The Project Gutenberg EBook of Day by Day With The Russian Army 1914-15, by Bernard Pares This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Day by Day With The Russian Army 1914-15 Author: Bernard Pares Release Date: October 8, 2017 [EBook #55702] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY *** Produced by David E. Brown, Brian Coe and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) DAY BY DAY WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 1914-15 THE AUTHOR. DAY BY DAY WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY 1914-15 BY BERNARD PARES Official British Observer with the Russian Armies in the Field WITH MAPS LONDON CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd. 1915 TO NICHOLAS AND MARY HOMYAKOV Tidings from the Tsar of Germans, Tidings to the Russian Tsar. "I will come and break your Russia, And in Russia I will live." Moody was the Russian Tsar, As he paced the Moscow street. "Be not moody, Russian Tsar, Russia we will never yield. "Gather, gather, Russian hosts; William shall our captive be. "Cross the far Carpathian mountains; March through all the German towns." Marching Song of the Third Army. PREFACE For the last ten years or more I have paid long visits to Russia, being interested in anything that might conduce to closer relations between the two countries. During this time the whole course of Russia's public life has brought her far nearer to England—in particular, the creation of new legislative institutions, the wonderful economic development of the country, and the first real acquaintance which England has made with Russian culture. I always travelled to Russia through Germany, whose people had an inborn unintelligence and contempt for all things Russian, and whose Government has done what it could to hold England and Russia at arm's length from each other. I often used to wonder which of us Germany would fight first. When Germany declared war on Russia, I volunteered for service, and was arranging to start for Russia when we, too, were involved in the war. I arrived there some two weeks afterwards, and after a stay in Petrograd and Moscow was asked to take up the duty of official correspondent with the Russian army. It was some time before I was able to go to the army, and at first only in company of some twelve others with officers of the General Staff who were not yet permitted to take us to the actual front. We, however, visited Galicia and Warsaw, and saw a good deal of the army. After these journeys I was allowed to join the Red Cross organisation with the Third Army as an attaché of an old friend, Mr. Michael Stakhovich, who was at the head of this organisation; and there General Radko Dmitriev, whom I had known earlier, kindly gave me a written permit to visit any part of the firing line; my Red Cross work was in transport and the forward hospitals. My instructions did not include telegraphing, and my diary notes, though dispatched by special messengers, necessarily took a month or more to reach England; but I had the great satisfaction of sharing in the life of the army, where I was entertained with the kindest hospitality and invited to see and take part in anything that was doing. The Third Army was at the main curve in the Russian front, the point where the German and Austrian forces joined hands. It was engaged in the conquest of Galicia, and on its fortunes, more perhaps than on those of any other army on either front, might depend the issue of the whole campaign. We were the advance guard of the liberation of the Slavs, and to us was falling the rôle of separating Austria from Germany, or, what is the same thing in more precise terms, separating Hungary from Prussia. I had the good fortune to have many old friends in this area. My work in hospitals and the permission to interrogate prisoners at the front gave me the best view that one could have of the process of political and military disintegration which was and is at work in the Austrian empire. I took part in the advanced transport work of the Red Cross, visited in detail the left and right flanks of the army, and went to the centre just at the moment when the enemy fell with overwhelming force of artillery on this part. I retreated with the army to the San and to the province of Lublin. My visits to the actual front had in each case a given object—usually to form a judgment on some question on which depended the immediate course of the campaign. I am now authorised to publish my more public communications, including my diary notes with the Third Army. I am also obliged to the Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury for leave to reprint my note of September 1914 on Moscow. I think it will be seen that if we lost Galicia we lost it well, and that the moral superiority remained and remains on our side throughout. We were driven out by sheer weight of metal, but our troops turned at every point to show that the old relations of man to man were unchanged. The diary of an Austrian officer who was several times opposite to me will, I think, make this clear. When Russia has half the enemy's material equipment we know, and he does, that we shall be travelling in the opposite direction. It was a delight to be with these splendid men. I never saw anything base all the while that I was with the army. There was no drunkenness; every one was at his best, and it was the simplest and noblest atmosphere in which I have ever lived. Bernard Pares. [Pg ix] [Pg x] [Pg xi] DAY BY DAY WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY July-August 1914. While the war cloud was breaking, I was close to my birthplace at Dorking with my father, whom I was not to see again. Though eighty-one years old he was in his full vigour of heart, mind and body, and we were motoring every day among the beautiful Surrey hills. He had had a great life of work for others, born just after the first Reform Bill which his own father had helped to carry through the House of Commons, and stamped with the robust faith and vigour of the great generation of the Old Liberals. Like every other interest of his children, he had always followed with the fullest participation my own work in Russia, and I had everything packed for my yearly visit there. In London I had had short visits from Mr. Protopopov, a liberal Russian publicist, and later from the eminent leader of Polish public life, Mr. Dmowski, than whom I know no better political head in Europe. Both had expected war for years past, but neither had any idea how close it was. Mr. Protopopov was absorbed in a study of English town planning and Mr. Dmowski was correcting the proofs of his last article for my Russian Review, which he ended with the words, "The time is not yet." He came down and motored with us through what he called "the paradise of trees"—and Poland itself has some of the finest trees in Europe; and my father was keenly interested in his hopes for the future of Poland. He was going to the English seaside when events called him back to an adventurous journey across Europe, in the course of which he was twice arrested in Germany, the second time in company of his old political opponent, the reactionary Russian Minister of Education, the late Mr. Kasso. To them a German Polish sentry said that as a Pole he wished for the victory of Russia, for "though the Russian made himself unpleasant, the Schwab (Swabian or German) was far more dangerous." When I read Austria's demands on Serbia, I felt that it must mean a European war, and that we should have to take part in it. I remember the ordinary traveller in a London hotel explaining to me how infinitely more important the Ulster question was than the Serbian. It was clear that the really mischievous factor was the simultaneous official and public support of Germany, who claimed to draw an imaginary line around the Austro-Serbian conflict and threatened war to any one who interfered in the war. I had long realised the humbug of pretending that Austria was anything distinct from or independent of Germany; and the claim of the two to settle in their own favour one of the most thorny questions in Europe could never be tolerated by Russia. The Bosnian withdrawal of 1909 would, I knew, never be repeated, least of all by the Russian Emperor. The line had been crossed; it was "mailed fist" once too often. Serbia's reply showed the extreme calm and circumspection both of Serbia and of Russia. Then came in quick succession the great days, when every one's political horizon was daily forced wider, when all the home squabbles of the different countries—the Caillaux case, the Russian labour troubles, and the Irish conflict, on which Germany had counted so much—were hurrying back as fast as possible into their proper background. There was a significant catch when the Austro-Russian conversations were renewed, and Germany, who had now come out in her true leadership, went forward to the forcing of war. The absurd inconsequences of German diplomacy reached their extraordinary culmination in the actual declaration to Russia. To make sure of war, the German ambassador in St. Petersburg received for delivery a formal declaration with alternative wordings suitable to any answer which Russia might give to the German ultimatum; and this genial diplomatist delivered the draft with both alternative wordings to the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr. Sazonov. It is the last communication printed in the Russian Orange Book. The question was, how soon we should all see it. The news of the German declaration was in the English Sunday papers. Many English clergymen see virtue in not reading Sunday papers. I went to church. The clergyman began his sermon: "They tell me that the Sunday papers assert that Germany has declared war on Russia." Not a very promising beginning, but England was there the next minute. "If this is true," he went on, "and if we come into it, as we shall have to, we stand at the end of the long period when we have been spoiling ourselves with riches and comfort and forgetting what it is to make sacrifices"; and there followed an impromptu but very clear forecast of what was to be asked of us. No one will forget the great days of probation, when each great country in turn was called on to stand and give whatever it had of the best. Russia was what one had felt sure that she would be. The Emperor's pledge not to make peace while a German soldier was in Russia, was an exact repetition of the words of Alexander I, but given this time at the very beginning of the war. The wonderful scene before the Winter Palace showed sovereign and people at one; and the wrecking of the German Embassy was an answer of the Russian workmen to an active propaganda of discontent that had issued from its walls. Next came France's turn, her remarkable coolness and discretion, and the outburst of patriotic devotion which the President of the Chamber voiced in the words, "Lift up your hearts" (Haut les cœurs). Then the turn of the Belgians, king and people, and their splendid and simple devotion. And now it was for us to speak. I believed that we were sure to come into the war, but it was three days of waiting and the invasion of Belgium that gave us a united England. The Germans did our job for us. It was a quick conversion for those who hesitated; one day, neutrality to be saved; the next, neutrality past saving; the next, war, and war to the end. When we were waiting before the post office for Sir Edward Grey's speech, every one was asking, "Have they done the right thing?" This was the atmosphere of the London streets on the night that we declared war. We all lived on a few very simple thoughts. It was clear that there must be endless losses and many cruel inventions, but just as clear not only that we had to win but that, if we were not failing to ourselves, we were sure to. I was in London before our declaration to ask what I could do, and was now making my last preparations for starting. The squalor of the great city had taken the aspect of a dingy ironclad at work. At the Bank of England, where payment could still be claimed in gold, I was asked the object of my journey. No one seemed to know about routes except Cook & Son. In the country the mobilisation passed us silent and unnoticed, except for the aeroplanes which we saw [Pg 1] [Pg 2] [Pg 3] [Pg 4] [Pg 5] streaming southwards. I saw my father in his garden for the last time, went to London, and there, in a confusion of little things and big, with a taxi piled in haste with parcels of the most various nature and ownership, hurried to King's Cross, bundled into a full third-class carriage and started for Russia. August 21. At King's Cross I was already almost in Russia. The sixty or so Russians who had come to the Dental Congress in London, after one sitting had been caught by the war. Their English hosts looked after them splendidly, and they themselves pooled the supplies of money which they happened to have on them. There were also several members of the Russian ballet, and other Russians on their way from Italy, Switzerland and France, going via Norway and Sweden to St. Petersburg. Our route of itself was a striking illustration of the great military advantage possessed by Germany and Austria. With its interior lines of communication, the great German punching machine could measure its forces to any blow which it wished to deal on either side, while for any contact with each other the Allies had to crawl right round the circumference. For this military advantage, however, the aggressors had sacrificed in the most evident way all political considerations. In a quarrel which Austria had picked with Serbia, Germany forced war on Russia for daring to mobilise. Germany made an ultimatum to France at the same time, so as to make war with both countries simultaneously and give herself time to crush France before Russia could help her. For greater speed against France, she invaded neutral Belgium, thus making England an enemy and Italy a neutral. The absurdity became apparent when, with all this done, we were still waiting for the completion of the Russian mobilisation which was the nominal cause of the European War. Hence the union of so many peoples; but for all that the military advantage remained. It was as if Europe had the stomach ache, with shooting pains in all directions. I asked a friend in the train what might be the state of mind of the Emperor William. He replied by quoting the answer of an Irishman: "He's probably thinking, Is there any one that I've left out?" At Newcastle, the Norwegian steamer had booked at least forty more passengers than it could berth. I only got on to the boat by a special claim and had to sleep in a passage with my things scattered round me. All the corridors were taken up in this way. The Russians are admirable fellow-passengers: they had organised themselves informally under a natural leader into a great family. One corridor was set apart for a night nursery. The women received special consideration, and any one who had a berth was ready to give it up to them. One Russian, thinking I was ill, offered me his. I was ensconced with my back to the wall at the head of a staircase, and they would stop to chat as they went up or down. They had been greatly impressed by the spirit in England: the Englishman they regarded as a civil fellow who had better not be provoked, for if he was he would get to business at once and not look back till it was finished. They spoke very simply of themselves and of their little failings, and said that for this reason it was the greatest comfort to have England with them. What had impressed them most was the calm and vigour with which we had faced our financial crisis. They had seen some of our territorial troops, whom they classed very high for physique and spirit. They had much to tell one of France and Italy, and also of insults offered to them or their friends when leaving Germany. There were outbursts of sheer hooliganism marked with a sort of brutal contempt for Russians, and one lady, they said, had the earrings torn out of her ears. Their humanity was shocked by all this. They had nothing but condemnation for anything of the kind, from whatever side it came, and they were quite ready to criticise their own people or ours wherever there was any ground for doing so. The captain said to me, "We sail under the protection of England." We were stopped once by an English warship, but only for a few minutes. At Bergen I found new fellow-passengers, and after an evening which was a succession of fiords, lakes, rocky heights and white villages, we passed by a wonderfully engineered railway over the snow level and down to Kristiania. The Norwegians were friendly and sympathetic, the Swedes courteous but reserved. There had recently been unveiled a frontier monument showing two brothers shaking hands; and one felt that the one country would not move without the other. Between Kristiania and Stockholm I wrote an article on the Poles, and directly afterwards, puzzling out a Swedish newspaper, I read the manifesto of the Grand Duke Nicholas. We had with us Poles who were travelling right round to Warsaw. From Stockholm the more apprehensive members of our party went northward for the long land journey by Torneô. The rest of us risked the voyage across the Gulf of Bothnia. In the beautiful Skerries, we were at one point sent back by a Swedish gunboat and piloted past a mine field. I was on a Finnish boat, which was fair prize; so I had an interest in any ship that showed itself on this hostile sea. When we reached Raumo, a little improvised port in Finland, there was an outburst of relief for those who had come so far and were home again at last. All classes joined and enjoyed the home-coming together. The train picked up detachments of Russian troops on their way to the war. I had no seat, and went and slept or drowsed for an hour or two in a carriage full of soldiers. As I lay on a wooden bench I listened to a young peasant recruit with a bright clear face who was talking to his mother. It seemed to be a kind of fairy tale that he was telling her, and the clearly spoken words mingled with the movement of the train: "And he went again to the lake, and there he found the girl, and there was the golden ring, the ring of parting." Petrograd. I shall not dwell on the six weeks or so that I spent in St. Petersburg. My time was taken up with a number of details and with arrangements for getting to the front. I had volunteered for the Red Cross when I was asked to serve as official correspondent. On my arrival I saw Mr. Sazonov, who spoke very simply about the overdoing of the mailed fist; he was as quiet and [Pg 6] [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] [Pg 10] natural as he always is. He was very pleased with the mobilisation, which he told me had been so enthusiastic as to gain many hours on the schedule. This was the account that I heard everywhere. Mr. N. N. Lvov, of Saratov on the Volga, one of the most respected public men in Russia, was at his estate at the time. When the news of war came, the peasants, who were harvesting, went straight off to the recruiting depot and thence to the church, where all who were starting took the communion; there was no shouting, no drinking, though the abstinence edict had not then been issued; and every man who was called up, except one who was away on a visit, was in his place at the railway station that same evening. In other parts the peasants went round and collected money for the soldiers' families, and even in small villages quite large sums were given. The abstinence edict answered to a desire that had been expressed very generally among the peasants for some years. It was thoroughly enforced both in the country and in the towns. In the country the savings banks at once began steadily to fill, and the peasants, who would speak very naïvely of their former drunkenness, hoped that the edict would be permanent. In the towns some few restaurants were for a time still allowed to supply beer, but this ceased later. In all this time I only saw one drunken man. The whole country was at once at its very best. After a mean and confused period every one saw his road to sacrifice. The difference between the Russians and us was that while this feeling, often so acute with us, could often find no road, in Russia, with her conscription and her huge Red Cross organisation, the path was easy. All the life of the country streamed straight into the war; age limits did not act as with us; and the rear, including the capital, was depleted of nearly every one. This made one feel that no good work could be done here without access to the army. Nearly all my friends were gone off, and I was anxious to join them. The interval was filled with different lesser interests. The question of communications between the Allies was engaging a great deal of attention. I was a member of a committee at the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, which was working out arrangements for trade routes. My English friends and I also tried to plan an exchange of articles, asking leading Russians and Englishmen to write respectively in English and Russian papers. But, though this was felt to be important, we broke down on the Russian side, because those who wished to write for us were swept away to war work at the front. In the rear the most important work was the relief of the families left behind. This engaged a number of devoted workers and was soon brought into very good order both at St. Petersburg and at Moscow, but it was in the main a task for women. At the outset of the war the aged Premier, Mr. Goremykin, whose political record was that of a benevolent Conservative, at once saw the need of engaging the full co-operation of the nation as a whole. After consultation with public leaders the Duma was summoned. A few representative speeches were expected, but with a remarkable spontaneity not only every section of political opinion, but every race in the vast Russian empire took its part in a striking series of declarations of loyalty and devotion. Each man spoke plainly the feelings of himself and those for whom he spoke. Perhaps no speeches left a greater impression than those of the Lithuanians and of the Jews; these last found a noble spokesman in Mr. Friedmann. The speeches in the Duma, which were circulated all over the country, were a revelation to the public and to the Duma itself; and the war thus had from the first a national character; it was a great act in the national life of Russia. In particular it was found that the Red Cross work could not possibly be organised on any basis of suspicion of public initiative. In the Japanese War Zemstva were still suspect to the Government, because they represented the elective principle. The Zemstva created a large Red Cross organisation under the admirable Prince George Lvov, but it worked under great difficulties. Now Mr. Goremykin confided the main work of the Red Cross to Prince Lvov and the Zemstva; and almost every one prominent in Zemstvo or Duma life engaged in this work, which gave splendid results. The later attempt of the reactionary Minister of the Interior, Mr. Maklakov, to close this organisation ended in his resignation. Red Cross Zemstvo work meant the nationalisation of Russian public life, which had so long been under the strong control of reactionary German influences. The liberation from these influences was sealed by the re-naming of the capital. The German name, St. Petersburg, was exchanged for the Russian Petrograd. This was no fad. It was the fitting end to a long struggle of the Russian people as a whole, under a national sovereign, to develop itself independently of any mailed fist, to manage its own affairs as Russian instincts should direct. In Moscow in 1812 the Emperor met his people after the beginning of the war. Gentry offered their lives; merchants, with clenched fists and streaming eyes, offered one-third of all their substance. In 1914 the Emperor again went to pray with his people in Moscow, and the growth of a still greater Russia has only augmented those proportions, deepened the reach of that historic example of patriotic self-sacrifice. "Russia," said one of the best Russians to me, Mr. N. N. Lvov, "was lost in a confusion of petty quarrels and intrigues; and suddenly we see that the real Russia is there." The pleasant streets of this great country city, so far more homelike than those of the capital, we found even more country-like than ever; a notable absence everywhere of young men; the feeling that all those who were left were at work somewhere together. In the town hall, which I have always found so thronged and busy, none of the chief public men were to be seen; the work of all seemed to have passed to the new department opened close by for the town organisation in connection with the Red Cross. There, after a long wait while numberless applicants for service passed us, we received an admirably short and clear explanation of the work for the wounded. In the same building was organised the care for the poor, strongly developed in recent years at twenty-nine local branches, and now working wholesale and with splendid effect [Pg 11] [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] for the homes of those who have gone to the war. At the Zemstvo League there was the atmosphere of all the years of missionary work for the people that has been carried on in camping conditions for so many years by the Zemstvo in all sorts of country corners of Russia. Every one was moving quietly and quickly about his share of the common business. At the big green baize table every seat was occupied—here a woman of the poorer class volunteering as a Red Cross sister, there a medical student asking for service. Small conferences of fellow-workers going on in all the side rooms; and in the evening a common discussion of how the Zemstvo work could be carried further to the economic support of the population; an appeal is being drawn up to go to every one in Russia. Here I found the excellent "twin" secretaries of the President of the Duma, Mr. Shchepkin and Mr. Alexeyev, who have done so much for friendship with England, and the head of the whole Zemstvo League, Prince Lvov, who in a few simple words gave all the objects of the work for the wounded, who were expected to number 750,000. Next we were taken to the chief depots. Princess Gagarin has given her beautiful house for one, and now lives in a corner of it, helping at the work. There are two main departments for paid work and for unpaid. Patterns of all the clothes, pillows, and hospital linen required for the wounded are sent here, and the material cut out is given out to 3,200 women, some of whom stand in a long file in the court outside. Every day the store, which works till midnight, is cleared for a new supply, and the materials prepared are packed in cases of birch bark for the army. In the Government horse- breeding department there is another great depot under the direction of Princess O. Trubetskoy. The workers, rich and poor, all have their simple meals together in one of the working rooms. There is a large store of chemicals, and elsewhere a department for the supply of furniture and implements for the field hospitals. It would be hard to make those who cannot see it feel how intimately the Russian people now feels itself bound up with the English in a great common effort. The Rector of Moscow University, with whom I was only able to converse by telephone, said to me: "Tell them in England that we have one heart and one soul with them." Every day great numbers of wounded are brought by train to Moscow. By the admirable arrangements of Countess O. Bobrinsky, a vast number of students, young women, and helpers of all kinds are waiting for them at the Alexandrovsky station to assist in moving them and to supply them with refreshments. An enormous silent crowd surrounds the white station. The owners of motors are waiting ready with their carriages; all details are in order. Three trains come in between six and ten o'clock. The sight is a terrible one; faces bound up, limbs missing; some few have died on the journey. The wounded are moved quickly and quietly to the private carriages. As they pass through the crowd all hats are off, and the soldiers sometimes reply with a salute. It is all silent; it is the pulse of a great family beating as that of one man. October 8. The Emperor's visit to the Vilna was a great success. He rode through the town unguarded. The streets were crowded, the reception most cordial. The upper classes in Vilna are mostly Poles, a kind of Polish "enclave." There are several splendid Catholic churches. On the road to the station are gates with some revered Catholic images, before which all passers by remove their hats. There is a large Jewish trading population often living in extreme poverty: for instance, sometimes in three tiers of cellars one below another. The peasants are mostly Lithuanians. Thus there are not many Russians except officials. At the beginning of war the nearness of the enemy was felt with much anxiety. Now there is an atmosphere of work and assurance. The Grand Hotel and several public buildings are converted into hospitals, where the Polish language is largely used. The Emperor visited all the chief hospitals, and spoke with many wounded, distributing medals in such numbers that the supply ran short. He received a Jewish deputation and spoke with thanks of the sympathetic attitude of the Jews in this hour so solemn for Russia. The general feeling may be described as like a new page of history. Among Poles, educated or uneducated, enthusiasm is general. This is all the more striking because in no circumstances could Vilna be considered as politically Polish. Vilna shows all the aspects of war conditions, but the country around is being actively cultivated. October 10. We reached the Russian headquarters as the bugle sounded for evening prayer. The atmosphere here is one of complete simplicity and homeliness. Our small party includes several distinguished journalists from most of the chief Russian papers, also eminent French, American and Japanese representatives of the Press. We found the Grand Ducal train on a side line. It was spacious and comfortable but simply appointed. We were received by the Chief of the General Staff, one of the youngest lieutenant-generals in the Russian army. He is a strongly built man with a powerful head, whose carriage and speech communicate confidence. He spoke very simply of the military conditions, of the common task, and of his assurance of the full co-operation of the public and Press. The Grand Duke then entered, his light step, bright eye and imposing stature well shown up by his easy cavalry uniform. Shaking hands with each of us, both before and after his address, he said: "Gentlemen, I am glad to welcome you to my quarters. I have always thought, and continue to think, that the Press, in competent and worthy hands, can do an enormous amount of good. I am sure you gentlemen are just the men who by your communications through the papers, telling all that is most keenly interesting, and by your correct exposition of the facts, can do good both to the public and to us. I unfortunately and necessarily cannot show you all I should be perhaps glad to show, as in every war, and particularly in this stupendous one, the observing of military secrecy relative to the plan and all that can reveal it is the pledge of success. I have marked out a road on which you will be able to acquaint yourselves with just what is of most lively interest to all, and what all are anxious to know. Allow me to wish you success and to express to you my confidence that by your work you will do all the good which is expected of you as representatives of the public, and will calm relations and friends and [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] [Pg 18] all who are suffering and anxious. I welcome you, gentlemen, and wish you full success." We were invited to join in the lunch and dinner of the General Staff in their restaurant car. There were no formalities—it was simply a number of fellow workers having their meals together, without distinction, just as in the big houses in Moscow where the making of clothes for the army is proceeding. A notice forbids handshaking in the restaurant, under fine of threepence for the wounded. I noticed a street picture of the Cossack Kruchkov in his single-handed combat with eleven German Dragoons, also a map of the front of the Allies in the West, but hardly any other decorations. Among the party there was, in accordance with the temperance edict, no alcohol. October 12. To-day I visited several wounded from the Austrian front, mostly serious cases. The first, an Upper Austrian with a broken leg, spoke cheerily of his wound and his surroundings. He described the Russian artillery fire as particularly formidable. His own corps had run short of ammunition, not of food. Another prisoner, a young German from Bohemia, singularly pleasing and simple, described the fighting at Krasnik, where he was hit in the leg. The battle, he said, was terrible. The Austrian artillery here was uncovered and was crushed. The Russian rifle line took cover so well that he could not descry them from two hundred yards in front of his own skirmishing line, but its firing took great effect. I saw also an Austrian doctor taken prisoner, and now continuing his work salaried by the Russians. All three prisoners evidently felt nothing antagonistic in their surroundings. They struck me as men who had fulfilled a civic duty without either grudge or any distinctive national feeling. I spoke with several Russians who had been badly hit in their first days of fighting, especially at Krasnik. Here a young Jew fell in the firing line on a slope, and saw thence more than half of his company knocked over as they pressed forward. He was picked up next morning. A Russian described how his company charged a small body of Austrians, who retired precipitately to a wood but reappeared supported by three quickfirers which mowed down most of his company. All accounts agreed that the Austrians could never put up resistance to Russian bayonet charges. This was particularly noticeable in the later fighting. As one sturdy fellow put it, "No, they don't charge us, we charge them, and they clear out." I was most of all impressed by a frail lad of twenty who looked a mere boy. He was not wounded, and was sent back simply because he was worn out by the campaigning. He said, "They are firing on my brother and not on me. That is not right, I ought to be where they all are." One feels it is a great wave rolling forward with one spirit driving it on. Many of these wounded had only been picked up after lying for some time on the field. I saw one heroic lady, a sister of mercy, who had herself carried a wounded officer from the firing line. Both the hospitals that I visited were strongly staffed. In the second, designed only for serious cases, and admirably equipped with drugs, Roentgen apparatus and operating rooms, the sister of the Emperor, the Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (who went through the full two years' preparation) is working as a sister of mercy under all the ordinary discipline and conditions of travel and work. Starting at the outbreak of the war, she was in time for the tremendous pressure of the great Austrian battles, when the hospital had to provide for three hundred patients instead of the expected two hundred. All the arrangements in these hospitals, based on fifty years' experience of Russian country hospital work, were carried out under the most difficult conditions and bore the impression of missionary devotion. Here, for instance, all the medicine chests were adapted for frequent transport; the table is also the travelling chest, and so on. The country aspect was also noticeable in an army bread factory which I visited. The rye bread is dried to a portable biscuit; the soldier can carry a large supply of this biscuit and has something to eat in the firing line when other provisions run short. Lvov (Lemberg), October 15. To-day, on their arrival, the Russian Governor-General of Galicia received the correspondents, and addressed us as follows— "I am glad, gentlemen, to meet you; I am well aware of the enormous advantage that can be derived from the use of the Press, and am only sorry that you are to be for so short a time in Galicia, for I should like you to have had the opportunity of studying on the spot the difficult questions of administration: you might have communicated to me your impressions and suggestions—for in your capacity of writers you are trained critics. We have to deal in Galicia with various nationalities, and very divergent political views. "I shall be glad if I can be of any assistance in your study of the country. I have already communicated to various deputations, and to the public, the principles of my attitude toward the problems of administration, and have no alterations to make in my declared views. "Eastern Galicia should become part of Russia. Western Galicia, when its conquest has been completed, should form part of the kingdom of Poland, within the empire. My policy as to the religious question is very definite. I have no desire to compel any one to join the Orthodox Church. If a two-thirds majority in any given village desires to conform to the Orthodox Church, then they should be given the parish church. This does not mean that the remaining third should not be free to remain in its former communion. I am avoiding even any suggestion of compulsion. The peasants pass over very easily to Orthodoxy; for them the question is in no way acute, indeed the so-called Uniats consider they are Orthodox already. But it is different for the clergy, for whom the question is a real one. I respect all the priests who have remained in their parishes, and they have not been disturbed. Those who have abandoned their benefices I am not restoring: nor shall I permit the return of any who are associated with any political agitation against Russia. "A difficult question has arisen relating to Austrian officials in the town of Lvov: from persons of means they have now become paupers requiring assistance. Another question is that of credit: numbers of banks are without their cash, which [Pg 19] [Pg 20] [Pg 21] [Pg 22] has all been taken away to Vienna. These banks are sending a deputation to Petrograd to solicit the support of the Bank of Russia. "There is also the question of the police. I am waiting for trained policemen to be sent from Russia: it is impossible, of course, to use untrained men for administrative work, and meanwhile I contrive to employ the local Austrian police. Some magistrates have fled—we have to put the affairs of justice in order: I am awaiting a representative of the Ministry of Justice, who will examine the question. "In certain regions around Lvov, Nikolayev, Gorodok and other places where there has been severe fighting, the population has been left in a state of great distress. In Bukovina, however, there is little distress, except in the towns; and as the crops there are good, we are importing food into Galicia from thence. The relief of distress is being dealt with by committees, including prominent local residents, under the Directors of Districts, and controlled by a central committee, whose chairman is Count Vladimir Bobrinsky. In cases of extreme distress it is being arranged that money may be advanced to the necessitous. "I have established in Galicia three provinces: Lvov (Lemberg), Tarnopol, and Bukovina. Perhaps we may establish another province, following the line of demarcation of the Russian population, which on maps of Austrian Poland is admitted to include parts of the region about Sanok (in central Galicia)." October 24. I have spent some days in the Austrian territory conquered by the Russians. The Russian broad gauge has been carried some distance into Galicia, and the further railway communication with the Austrian gauge and carriages is in working order. The large waiting-rooms were covered with wounded on stretchers with doctors and sisters of mercy in constant attendance. They utter no sound, except in very few cases when under attention. One poor fellow, a bronzed and strapping lad struck through the lungs, I saw dying; he looked so hale and strong; his wide eyes kept moving as he gasped and wrestled silently with death; he seemed so grateful to those who sat with him; he died early in the morning. I talked with three Hungarian privates, keen-eyed and vigorous. They said their men were very good with the bayonet and seldom surrendered, a statement which was confirmed by a Russian cavalry officer who had just returned from fighting in the passes, though it seems the Hungarians do not consider the war as national beyond the Carpathians, and they fight well because they are warlike and not because they like this war. The prisoners with whom I talked were very energetic in praising their treatment by the Russians, which is indeed beyond praise. Everywhere they met people with tea, sugar, and cigarettes. One said repeatedly, "I can say nothing," and another said, "I cannot but wish that we may do as well by them in Hungary." These were the only Austrian prisoners in whom I have seen a trace of that national enthusiasm for the war which is so evident in all the Russian soldiers. I talked with two Italians, simple, friendly fellows who described their treatment as pulito, or very decent. The Slovenes and Bohemians seemed rather in a maze about the whole thing. A Ruthenian soldier of Galicia was quite frank about it. "Of course we had to go," he said, but he expressed pleasure at the Russians winning Galicia, and even regarded it as compensation for his wound. I saw off a train of Russian wounded. They were most brotherly and thoughtful for each other. An Austrian patient told me he was happy and had made great friends with the Russian next to him. The electric trams are used for ambulances, and the chief buildings are turned into hospitals. The biggest is in the Polytechnicum, and is served practically by Poles. The big Russian hospital of the Dowager Empress is very well equipped. The Red Cross organisation is in the hands of eminent public men; such as Homyakov, Stakhovich and Lerche, who visited England with the party of Russian Legislators in 1909. Count Vladimir Bobrinsky, another member of that party, is chairman of the relief committee appointed by his cousin the Russian Governor-General of Galicia. The town is old and pleasing, set in undulating country. It is in excellent order. A little sporadic street firing was quickly suppressed. All inhabitants throughout the conquered territory must be at home from ten in the evening till four unless they have special permission. How well this rule is kept one could judge when returning from the station. No one was out except Russian sentries and Austrian policemen, who have been continued on their work. Otherwise one sees no signs of a conquered town. The day the Russians entered, the Polish paper issued its morning edition under Austrian control and its evening edition under Russian. The electric lighting and tramways continued working and the shops remained open. The fighting, which was most severe, was all outside. But even on the sites of engagements the amount of damage done by artillery is limited to few places and few houses, and cultivation is now going on, without any signs of war, close up to the present front. A general order forbids the leaving about of any refuse. There is no friction between the Little Russian peasants and the troops or the new administrators; but the Jews adopt a waiting attitude. The general position is a great credit to the Russians, and gives ample proof of their close kinship with the great majority of the conquered population. October 26. I have visited some of the battlefields of Galicia. It is much too early to attempt any thorough account of these battles; nor did the conditions of my visits make any complete examination possible. The chief harm which Germany and Austria could inflict in a war against Russia was to conquer Russian Poland, whose frontier made defence extremely difficult. Regarding this protuberance as a head, Germany and Austria could make a simultaneous amputating operation at its neck, attacking the one from East Prussia and the other from Galicia. But the German policy, which had other and more primary objects, precipitated war with France and threw the bulk of the German forces westward. Thus the German army in East Prussia kept the defensive, and Austria was left to make her advance from Galicia without support. [Pg 23] [Pg 24] [Pg 25] [Pg 26] The Austrian forces on this front were at first more numerous than the Russians. The Russians had been prepared to defend the line of the Bug, which would have meant the temporary abandonment of nearly all Poland. But the alliance with France and England made it both possible and desirable to advance, and at the battle of Gnila Lipa the army on the Austrian right was driven back beyond Lvov (Lemberg), the town falling into Russian hands. The next great fighting was for the possession of the line of the river San. It must be remembered that while the fighting lines ran roughly from north to south, the frontier line here ran from east to west. Thus the left of each force occupied the territory of the other. The first decisive success had been that of the Russian left in Galicia; but the Austrian left and centre were still allowed to advance further into Russian Poland. A double movement was then undertaken against them. While General Brusilov pushed home in southern Galicia the success already obtained on this side, and thus secured the Russian left flank from a counter-offensive, General Ruzsky, the conqueror of Lvov, came in on the Austrian centre at Rava Ruska, while other Russian armies, detached from the reserves standing between the Russian northern and southern fronts, and making good use of the advantageous railway connexion, arrived to the north of the Austrian left. Seldom has a tactical battle been planned on so large a scale. The Austrians, threatened at this point with outflanking on both sides, after several days' hard defensive fighting, withdrew with a haste that had the character of a rout, and which only saved them from complete annihilation. Their centre, like their already beaten right, retired southwards toward Hungary, while their left, just escaping the peril of being surrounded, fell back rapidly in the direction of Cracow, where it was strengthened by further support from Germany. Two German corps had already joined it, but too late to avert the reverse already described. The success of Brusilov at Gorodok (Grodek) secured to the Russians the line of the river San as far as Peremyshl (Przemysl). This series of operations, after the Russian evacuation of East Prussia necessitated by the strong German movements on the northern fronts, left Russia with the following line of defence: the Niemen, the Bobr, the Narev, the middle Vistula, the San (to Peremyshl) and the Carpathians. This line includes the larger part of Russian Poland, the city of Warsaw, and western Galicia, with its capital, Lvov. This line is infinitely more satisfactory than that of the Bug. Its security on the south depends in part on the action of Rumania, but a counter-offensive from Hungary has already been repulsed on this side. On the north, attempts of the Germans on Grodno and on Warsaw have been triumphantly repulsed; and the Russians have since fought with success along almost the whole line; a serious German and Austrian effort is to be anticipated on the middle Vistula and the San. I have so far visited only Galich (Halicz), the junction of the Stryi (Stryj) and Dniestr, and the battlefield of Rava Ruska. Galich was at the south of the first Austrian line of defence. The Dniestr here presents from the north-eastern side a concave front, defended by extensive wire entanglements and trenches, and, behind the river, by low but jutting hills. The town, which lies on a ledge between these hills and the river, bears the distinctive Russian character and possesses an ancient Russian church, now Uniat, and a remnant of an early Russian tower. There is no doubt of the Russian-ness of Galich; the only inhabitants whom one sees besides the picturesque Little Russians are the numerous Jews. There was nothing to indicate nearness of the enemy, and complete order prevailed, the Russian authorities being evidently chiefly concerned with the newness of their work and the task of organisation. Friendly relations were maintained between the troops here and the inhabitants; and the only violences of which there was local evidence were those committed by Austrian soldiers before the evacuation of the town. In spite of the strength of the position, no serious resistance was offered here. The Russians appeared unexpectedly at a point on the north of the river, taking in reverse the Austrian field works at this point. They shelled the neighbouring township with extraordinary accuracy, destroying only the houses in the middle and leaving standing the two churches and a third spired building, the town hall. The Austrians then retired rapidly over the bri...