkenhayn and the German General Staff from

selecting Verdun as a point for an attack which, if successful, would

disorganize seriously the continuity of the French defences. In 1916, as

for two years more, the problem of either combatant was to break through a

line of trenches which extended continuously from the sea to Switzerland;

and failing a complete break-through, comparable to that which had crippled

Russia in 1915, to effect a fracture or a deep dent which would compel the

loser to reconstruct his system of communications. At the best such a

thrust might disclose a fatal weakness in the assailed; at the next best it

would disastrously hamper his future activities.

Verdun as a fortress had strong and modern defences. West of the Meuse,

north of the town, are low hills the chief of which is the Charny Ridge

with dominating strategic points beyond known as Hill 304, Hill 295, Hill

265. The French lines were pushed beyond these into the woods of Avocourt

and Forges, but below the heights of Montfaucon, which were the Crown

Prince's head-quarters. On the east of the Meuse the heights rise to a

tableland severed by wooded ravines and overlooking the plain of the

Woevre. The line of French trenches embraced all this tableland and a good

deal of the plain beyond. Its outer line ran in a bold convex curve from

Forges and Consenvoye on the Meuse to Fresnes on the Woevre, but it did not

penetrate the woods of Forges or Spincourt, and it was below the gun

positions on the hills of Ornes. Inside this outer circle was the inner

line of Samogneux, Beaumont, Fosses Wood, and Bezonvaux. Inside that again

the line of Bras, Douaumont Fort, Hardaumont Wood, Vaux Fort, and Eix.

The multiple defences were most elaborate between these two inner lines. A

weak point was that though such defences would be very exacting of life and

effort, yet the outer ones were not pushed out far enough to place the

bridges of the Meuse out of reach of long-range gun-fire; and an

overwhelming attack might have jammed a defending army on the east of the

Meuse against the river. The French had provided against the possibility by

the multiplication of transport, as well as of inner defences. The Germans

hoped by the weight, volume, and suddenness of their attack to bring about

the not impossible catastrophe. They massed an amount of artillery which,

though surpassed afterwards in the war, was at that time the greatest

assemblage that had ever been seen together, and accumulated a supply of

ammunition exceeding the quantity which all previous experience prescribed.

The heavier guns were placed at Ornes, Spincourt, and Forges. The woods

below afforded cover for a concentration of men; and this concentration,

amounting to fourteen divisions, with others in immediate reserve, was at

first thrown at the 7-mile sector from Brabant-sur-Meuse to Herbebois,

which was held by three French divisions under General Humbert.

The attack began on the morning of 21st Feb. with an artillery bombardment

lasting four hours. The great weight of shell demolished the French

first-line defences, so that the German troops had little to do but walk

over them, while a remnant of the defenders fell back to their supporting

positions. These were not sufficiently strong or well constructed to enable

weak forces to hold them long against the force of three army corps (18th,

3rd, and 10th, with a Bavarian Division) which the Germans sent in after

the guns had done their work. The effectiveness of the German artillery was

due in part to its weight, and in part to the fact that French

counter-battery work effected little, owing to the thick weather.

The trench systems in the Haumont and Caures Woods were carried, but the

resistance of parts of the first line at Brabant, Herbebois, and elsewhere

was even at this dangerous moment reducing the speed of the German advance,

though the momentum was far from exhausted. It was not till next day that

the first line was definitely abandoned by the French; and on 23rd Feb. the

line Samogneux-Herbebois was temporarily held. Before the morning of 24th

Feb. the French contracted their line still further by drawing in their

outposts from the Woevre. It seemed a matter for surprise at the time that

no flank attack was made by the Germans in the Woevre; it had been perhaps

thought an unnecessary extension of their general scheme, though the

weather, which was bitter and snowy, was unfavourable for operations in

that sodden plain.

But the German second wave of attack was now rising in fury, and General

Petain, who had undertaken the command of operations on the French side,

was still awaiting reinforcements. The character of von Falkenhayn's attack

had become clear, and while to the French the need for holding on was

imperative, the Germans had a need no less urgent for hastening operations

and exploiting their preliminary success to a point at which General Petain

could not repair the breach. They had, in fact, two days in which to

achieve their aim--24th and 25th Feb. On the 24th they flowed round the

Beaumont Woods and came close to the Talou Ridge, the Poivre Ridge, and the

rest of the French line where it ran past Haudremont and Douaumont to Vaux.

On the 25th they attacked the Poivre Ridge without much success, but

pressed the more important sector of their attack close to Douaumont.

Next day, 26th Feb., brought the fateful hour of the struggle. Petain's

reinforcements were at hand. The Germans made their supreme effort on a

2-mile front at Douaumont, and the picked 24th Brandenburger Regiment was

the spear-head of an assault which at one moment burst its way into the

Fort Douaumont trenches between the village and redoubt--a fine feat of

arms which evoked this telegram from the Crown Prince's head-quarters:

"Douaumont, the eastern pillar of the Verdun defences, is solidly in German

hands". The adverb alone was misplaced. The position was not held solidly,

for Petain's reserves, thrown in at the exact moment, flung back the

Germans and prevented the leak in the defences from being widened by any

further inrush.

This counter-attack, made by men of Balfourier's 20th Corps, marked,

indeed, the turn of the struggle, for though Douaumont, and Vaux after it,

were subsequently to be lost, together with many other historic redoubts

and shell-battered points of vantage on either side of the Meuse, and

though many thousands of lives were to be swept away in attack and

counter-attack on the barren hills about Verdun, yet henceforward the

assaults were no different, except in weight, from others which in 1916 and

1917 were projected by the Germans or the Allies on the amplifying

complexities of the armoured defence lines. Von Falkenhayn's subsequent

comment on the operations, which marked the beginning of the creeping

paralysis of his plan, was that violent French counter-attacks began, and

the German forward movement on the heights was stayed.

Though the crisis was over there were many great moments of sleepless

effort, of anxiety, and heroism in the months to come, for the last

purposeful German assaults on the fortress were made on 15th June, and on

14th July the Germans were still occupying the French with assaults

developing from the Thiaumont redoubts, which marked the farthest point

southwards to which their long-sustained efforts had taken them. Following

on these attacks was a considerable pause, during which the Germans were

fully occupied elsewhere in dealing with the British attacks on the Somme.

The last phase at Verdun in 1916 was that in which the French, inspired by

the methods of General Nivelle, thrust the Germans out of all the positions

so painfully won, and re-occupied by mid-December very much the same lines

as those from which the great push of the last week in February had ejected

them. The story of Verdun cannot here be told in detail; its principal

events are dated as follows:

27th Feb.--Germans take Talou Ridge.

3rd March.--Germans enter Douaumont village.

7th March.--Germans, transferring their efforts to the west of the

Meuse, capture Hills 360 and 265.

14th March.--Germans penetrate west of Verdun the line Bethincourt-Mort

Homme.

20th March.--Germans enter Avocourt Wood.

29th March.--French recover Avocourt Redoubt.

1st April.--Germans, renewing their attacks east of Verdun, capture

part of Vaux village.

10th April.--Germans make extended attack on both sides of the Meuse,

failing at the Mort Homme, but gaining at Poivre Ridge.

5th May.--Germans, renewing westerly attacks, gain a footing on Hill

304.

20th May.--Germans in a great attack on Mort Homme capture summit of

Hill 295. The attack next day enlarged the gains.

24th May.--Cumieres and Fort Douaumont captured by Germans.

1st June.--Fresh German attack at Fort Vaux east of Verdun.

7th June.--Fort Vaux captured after six days' fighting.

17th June.--Attack renewed at Mort Homme. The attacks on both sides of

the Meuse were prosecuted with increasing vigour till 28th, during

which period the Germans took Hills 321 and 320, as well as Thiaumont

Fort (23rd June) and Fleury (24th June). Fleury marked the point of

their farthest advance towards the inner line of defences east of the

Meuse at Forts Souville and Tavannes. The tide now paused, and on 30th

June, a day before the British attack on the Somme, the French retook

Thiaumont. The fighting went on in a restricted but incessant way

through the rest of June and July, the French gradually improving their

position. In August activity was renewed at Thiaumont and Fleury.

18th Aug.--French retake whole of Fleury.

9th Sept.--French retake trenches between Fleury and Douaumont.

24th Oct.--The French, after a long pause for readjustment, and now

under the direction of General Nivelle, recapture village and fort of

Douaumont, Haudremont quarries, and 4500 prisoners. They thus advanced

to lines held in May.

3rd Nov.--Vaux recaptured. On 30th Nov. the German Crown Prince

resigned the command of the Verdun front.

15th to 16th Dec.--General Nivelle (who succeeded General Joffre as

French Commander-in-Chief on 12th Dec.) orders new attack at Verdun.

Vacherauville, Poivre Ridge, Bezonvaux, Hardaumont recaptured with

11,000 prisoners.

In early 1916 the British army was still finding itself, and its new

Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig, regarded it as insufficiently trained

and equipped for the great tasks which lay before it. As an instrument of

war it was still not yet ready. It also remained, if not in a water-tight

compartment in respect of the French armies at its side, yet with a

separate command and in separate control. This may have been merely the

necessary consequence of its state of training; but it is certain that in

1916 there was no one with authority to compel that unity of action and

command which in 1918, but not till then, directed the Franco-British

armies as one force. Fortunately, perhaps, the German High Command elected

to attack the French at Verdun instead of throwing their whole weight on

the British, though there were numerous smaller actions along the worn and

dangerous Ypres front and elsewhere in the first half of the year.

On 14th Feb. the enemy captured some 600 yards of 'International Trench',

south-east of Ypres, but they were regained on 17th March, when a bitter

and protracted struggle also began for the mine craters at St. Eloi. These

were lost and recovered more than once, with heavy casualties on both

sides. The Canadians, who had their full share of these costly operations,

were again sorely tried at the beginning of June, when the Germans

penetrated their front trenches in a surprise attack on the 2nd of that

month. Major-General Mercer was killed in this assault, and General

Williams captured. Eleven days later the Canadians atoned for this set-back

by completely re-establishing their broken line. Throughout the first half

of 1916 the enemy, not only round Ypres, but also round Loos, at

Ploegsteert, Givenchy, and elsewhere, persevered in similar local attempts

to keep the British occupied and upset their plans, while he was

concentrating his chief efforts towards beating down the French defences at

Verdun. The attack on Verdun, as already related, ultimately broke down,

and the period in which it was at its height was utilized by Sir Douglas

Haig to bring his forces as near as possible to the point at which they

could undertake with success an attack of the first magnitude against the

entrenched German lines. The date of the attack was premature, and was

hurried on in order to take some weight off the harassed French armies at

Verdun. It began on 1st July; the chosen _terrain_ was the River Somme, and

the great offensive, in which the French joined, was over a 28-mile front

from Gommecourt, north of the Somme, to Dompierre, south of that river.

_First Battle of the Somme_

The German position in the Somme area was situated on the high ground which

is the watershed between the Scheldt and the Somme. The ground runs

east-south-east, and its hills fall into long irregular spurs divided by

wide valleys. On the forward slopes of the hills the German first-line

defences ran from the Somme at Curlu to Fricourt; at Fricourt the defence

line turned north, crossing the Ancre, thence passing over the summit of

the watershed near Hebuterne and Gommecourt to Arras. Between the Somme and

the Ancre a second line of defence had been constructed 2 miles behind the

first, and on it had been lavished all the ingenuities of fortification

which the German engineers afterwards developed in the so-called Hindenburg

lines. South of the Somme, where the French were to co-operate with Sir

Douglas Haig, the defences were not so elaborate; it was not here that the

Germans, who were fully aware of the impending British attack, expected the

blow to fall. They expected the greatest weight to be felt towards the

Ancre.

The British preparatory bombardment, delivered by a force of artillery far

greater than any British army had heretofore possessed, began on 24th June,

and deluged the German positions with shells for a week. It was aided by

the efforts of the Royal Flying Corps, which, at this time, had a decided

superiority over that of the Germans. The British attack on 1st July began

in broad daylight, and was delivered principally by Rawlinson's Fourth Army

of five corps, with a subsidiary attack by the Third Army (Allenby)

opposite Gommecourt, where one corps only was sent forward. The sectors

attacked, beside that at Gommecourt, may be designated: Beaumont-Hamel;

River Ancre, including Thiepval; La Boisselle and Contalmaison; Fricourt;

River Somme at Montauban. The French attack, designed by Foch and delivered

by the French Sixth Army (Fayolle), and Tenth Army (Micheler), was

delivered along an 8-mile front, taking in a sector on either side of the

Somme from Maricourt, through Frise and Dompierre, to Fay.

Severe as were the British preparatory and final bombardments, they did not

succeed in demolishing the German systems of defences, and had left

machine-gun nests intact. The efficacy of the machine-gun was one of the

bitterest lessons to be learnt by the flower of the British armies of 1916,

and the great losses of 1st July were largely due to the German handling of

this weapon. Taking the British and French attack as a whole, it may be

said to have failed towards the north and succeeded towards the south. The

heaviest rebuff was inflicted on the corps of Allenby's Third Army which

operated opposite Gommecourt. From Thiepval, across the Ancre, the Germans

had massed their best fighting material and the greatest weight of their

artillery. The 10th Corps (Morland), which included the famous 36th

(Ulster) Division, Highlanders, and North Countrymen, did wonders, and

actually penetrated the Thiepval Redoubt but could not hold on to its

gains. Hunter-Weston's 8th Corps of picked troops, including the 29th

Division from Gallipoli, found the task of assaulting Beaumont-Hamel too

strong for them. Farther south there were successes which increased in

value towards the Somme. The 13th Corps (Congreve) carried Montauban and

Mametz; the 15th Corps (Horne) surrounded Fricourt; the 3rd Corps

(Pulteney) forced its way at great cost into La Boisselle.

[Illustration: The Allied Battlefield on the Somme: map showing

approximately by the shaded area the Franco-British gains from 1st July to

18th September, 1916]

The French armies, well handled, and aided by the advantage of finding the

Germans less on their guard, made ground on either side of the Somme. Three

corps participated in the assault--the 20th (Balfourier) from Maricourt to

the Somme, where the hardest fighting was at Curlu and Hardicourt; the 1st

Corps (Brandelat); and the 35th Corps (Allonier). The last two walked

through the Germans, and the French losses were light. As the result of the

day's fighting along the whole extent of the front, the British captured

3500, and the French 6000 prisoners; but the casualties of the assailants

were close on 50,000. The second day's fighting, though it emphasized the

certainty that no great German defeat had been inflicted, enabled both the

French and British commanders to enlarge the ground they had won, and the

advantage was further exploited in the few days that followed. By the 5th

of July over a front of 6 miles the Germans had been pushed back a mile;

the British had captured 6000, the French 8000 prisoners.

This was the first blow in the Somme battle. Its results, compared with

those of the German attack at Verdun, do not afford warrant for regarding

it as a great victory. It became clear that there was no precedent to

follow other than that set by the Germans at Verdun, namely that of

systematically reducing the enemy's position. This heavy task was entered

on by the British forces with unbroken determination; and the effort

relaxed scarcely any of its vigour till 18th Sept., while the last big

British attack on the Ancre began on 13th Nov. The principal events in this

protracted struggle for positions and fortified strongholds after the

opening phase already described were:

14th to 15th July.--British attack German second line, capturing

Longueval, Trones Wood, Delville Wood, and 2000 prisoners.

23rd July.--Second phase of Somme battle begun. Pozieres captured 26th

July.

16th Aug.--French take Belloy near the Somme; 1300 prisoners.

29th Aug.--Total British captures on Somme to date: 266 officers,

15,203 men, 86 guns.

15th Sept.--British advance (third phase of Somme battle) using tanks

for the first time; Martinpuich and High Wood taken. Lesboeufs and

Morval captured 25th Sept. Combles and Thiepval captured 26th Sept.

30th Sept.--Thiepval Ridge captured.

10th Oct.--French take Ablaincourt, south of Somme, and 1300 prisoners.

21st to 23rd Oct.--British take 1018 prisoners.

12th Nov.--French take Saillisel.

13th Nov.--Battle of the Ancre (fourth phase of Somme battle). British

take 4000 prisoners.

29th Dec.--Sir D. Haig's dispatches relating to Somme battle. During

the period 1st July to 18th Nov. were captured 38,000 prisoners, 125

guns, 514 machine-guns. The number of casualties inflicted on the

Germans has not been made known. Those of the British amounted to

22,923 officers and 476,553 men. A number of these were, of course, not

permanent casualties.

_Russian Campaign, 1916_

During the winter of 1915-6 the Russian armies were reorganized by General

Alexieff under the nominal command of the Tsar. The Grand Duke Nicholas, as

already stated, went to the Caucasus in 1915, and while Viceroy there the

successful advance of General Yudenitch to Erzerum (captured 16th Feb.) was

made. The Russian armies of the north were placed under General Kuropatkin

(Riga to Dvinsk) and General Everts (Vilna to the Pripet), and the commands

embraced respectively the Twelfth, Fifth, and First; and the Second, Tenth,

Fourth, and Third Armies. In the southern group of armies, commanded by

General Ivanoff till April, and by General Brussiloff afterwards, were

included the Eighth Army (Kaledin) in the Rovno sector, Eleventh Army of

Volhynia (Sakharoff), Seventh Army of Eastern Galicia (Scherbatcheff), and

Ninth Army of the Dniester (Lechitsky). Facing the northern group of armies

were German forces directed nominally by General Hindenburg, actually by

General Ludendorff. The local commanders were von Below and von Scholtz

(Riga to Dvinsk), von Eichhorn (Lake Narotch), von Fabeck and von Woyrsch

with an Austrian army corps. A force under the nominal command of Prince

Leopold of Bavaria connected these German armies with those which faced

General Brussiloff (successor to Ivanoff). The Volhynian sector (Third

Austro-Hungarian Army) was under von Brlog; Rovno sector (Fourth Army)

under the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, stiffened by a reserve under von

Linsingen. Farther south were General Boehm-Ermolli's army (Second), and

the two armies of Bothmer and Pflanzer-Baltin. The Russians, who had been

recruiting far larger numbers than they could feed or employ, were much

more numerous. The Germans were well entrenched and superior in artillery.

The German effort in 1916 was diverted to the West. The Russians, who were

now better supplied in guns and ammunition than heretofore, seized the

opportunity to take and keep the initiative in the East. They began before

the end of 1915 with an offensive in Galicia on the Styr and Strypa, and

continued their attacks through January; while in February there was severe

fighting on the Dniester, in the Bukovina, and in Volhynia. The first

full-dress attack was made, however, in the northern sector, where General

Everts began the battle of Lake Narotch on 18th March. Fighting here was

renewed eight times before 14th April, and the Russian gain on the Vilna

road did not warrant the heavy losses (12,000), which were increased by a

German counter-attack on 28th April.

The important part of the Russian campaign took place in the southern group

of armies commanded by Brussiloff, who used his superiority of numbers

against the Austrian generals and their very mixed troops with brilliant

effect. On 4th June the Russian armies from the Pripet to the Bukovina were

set in motion simultaneously against the long unequally guarded Austrian

front, seeking the weak places. Generals Kaledin and Sakharoff, in the

sectors nearest the Pripet, engaged the armies of von Brlog and the

Archduke Joseph Ferdinand; and the Russian columns, though held up in the

marshes supporting von Brlog near Kolki, swept through the archduke's

defences like paper. They marched swiftly forward over rolling country to

the Styr, driving the Austro-Hungarian levies before them. By 16th June the

leading Russian columns were 12 miles from Vladimir Volhynok. North of this

apex Kolki and Svidniki, on the Stokhod, were captured; south of the

so-called Lutsk salient thus created Sakharoff captured Dubno, and was

outside Brody on the 16th. In twelve days this most damaging attack

captured 70,000 men, 83 guns, and created a salient which, at its greatest

depth, was 50 miles from the 80-foot base from which it had been started.

Von Linsingen's reserves were sent in, and Ludendorff took matters in hand.

General Scherbatcheff had simultaneously attacked von Bothmer from Kozlov

to the Dniester. The Russian general reached Bucacz (8th June) and crossed

the Strypa. He also captured 17,000 prisoners and 30 guns, but von Bothmer,

athwart a good line of railway, could not be enveloped, and fell back

sullenly and without disaster.

General Lechitsky, in the most southerly sector, struck with fury at

Pflanzer-Baltin, and cut through his centre on the hills between the

Dniester and the Pruth while turning his flank at the Dniester bridge-heads

at Zaleszczyki and Biskupie. The net result was the wreck of

Pflanzer-Baltin's army, which was forced to retreat across the Pruth to the

Carpathians. Lechitsky captured 39,000 men; and Brussiloff's great attack

had succeeded triumphantly on both wings. It had made less headway in the

centre. There were two lines of subsequent pressure or advance open to him,

one, the more northerly, towards Kovel; the other, with, as object, the

further destruction of the southern Austro-Hungarian armies, towards

Halicz.

[Illustration: Map illustrating the extent of Russian Recovery in the

Summer Campaign of 1916]

Ludendorff, however, had by this time formed his plans for the restoration

of equilibrium; and Linsingen, with his reserves, was employed to make

amplification of the Russian success at the most northerly portion of the

salient impracticable. Linsingen struck at the Stokhod River crossings.

Brussiloff countered by bringing up a fresh army under General Lesch with

the object of outflanking Linsingen in his turn; and another army, under

General Rogoza, was ordered to occupy General Woyrsch's attention farther

north. These manoeuvres had considerable success, Lesch and Rogoza

capturing 17,000 men. But though in these and subsequent engagements the

largest numbers of captures fell to the Russians, and though in the extreme

south they were again able to advance to the Carpathian passes, no disaster

on the largest scale was inflicted. The Germans were able to withdraw their

allies and to allow the Russian attack to wear itself out.

Nevertheless, the Russian victories were of immense service to the Allies,

and by the autumn of 1916 it seemed that the prospects of the Central

Empires were darker than at any period of the war. The Russian advance, in

its resolution and generalship, need not shrink from a comparison with that

with which Foch ended the war two years later. By the middle of September,

Generals Kaledin, Lesch, Sakharoff, Scherbatcheff, with Bezobrazoff and

Lechitsky in the south, had captured 370,000 prisoners, 450 guns, and an

amount of supplies as great as that which fell into Ludendorff's hands at

St. Quentin in 1918.

_Balkan Campaign, 1916_

After the conclusion of Brussiloff's triumphant dissipation of the

Austro-Hungarian armies in the early autumn of 1916, the way was open for

Roumanian co-operation with the Allies, and Roumania, though neither united

nor completely ready, was urged to enter the war. This she did on 28th

Aug., when Germany declared war on her, and Italy made a belated

declaration of war on Germany. On 29th Aug. von Hindenburg was appointed

Chief of the German General Staff in succession to von Falkenhayn, to whom

was relegated the task of dealing with Roumania. The Russians during the

rest of the year advanced towards the foot of the Carpathian passes and to

the junctions of the knot of railways in South-Eastern Galicia, in order to

gain complete contact with the Roumanians through the Bukovina. Meanwhile

the Roumanians, instead of concentrating on their southern front, where a

mixed force of Bulgarians, Turks, and Germans under the command of von

Mackensen was preparing to take them in the flank, pressed forward through

the easterly passes of the Carpathians into Transylvania. They advanced

here some distance, practically striking a blow in the air, but neither

raising the Transylvanian population nor capturing any strategic points. On

2nd Sept. Russian forces in aid of Roumania crossed the Danube into the

Dobrudja, while on 3rd Sept. Brussiloff's troops won a considerable victory

in South-East Galicia, and on 7th Sept. took Halicz. But this success was

more than offset by the loss to the Roumanians on their southern front of

Tutrakan, on the Danube, with 20,000 prisoners. Occurrences were

symptomatic of what was to come; and again, on the Eastern, as on the

Western front, the Allies suffered from the lack of unity of command. The

Russians and Roumanians joined hands on 10th Sept., but never concerted

their strategy. Mackensen continued to advance along the Danube towards the

vital Cernavoda Bridge, and so to threaten the whole of Southern Roumania,

while the Russian forces which, on the east, had ventured into Roumania,

found themselves by 18th and 19th Sept. faced with the new forces

concentrated by the Germans against their eastern Transylvanian front. The

rest of the Roumanian campaign is the history of the stages by which the

two arms of these German-made 'nut-crackers' closed on the Roumanian

armies, which had been placed in a false strategical position and were

badly led. On neither front did the Roumanian soldiery, who fought well

under very trying conditions, with inferior artillery and a poor medical

service, give way without a struggle. Mackensen was stoutly held up on 20th

Sept. in the Dobrudja, and on the Transylvanian side the Roumanians had a

success on 27th Sept. But on 30th Sept. Falkenhayn developed his eastern

attack near the Roter Turm Pass, and by 7th Oct. the whole Roumanian front

in Transylvania was retiring by the way it had come. A week later it was

out of Transylvania and defending the not very defensible passes.

On 20th Oct. Mackensen attacked on the whole line in the Dobrudja, and five

days later he was on the vital Cernavoda Bridge. Constanza, the Roumanian

Black Sea port, had fallen, and so far from ever being in a position to

take Turkey or Bulgaria in the flank, the Roumanians were now themselves on

the verge of being outflanked on the Danube. Meanwhile, on the other arm of

the nut-crackers, von Falkenhayn, despite trifling set-backs, was pressing

on. The Toerzburg Pass (21st Oct.), Predeal Pass (23rd Oct.), Vulkan Pass

(25th Oct.), Roter Turm Pass (31st Oct.) were all scenes of Roumanian

reverses, and by 15th Nov. the bulletins were bringing the daily news that

the Roumanian retreat continued. On 23rd Nov. Falkenhayn was advancing on

Bucharest; Mackensen had crossed the Danube at Islatz and Simnitza; and

farther west Orsova and Turnu-Severin had fallen. All the German composite

forces could now be deployed in Roumania, and the end followed swiftly.

Mackensen and Falkenhayn were in touch on 26th Nov.; Campolung was captured

29th Nov.; Bucharest, Ploeshti, and Sinaia fell on 6th Dec.; and with them

went the Roumanian oil-fields, the wells of which had, however, been very

thoroughly damaged by Captain Norton Griffiths and a small British party in

order to prevent their use by the Germans. (They were restored in some

eight months.)

On 8th Dec. the Germans estimated their Roumanian captures as 70,000 men

and 184 guns; and it is true that only a portion, though a considerable

one, of the Roumanian armies was able to effect a retreat with the Russians

to the line of the Sereth defences. Fighting went on till the end of the

year, and was continued into 1917 until the Roumanians were forced to sign

the Treaty of Bucharest--revoked by the Allies at the end of the war.