Dated:
Warsaw, Russia,
May 10, 1915.

The two most simple personalities that I have met in this war are the Grand Duke Nicholas, and the Commander who has come to the Northern Armies to take up the post made vacant by the retirement of General Russky. Certain business relating to desired freedom of movement in the zone of operations took the writer to the head-quarters of General Alexieff, which is situated in a place not very far away. Without giving away any figures it is perhaps safe to say that the command of General Alexieff is twice the size of that now under Field-Marshal Sir John French on the continent. The territory occupied by the armies commanded by him covers an enormous area, and probably up to this war there has been no single individual in the history of the world with such a vast military organization as that over which General Alexieff presides as supreme dictator, subject only to the Grand Duke himself. The whole aspect of the headquarters of which he is the presiding genius is, in atmosphere, the last word in the modern idea of a commanding general’s place of abode. The town in which he is living is perhaps a model one from the point of view of the gentlemen who write the textbooks and sketch the details of the programme and course which should be adopted by military chiefs. The theory in the Japanese Army was that the brains of the army should be so far away from the actual scene of operations, that the officer would be absolutely detached from the atmosphere of war; and that between himself and the Front there should be installed so many nervous shock absorbers that the office of the great chief himself should be the realm of pure reason with no noise nor excitement nor hurrying aides to impair his judgment.

I recall a conversation I once had with Major (now Lt.-General) Tanaka, Oyama’s personal A.D.C. “I should have liked to have been with the General Staff,” I remarked to him, “during the Battle of Moukden. It must have been an exciting time with you.” My friend laughed and answered, “You would have had a great surprise, I imagine. There was no excitement at all. How do you suppose Oyama and his staff spent much of their time during the battle?” One naturally imagined that it was spent scrutinizing maps and making plans, and I said this to Tanaka. “Not at all,” he replied, “when the battle began, our work was largely finished. It was but necessary to make an occasional change in the line here and there, and this too, for only a few minutes of the time of the Field-Marshal. Most of the time he and Kodame (Chief of General Staff) were playing croquet.”

Much the same atmosphere of detachment from the activities of the campaign may be seen to-day in the little Polish city where Alexieff has his head-quarters, except that no one here has time for croquet. It is a safe venture that outside of his own staff there are not fifty soldiers in the whole town. It is in fact less military in appearance than any city I have ever seen since I have have been in Russia. In front of his office are a couple of soldiers, and a small Russian flag hangs over the door. Nothing outside would lead one to believe that within is the man in the palm of whose hand lies the fate and movements of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of men, and at whose word a thousand guns will spread death and destruction. In trenches miles away, stretching through forest and along hilltops, numberless regiments and brigades await the curt order from this building to launch themselves against the German lines.

The man himself is as quiet and unobtrusive as are his surroundings. Perhaps fifty-eight or fifty-nine in years with a very intellectual face and an almost shy manner, is Alexieff, the man whom current gossip credits with the keenest brain in the Russian field armies. As Ivanov’s Chief of Staff, he is said to have been a great factor in the planning and the execution of much of the Galician campaign, and those who know him well, believe that under his direction great things will be accomplished in Poland. The General is very quiet and retiring, and from a very brief observation one would say that he was primarily a man of strategy, more at home solving the intellectual problems of a campaign than in working out tactical puzzles in the field.

The staff of the quiet unostentatious Russian who is commanding this enormous front consists of about seventy-five members (about the same number as Kusmanek of Przemysl fame had on his personal staff for the defence of the city), and taken as a whole, they are most serious and hard-working men, if their looks do not belie them. “You would be surprised,” an A.D.C. informed me, “to know the enormous amount of work that we all get through here. There is a lull on this front now, and it is comparatively an easy time, but in spite of that fact we are all of us busy from morning until night. When there is a movement under way we do not get any rest even at nights.” One comes from Warsaw where rumours are flying thick and fast as to German advances and Russian mishaps, to find everything serene and calm and the general opinion of the staff one of great optimism. For the moment the Russians are in the trough of the sea, as it were, and all of the late news from Galicia is not particularly favourable; but if the attitude of the staff is any criterion, the situation is not felt to be of a critical nature, and for the first time in months one hears officers expressing the opinion that the war will end this year.

There is a tendency to welcome the German impetuosity of attack, for each fresh irruption means a weakening of the enemy. The Russian theory is that Russia can stand the losses, large as they are, almost indefinitely, and that she is willing to take the burden of breaking the German wave again and again if need be, knowing that each assault of the enemy is bringing them nearer and nearer to the end of their tether. Since the latest irruption into Galicia we hear less talk of a Russian advance in the near future, but certainly not a sign of discouragement in any of the high quarters. One may well believe that this last outburst was not anticipated, but the Russians over on this side are as ready to “play” the fish now as they were when the war first started. It was hoped after the January-February attacks, that the enemy was exhausted and the time was in sight when the gaff might be of use. Now the fish has taken another spurt, and the Russians are letting out the line again and are prepared to let it have another fling in their waters. But they believe none the less that the enemy is firmly hooked, and that it is merely a question of time when from sheer exhaustion he will tire and they may begin to drive home their own attacks.

The Russian attitude is very philosophical, and though a people who are temperamentally not without a vein of melancholy, they take this war with much more equanimity than one could have imagined possible. Retreats and shifting of lines no longer create panics over here. People are sorry. They had hoped that the Germans were nearer the point of exhaustion, but there is not the slightest indication of discouragement. Probably their attitude is due primarily to the fact that they had never anticipated an easy victory nor a short war. They knew from the start that they were in for a terrific ordeal, and what goes on day after day, with its ebbs and its floods, is merely a matter of the day’s work with them. They have seen again and again the irruptions of the Germans gradually absorbed by their troops, and each set back now is accepted as only temporary. The movement of the Germans in Courland has hardly made any impression at all in Russia generally, if the reports one hears are true.

The Russians had practically no troops in that province, which itself offered no great strategic advantage to the Germans. Taking advantage of this weak spot, the Germans with a number of corps—it is placed as high as three—poured into the almost unprotected country.

The Russians say that the German motive is first that they would be able to announce to their people that they had occupied enemy territory, and second that the rich province would give them certain much needed supplies. For a day or two the progress seems to have been almost without interruption, but now we hear that it has been checked and that the enemy are gradually giving way before the Russians, who have shifted troops to that front to prevent further advances. The occupation of Libau does not seem to worry any one very much. “What good will it do them?” one Russian officer said to me? “No doubt they will fortify it and make it as strong as possible. Probably we will never try to get it back while the war lasts. Why should we? It is of no great value strategically, and it is not worth the price of lives and troops detached from other points to retake it. When we have won, it will naturally come back to us without our having to spend a single extra life in getting it.”

The situation in Galicia is still something of a puzzle, but those in authority do not seem to be taking it over seriously. There is reason to believe that it is a repetition of what has occurred again and again on this and other fronts. The Germans, by means of their superior rail facilities made a sudden concentration and hit the Russian line with such energy as to force its retirement. Each mile of the Russian retreat has strengthened their army by the additions of reserves, while it has probably seen an increasing weakening of the enemies’. The sudden advance of the enemy has forced the withdrawal of the Russians pushing through the Dukla, who were obviously menaced in their communications. I am told now that the German attacks have already passed their zenith, and that the Russians reinforced by new troops are confident of checking any further advance. Over here it is but a question of breaking the first fury of the attack. When that is done we can count on the Russian muoujik slowly but surely to force his way back over the lost ground. The end of the incident sees the Russians stronger and the Germans weaker. It is futile for any one to attempt to estimate how many more of these irruptions the Germans are capable of, but we are certain that be it this summer or next there is a limit to them. When that limit has been reached the Russian advance will begin.

CHECKING UP THE SITUATION IN POLAND