HOPE DEFERRED
Among the events which gave so brilliant a promise to the spring of
1917, not the least was the revolution in Russia. From the first,
indeed, there was anxiety about the effect which so great a change in
the midst of war would have upon the military efficiency of our ally.
But that had suffered under the old regime, and the failure to capture
Lemberg in the summer of 1916, distracted as the Central Empires were
by the Somme and Italian campaigns, followed by the more discreditable
failure to protect Rumania in the autumn, raised serious doubts of the
competence of the imperial bureaucracy. Its honesty also fell under
grave suspicion. Sazonov, the Foreign Minister, had been dismissed in
August, and Stuermer became Prime Minister. A fierce indictment of his
conduct by Miliukov in the Duma led to his retirement in November, and
an honest Conservative, Trepov, succeeded. But Stuermer retained his
power at Court as Imperial Chamberlain, and a renegade from the
Liberal party, Protopopov, was introduced into the Ministry and
exercised therein a growing and sinister influence. Winter saw the
Russian Government turning its back on its Liberal professions,
proroguing the Duma, prohibiting the meetings of town councils and
Zemstvos, provoking a revolution in order to suppress it and
re-establish the old despotism on its ruins, and apparently casting
wistful glances back at its old alliance with the German champions of
autocracy. The Tsar himself was a firm friend of the Entente, but the
same could not be said of the Tsaritsa nor of the reactionary and
disreputable influences to which she extended her patronage. If
therefore there were risks to the Entente cause in a Russian
revolution, there were also perils in its postponement; and it might
well be thought that a Liberal Russia would be bound more closely and
logically to the Western Powers than autocracy ever could be. A
revolution would at least clarify the issue between the combatants and
give a more solid basis of political principle to the Entente.
The overture was a strange and squalid tragedy. Noxious weeds grew in
the shadow of the Oriental despotism of the Russian Court, and for
years the Government had been at the mercy of a religious impostor and
libertine called Rasputin. The trouble, remarked a Russian General,
was not that Rasputin was a wizard, but that the Court laboured under
the superstitions of a Russian peasant; and Rasputin, who had some
mesmeric power, used it to gratify his avarice, immorality, and taste
for intrigue at the expense of Russian politics and society. At last,
on 29 December, he was doomed by a conclave of Grand Dukes, Princes,
and politicians who informed the police of what had been done. The
deed was enthusiastically celebrated next evening by the audience at
the Imperial Theatre singing the national anthem; but the body was
buried at Tsarkoe Selo in a silver coffin, while the Metropolitan said
mass, the Tsar and Protopopov acted as pall-bearers, and the Tsaritsa
as one of the chief mourners. The last days of the old regime in
France, with their Cagliostro and the Diamond Necklace, produced
nothing so redolent of corruption or so suggestive of impending
dissolution.
Rasputin was a symptom, not a cause, and the dark forces in Russia
were not eradicated by his removal. Rather they were roused to further
action, and on 8 January Trepov gave place to Prince Golitzin, a mere
agent of obstruction, while Protopopov proceeded with his measures to
provoke disorder. The Duma was prorogued and machine guns made in
England were diverted from the front to dominate the capital. The
Russian revolution was, in fact, as much forced upon the Russian
people as war was forced upon ourselves and America. Le peuple, wrote
Sully three centuries ago, ne se soulève jamais par envie d'attaquer,
mais par impatience de souffrir; and in Russia even hunger and
Protopopov barely provoked the people to action. The revolution
occurred not so much because they rose, as because the bureaucracy
fell, and it was not so much a change from one government to another
as a general cessation of all government through comprehensive
inaction. The Petrograd mob did not storm a Bastille like that of
Paris in 1789; it merely paraded the streets and declined to disperse
or work, and the act of revolution was simply the refusal of the
soldiers to fire. It was not the new wine of liberty, but the opium of
lethargy that possessed the popular mind, and relaxation loosened all
the fibres of the Russian State. Action came later with the Bolshevik
reconstruction, but for the time dissolution was the order of the
day--a dissolution that was due less to the activity of destroyers
than to the decay of the body politic; and the over-government of
Russia by bureaucracy and police precipitated a violent reaction
towards no government at all.
The Russian revolution was not therefore planned, and its origin and
progress can hardly be seen in acts. The Rasputin affair was a
vendetta of society which revealed its moral disintegration, but more
than two months passed before the Government collapsed. The first
disorder took the form of the looting of bakers' shops on 8 March by
disappointed food-queues, but a more ominous and comprehensive symptom
was the abstention from work. Characteristically it was not an
organized strike; the idle throng seemed to have no definite objects,
and the question was not whether it would achieve them, but whether
the soldiers would obey orders and fire upon the mob. On the 9th the
chief newspapers ceased to appear; on the 10th the trams stopped
running; on the 11th a company of the Pavlovsk regiment mutinied when
told to fire, and the President of the Duma, Rodzianko, telegraphed to
the Tsar that anarchy reigned in the capital, the Government was
paralysed, and the transport, food, and fuel supplies were utterly
disorganized. Golitzin thereupon again prorogued the Duma; but, like
the French National Assembly in 1789, it refused to disperse, and
declared itself the sole repository of constitutional authority. On
the 12th Household troops improved upon the example of the Pavlovsk
regiment, and shot their more unpopular officers when ordered to fire
on the people. Other regiments sent to suppress the mutiny joined it
and seized the arsenal. Then the fortress of SS. Peter and Paul
surrendered, and the police were hunted down. The Duma now appointed
an executive committee of its members to act as a provisional
government, while, outside, an unauthorized committee of soldiers and
workmen was created, for the original Duma had been purged by imperial
rescript and represented chiefly the upper and middle classes. On the
13th news came that Moscow had accepted the revolution, and it was
clear that the Army would offer no resistance, although the Tsar had
appointed Ivanov commander-in-chief in order to suppress the
insurrection. Ruszky and Brussilov signified their adhesion to the
popular cause, and Ivanov failed to reach the capital. The Tsar
followed him, but was stopped at Pskov on the 14th. There on the
15th--the modern Ides of March--the modern Russian Tsar or Caesar was
constrained to abdicate.
On that day the Duma Coalition Ministry was announced; the Premier was
Prince Lvov, Miliukov took charge of Foreign Affairs, Gutchkov of War
and the Marine, and Kerensky, a Socialist, of Justice. Ministers were
in favour of a regency, but the Soviet--a Russian word which
originally meant no more than Council--of Soldiers' and Workmen's
Delegates demanded a republic. Kerensky, however, persuaded it to
support the Provisional Government by an enormous majority and the
revolution appeared to have produced a government. But even in orderly
countries enormous majorities secured in moments of emotion are apt to
be evanescent, and the Provisional Government had an uneasy lease of
life for just two months. The Duma had not made the revolution, and
the middle classes for which it stood were weak in numbers and
prestige. The vast mass of the Russian people consisted of peasants
who were illiterate and unorganized, and cared for little but the
land. The urban proletariat, not having been educated by the
Government, had partially educated itself in the abstract socialism of
Karl Marx, Lavrov, and Tolstoy. The Extremists followed Marx and were
called Social Democrats; but they had themselves split into two
sections, the Bolsheviks or Maximalists and the Mensheviks or
Minimalists; the former wanted a dictatorship of the proletariat, a
complete inversion of the Tsardom consisting in the substitution of
the tyranny of the bottom for the tyranny of the top, while the
Mensheviks were willing to recognize the claims of other classes than
the proletariat. More moderate, though still socialists, were the
followers of Lavrov, who called themselves Social Revolutionaries and
found a leader in Kerensky. The middle classes and intelligentsia
formed the bulk of the Cadet party led by Miliukov and were
predominant in the Duma and the Provisional Government. In the Soviet
power gradually passed farther and farther to the left, from Social
Revolutionaries to Mensheviks and from Mensheviks to Bolsheviks under
the leadership of Lenin, whose return from exile in Switzerland was
facilitated for its own purposes by the German Government.
All parties in the Soviet were, however, agreed in their anxiety for
peace, the destruction of imperialism and bureaucracy, and the
reconstruction of Russia on a socialistic basis; and they concurred
with the peasants in their demand for the extirpation of landlordism.
The emancipation of the serfs by Alexander II in 1861 had done little
more than substitute economic for legal slavery; for the emancipated
peasants were only given as proprietors the refuse of the land they
had tilled as serfs, and for it they had to pay tribute calculated
upon the value of their labour when applied to the richer soil of
their lords. Freedom therefore meant unavoidable penury, but the
demand of the peasants was not so much to evade their dues to the
State as to secure the richer land which would enable them to meet
their obligations. It was here that they sought their indemnities and
their annexations, not in the acquisition of foreign territory
hundreds of miles beyond their ken. Of Belgium and Serbia they knew
nothing, and all they knew of the war was that it meant ghastly
losses, fighting with pitchforks against poison gas and machine guns
for them, and for their masters the fruits of victory. What domestic
progress Russia had made in the past had been the outcome of her
defeats; success in war had always been followed by reaction.
Constantinople--Tsargrad as it was called by the Russians--had no
charms for the proletariat. They wanted peace, some of them because
national wars divided the forces of international Socialism and
postponed the war of classes, but most in order that they might
consolidate their revolution and garner its ripe and refreshing fruit.
They did not, however, desire a separate peace with the enemy, and
Austria's offer of 15 April was declined, because a separate peace
would be disadvantageous to them. What they wanted was a general peace
which would give each nation what it possessed before and each
proletariat a good deal more; and the design took form in the Congress
of Stockholm in June.
Meanwhile discipline disappeared in Russia, and even in her armies the
Soviet insisted that there should be no death-penalty, and that
military orders, except on the field of battle, should proceed from a
democratic committee. They knew that Russian autocracy had rested on
bayonets and only fell with the failure of that support: whosoever
controlled the Army would be master of Russia, and with a correct
instinct the Bolsheviks set to work to convert the soldiers and
seamen. It was easy work preaching peace, plenty, and indolence to the
peasants at the front; and the relaxation which reduced the production
of Russian industries by 40 per cent diminished still more the
efficiency of the Russian Army. The Provisional Government struggled
in vain against the disintegration, but its efforts were frustrated by
the Congress of Soviets which began to sit in April, fell more and
more under Lenin's influence, and resisted on principle all measures
to retain or re-establish authority. On 13 May, Gutchkov, the Minister
for War, resigned, and Miliukov followed. On the 16th the Provisional
Government was succeeded by another Coalition more socialist in its
complexion. Lvov remained its nominal head, but Tchernov, a social
revolutionary, and two Mensheviks became Ministers, and Kerensky took
Gutchkov's place at the Ministry of War. He did his best by his
fervour and eloquence to reanimate the army, for he believed that only
the success of Russian arms could guarantee the orderly progress of
the revolution. But Alexeiev retired in June, the Congress of Soviets
resolved that the Duma should be disbanded, and the view was
sedulously propagated that it was wrong to fight fellow Socialists in
the German Army and that the approaching Stockholm Conference would
compel the bourgeois and imperialist governments to make peace without
any further bloodshed.
Still Kerensky achieved some success with his impassioned appeals, and
Brussilov, who had become commander-in-chief, reported that the army
was recovering its moral. The Government determined to gamble on the
chance of a successful offensive. It had, indeed, no other means of
checking the growth of disorder, and an attack on the front was not
entirely hopeless. Both the Germans and Austrians had depleted their
Eastern forces to provide against dangers elsewhere, and there were
still sound elements like the Cossacks in the Russian Army. It was
skimmed for the purpose of all the cream of its regiments, and the
scene of action was laid where Brussilov's advance had pressed
farthest forward in 1916. Lemberg was to be outflanked on the south by
a movement from a line reaching from Zborow across the Dniester to the
foothills of the Carpathians. Three armies were employed, Erdelli's
Eleventh to the north, then Tcheremisov's Seventh reaching to the
Dniester, and south of it Kornilov's Eighth. Kerensky orated in khaki,
and Gutchkov served as an officer in the field. The artillery
preparation began on 29 June, and on 1 July the troops advanced from
their trenches. For a time they carried all before them, and
revolutionary Russia bade fair to repeat the success of Brussilov's
offensive in 1916. Tcheremisov's Seventh Army took Koniuchy on the 1st
and Potutory on the 2nd, and captured 18,000 prisoners. Erdelli's
Eleventh was more successful in attracting the bulk of the enemy
reserves than in making progress; but the diversion gave Kornilov's
Eighth a chance of which it made brilliant use. It attacked on the 8th
and took half a dozen villages south of the Dniester, driving the
Austrians back across its tributaries, the Lukwa and the Lomnica. On
the 10th Halicz fell before a combined advance of Tcheremisov north
and Kornilov south of the Dniester, and on the morrow Kalusz was
captured well on the way to Lemberg's vital connexions at Stryj. Then
the weather broke and the strength of the Russian armies turned into
water. There were no reserves with the spirit of those who fell in
this rapid advance, and Erdelli had failed to inspire the Eleventh
Army with Kornilov's dash. On the 16th Lenin brought off his Bolshevik
insurrection at Petrograd, but more fatal was the infection which
spread through Erdelli's troops. It was on them that the weight of the
German counter-attack fell on the 19th, and they simply wilted before
it. There was no great force in the German blow, which was merely
designed to relieve the pressure of Kornilov's advance; but Russian
troops refused to fight, and ran away trampling underfoot and killing
officers who strove to stem the rout. By the 20th German patrols were
in Tarnopol, which the Russians had held since August 1914, and in a
fortnight they were across the Russian frontier as far south as the
borders of Bukovina (see Map, p. 146). The Seventh and Eighth Armies
had to conform to this retreat, but they offered some stubborn
resistance and were brought off in good order. Czernowitz fell on 3
August, and the only solid obstacle to the enemy advance in the East
was the little Rumanian Army which had looked to this summer for its
revenge on the invader and the recovery of its capital and Wallachia.
The Rumanian Army had during the winter been refitted and equipped
with a considerable store of munitions, and its offensive was planned
to follow closely on the heels of the Russian in Galicia, But the
Russians were out of Tarnopol before, in the last week of July,
Averescu began his advance from south of the Oitoz Pass towards Kezdi
Vasarhely; and the Russian Fourth Army under Scherbachev, which was to
co-operate on Averescu's right, was deeply infected with revolutionary
disorder. Nevertheless Averescu broke the enemy front, took 2000
prisoners on the first day, and on 28 July was ten miles ahead of his
original line. Then Mackensen counter-attacked farther south at
Focsani, while Scherbachev's regiments began to desert and the
Russians in the Bukovina were being steadily driven back. On 6 and 7
August Mackensen forced the Russo-Rumanian line back from the Putna to
the Susitza, taking over 3000 prisoners in three days and also pushing
on towards Okna and Marasesti. In three days more the number of
prisoners increased to 7000, the key to the defence of the Moldavian
mountains was threatened at Adjudul, and the Court prepared to leave
Jassy and take refuge in Russian territory. On the 14th Rumanian
troops replaced the Russians in front of Okna in the Trotus valley and
counterattacked with vigour. But the decisive battle was fought
farther south, where Mackensen, advancing from Focsani, was seeking to
cross the Sereth in the direction of Marasesti and Tecuciu. It was the
most heroic of Rumania's struggles. Deprived of all but a fragment of
her territory and her manhood, and abandoned by the only ally within
reach, she had to face perhaps the ablest of German generals and over
a dozen fresh divisions thrown into the battle; and almost hourly
during the three days' fighting a fresh detachment of Russians
deserted. Yet Rumania triumphed at the battle of Marasesti, and by the
19th the crisis had passed. The attack then shifted to Okna, where the
Second Rumanian Army emulated the achievements of the First at
Marasesti. Sporadic fighting went on into September, but Rumania had
defended herself and saved South Russia for the time. On the 18th the
Germans even withdrew from Husiatyn, an Austrian town on the Galician
frontier: they had already abandoned the south for a safer adventure
against the unaided Russians at Riga (see Map, p. 229).
The Baltic Campaigns
This northern campaign resembled autumn manoeuvres, and was mainly
intended to test the value of the new tactics which Germany proposed
to use next spring against a more serious foe. It was more realistic
to experiment upon Russians than among themselves, and Von Hutier was
selected to make the demonstration. The advance began in the last days
of August, and on 1 September Von Hutier forced the passage of the
Dvina at Uexküll, eighteen miles above Riga, which the Russians
abandoned on the following day. Friedrichstadt fell next, and the
Russians retired from Jacobstadt on the 21st. The Germans were now
across the Dvina on a front of seventy miles, and pushed on towards
Wenden, meeting with occasional resistance. But their next experiment
was at the expense of the Russian Navy, which was even more
demoralized than the Army, and had murdered its officers wholesale. On
12 October the Germans landed a force on the island of Oesel, and
within a week had overrun that and the other islands at the mouth of
the Gulf of Riga. On the 21st they crossed to the mainland,
disembarking a force at Verder opposite Moen Island. There was little
to hinder a march on Petrograd, had there been any sufficient
inducement. But Petrograd in the hands of the Bolsheviks was worth
more to the Germans than in their own; for a German occupation of the
capital would have sterilized its miasmic influence over the rest of
Russia, and the Germans had only advanced so far in order to get into
touch with Finland and establish pro-German governments among the
little nationalities of the Baltic littoral. They had, moreover, to
economize their shrinking manpower, and their reserves were being
called off from all the Eastern fronts to more urgent tasks elsewhere,
leaving Russia to stew in its own disintegration.
Disaster had done nothing to check the distraction of Russian domestic
politics. The Cadets had most of them resigned in July owing to the
Government's complaisance towards the Ukrainian demand for
independence; and Kerensky succeeded Lvov as Premier on the 22nd,
while Kornilov took Brussilov's place as commander-in-chief on 1
August. But while Kerensky shed his right wing, he gained no support
from the left. The Bolsheviks would not forgive him his offensive in
July, nor the success with which he had suppressed the Leninite
rising; and a great conference at Moscow on 25 August representing
every shade of Russian disorganization produced some agreement on
formulas but none on action. Early in September Kerensky came to the
conclusion that a dictatorship was the only cure, and gave Kornilov
the impression that the latter should fill the part. Another Bolshevik
insurrection was brewing in Petrograd, and on the 7th Kornilov
prepared to crush it, sending Krymov forward to Gatchina within twenty
miles of the capital. Kerensky now took fright at the bugbear of a
military restoration, denounced Kornilov as a traitor, and threw
himself on the support of the Soviets. The cry that the revolution was
in danger ruined Kornilov's chances; his surrender was arranged by
Alexeiev's mediation, while Krymov committed suicide.
Such were Russian politics during the week in which the Germans
overran the Dvina. A republic was proclaimed on the 15th, and the
government entrusted to a council of five with Kerensky at its head.
It lived no longer than its numerous predecessors in the revolution.
Kerensky was rash enough to renew his breach with the Bolsheviks who
had helped him to ruin Kornilov, and in November they rent the man of
words. Trotzky organized the blow. There was little that was Russian
about this Jew, whose real name was Leo Braunstein, although he was
born in Odessa; but he possessed some practical capacity. Having
secured election as president of the Petrograd Soviet, he had created
a military revolutionary committee and a body of Red Guards, and on 5
November summoned the Petrograd garrison to place itself under its
direction. Kerensky sought to defend his Government, but most of his
forces went over to the Bolsheviks, and on the 7th he fled from the
city. He attempted to return at the head of some dubious troops, but
they were scattered by the Red Guards at Tsarskoe Selo on the 13th and
Kerensky disappeared. What there was left of government in Russia
passed into the hands of a self-constituted council of People's
Commissioners with Lenin as its president and Trotzky its Foreign
Minister; and on the 21st the council found a commander-in-chief in
one Ensign Krilenko. His business was to offer an armistice to the
Germans as a preliminary to suing for peace.
Russia had gone out of the war much faster than America came in. Early
in May a flotilla of destroyers joined the British Fleet, and on 26
June the first division landed in France. But it needed six months'
training, and a year would pass before the weight of American
reinforcements would make much material difference to the Western
front. That year was bound to try the Western Allies to the utmost,
and the interval between the disappearance of Russia and the arrival
of the United States as an effective combatant, gave the Germans the
chance of reversing the decision which they felt had gone against them
before the end of 1916. They regarded the Russian revolution as a
miracle wrought in their favour; but it was only by degrees that they
realized the extent of their apparent good fortune and proceeded both
to use and to abuse it. From the first, however, the revolution
changed for the worse the situation on every front, and enemy troops,
released from fear of Russia, began to appear in the West, on the
Isonzo, in Mesopotamia, in Palestine, and in the Balkans. The middle
of treacherous April saw the tide checked that had been flowing so
strongly since the year began.
The disappointment was not, however, entirely due to the gradual
elimination of Russia, for that misfortune did not fall with much
weight on the Western front until many months had passed, and
depression there had its causes nearer home. Commenting on the British
success at the battle of Arras, an Italian journal optimistically
asked its readers what would be the plight of the Central Empires when
real military Powers got to work, since so much had been achieved by
the semi-civilians of the British Empire. Hopes also ran high in
France. Nivelle, the new commander-in-chief, had conceived an
ambitious plan of crushing the Germans on a front of fifty miles
between the plateau north-east of Soissons and the river Suippe in
Champagne; and this offensive, coupled with the British pressure in
front of Arras, was to clear the Germans out of the greater part of
occupied France. Nivelle proposed to repeat on a vastly extended scale
his triumphs of the previous autumn at Verdun, and he made no secret
to his Government of his confidence that Laon would fall as a result
of the first day's fighting. Neither Haig nor Pétain had much faith in
the possibility of the plan, but Nivelle had persuaded Ribot's
Ministry, which had succeeded Briand's in March, and French
expectations were raised to a giddy height. There were three main
objectives: to clear the Chemin des Dames, to master the Moronvillers
massif and other heights north and east of Reims, and to thrust
between these two great bastions along the road to Laon. Each was an
objective greater than that achieved in the battle of Arras, and all
were attempted at once (*see Map, p. 67*).
The artillery preparation began on 6 April and the infantry attack on
Monday the 16th, a week after that on the Vimy Ridge. The battle was
not easy to follow, because the French were very reserved about their
reverses, and the maps gave an erroneous impression of the line from
which the attack started and that on which it ended. The French were
commonly thought to be holding both banks of the Aisne all the way
from Soissons to Berry-au-Bac, whereas in reality they had never
recovered from their retreat in January 1915 to the south bank between
Missy and Chavotine. Nor, except at Troyon, were they near the Chemin
des Dames; and not only had the river to be crossed, but the
formidable slopes, which the Germans had beeen meticulously fortifying
for two and a half years, to be surmounted. The results of the first
day's onslaught fell lamentably short of the extravagant
anticipations. The banks of the Aisne were cleared, some progress was
made up the slopes, and from Troyon, where the original line was
nearly on the ridge, an advance was made along it. But on the whole
the Germans maintained their grip on the Chemin des Dames. Nor was
fortune much kinder in the gap between it and the heights east of
Reims. The French Tanks, here first employed, were disappointing, and
Loivre was the only gain. The 17th was spent in beating off
counter-attacks west of Reims, while the French offensive spread east
to Moronvillers. Here the same tale had to be told; gallantry carried
various points of importance, but a month's fighting failed to give
the French complete control of their first day's objectives. West of
Reims on the 18th and following days Nanteuil, Vailly, Laffaux, Aizy,
Jouy, Ostel, and Bray were captured by Mangin, but they were all below
the Chemin des Dames, and April came to an end with the road to Laon
as impassable as ever. Fresh attempts were made in May; Craonne was
taken on the 4th, and the California plateau to the north of it and
Chevreux in the plain to the east were seized on the 6th and held
against counter-attacks, while east of Reims Auberive had fallen, and
by the 20th the whole summit of the Moronvillers massif was said to
have been secured.
The impression that the Chemin des Dames had been conquered was not
removed until it really was gained by Pétain five months later; but
there was contrast enough between the promises and the achievement to
produce the deepest depression in France. On 28 April Pétain was
appointed chief of staff and on 15 May commander-in-chief in
succession to Nivelle, while Foch became chief of staff. Little was
wisely revealed abroad of French despondency or the effect of the
disappointment on the moral of the army. But French journals began to
clamour for unity of command of all the forces in France under a
French generalissimo, pour épargner du sang Français, as one of them
expressed it; and prudence constrained the higher command to revert to
those limited objectives which Nivelle had abandoned. Joffre was sent
to the United States to place the situation before the
sister-republic; and but for American intervention France would have
been nearer a peace of compromise in May 1917 than at any previous
date in the war. The second battle of the Aisne gave rise to that
miasma of défaitisme, associated with the names of Bolo and Caillaux,
which enfeebled the spirit and effort of France until they were
revived by Clémenceau's vigorous stimulants.
Haig was also laid under an obligation to relieve the pressure and
gloom by prolonging his Arras offensive and seeking to extract more
from his victory than it would yield; and the second phase of that
battle was fought under a shadow and under constraint. But if it
resulted in serious losses, it brought some additions to our gains of
ground. On 23 April Gavrelle and Guémappe were captured after
desperate fighting; and on the 28th an advance was made at Arleux and
Oppy. On 3 May the Canadians took Fresnoy, and the Australians
trenches at Bullecourt, but the Germans kept up a series of stubborn
counter-attacks, especially at Fresnoy, Roeulx, and Bullecourt, and
Fresnoy was lost on the 8th. On the 14th we completed our capture of
Roeulx, and on the 17th that of Bullecourt. The fighting died down,
towards the end of May, and the scene was shifted farther north in
June to the Messines-Wytschaete Ridge. During the month of the battle
of Arras we had taken over 20,000 prisoners, and the French claimed
more on the Aisne. We had also bitten into the Hindenburg "line." But
that line had not been broken, mainly because it was not a line,
having instead of none a breadth of several miles; and, apart from the
important Vimy Ridge, the German position had not been greatly shaken.
The warfare was one of attrition, and the true test was that of
wastage, which can only be used when the losses on both sides are
exactly known. There was evidence that the Germans were feeling the
strain, but so was the Entente, and the influx of troops from the
Eastern front, which began in April and was felt in the Arras battle,
would more than compensate for the excess (if any) in German losses.
It was also clear by this time that the Germans had gained another
great advantage. They might lose the war, but they would lose it in
France, and the Fatherland would not suffer the destruction and
desolation which it had inflicted on all its foes except the British
Empire and the United States. The Germans were wisely bent on fighting
to a finish where Hindenburg had fixed his lines; they were beaten
there, but snatched immunity from ruin for German soil out of their
defeat. Nivelle's failure in April 1917 combined with the Russian
collapse to preclude an Entente repetition of the German invasion of
August 1914; and Lord Curzon's mental vision of Gurkhas encamping in
Berlin was destined to remain a dream.
The breakdown of Russia and of the French campaign paralysed other
offensives than those on the Western front, and a sympathetic inertia
spread to the Balkans. At the end of February Sarrail had told his
commanders that he intended attacking all along the line at Salonika
in the first week of April as his contribution to the comprehensive
Allied advance. But local operations in March, which succeeded in
linking up the Italians east of Avlona with Sarrail's left, did not
lead up to the expected climax. The offensive was postponed until 24
April, and then it was only British troops that were sent into serious
action. The desired economy of French blood was effected by a French
commander-in-chief at the cost of general failure. A frontal attack by
General Milne's forces was ordered on the central position at Doiran;
considerable losses were incurred, and gains were secured that made no
essential difference to the situation. West of the Vardar and in front
of Monastir no advance was attempted; but on 8 May Milne was told to
repeat his effort, which had similar results to those of his first;
and Sarrail was presently superseded by Franchet d'Esperey.
Nevertheless the Russian revolution had one beneficial effect upon the
Balkan situation. It removed one of the two influences which had
protected Constantine and enabled him to counterwork Entente policy
and strategy in the Near East. The other was neutralized by connivance
in Italy's proclamation of a protectorate over Albania on 3 June; and
with this compensation she was induced to remove her ban on Venizelos
and to risk that greater Greece, which with a free hand that statesman
bade fair to achieve. France was whole-hearted in supporting him. The
chief islands had one by one rallied to his cause in the spring, and
by the end of May he had 60,000 troops at his disposal. On 11 June M.
Jonnart arrived at Athens as plenipotentiary for the Entente to insist
on Constantine's abdication. Troops were moved down into Thessaly; the
Isthmus of Corinth was seized, and warships anchored off the Piraeus.
Constantine had no choice, and under compulsion nominated his second
son Alexander as his successor. On the 13th he left Athens for Lugano,
and on the 21st Venizelos arrived from Salonika and formed a
government. The German agents were expelled, and the Greek people were
reconciled to the violence of the proceedings by the substantial
consolation of the raising of the blockade. Less happy was the effect
of the Russian revolution in Asia Minor. All idea of an advance from
Trebizond and Erzingian came to an end, and the projected campaign
which was to have given the Russians Mosul while Maude advanced to
Baghdad was abandoned. On 30 April the Turks announced that the enemy
had evacuated Mush. In May they left the Dialah, and in July retreated
from Khanikin into Persia, leaving the British right wing in the air.
Gradually they abandoned Persia to the principle of self-determination
and to the Turks, and Armenia to fresh experiments in massacre. Even
on the Salonika front Sarrail suffered from the retiring habits of his
Russian troops, and at Gaza Murray felt the force of Turkish divisions
released from Russian fronts. There were at least six divisions to
oppose him when he renewed his attack after three weeks' interval on
17th April. His communications had been greatly improved and the
railway brought up to Deir-el-Belah, but so too had the Turkish
defences, and there was little to say for a frontal attack by inferior
forces without the chance of surprise. The political demand for an
Egyptian contribution to the combined Allied offensive seems, however,
to have been inexorable, and Sir Charles Dobell was committed to an
enterprise not unlike our attacks in Gallipoli. Some initial success
was won on the 17th, and the ground gained was prepared on the 18th
for a final effort on the following day. Samson Ridge near the coast
was taken, but Ali Muntar defied all our efforts, and counter-attacks
deprived us of much of the ground that was won. Seven thousand men had
been lost, and Turkish reinforcements were still arriving. Gaza could
not be taken by frontal attack without greatly superior forces; and
the British had to look for success to another general and a different
strategy, and to postpone from Easter to Christmas their Christian
celebrations in Jerusalem. The brightness of dawn in the East was
clouded, and the flowers of hope that bloomed in the spring drooped in
the Syrian summer and in the furnace of war in the West.