Dated:
Rovna,
June 26, 1915.

In a few weeks a year will have passed since the Imperial German Government began issuing its series of declarations of war against one country after another—declarations which as time elapses are assuming the aspect of hostilities not only against individual countries, but against practically all that modern civilization had come to represent. During that time each of the Allies, and all of the world besides, have been studying the geography of Europe and the armies engaged in the great conflict. Of all these countries and of all these armies, I think that the least known and the least understood are the country and the army of Russia.

It has been my fortune to be with the Russians since last September, during which time I have travelled thousands of versts both in Poland and in Galicia. I have visited eight out of their eleven active armies, and been on the positions in most of them, and it is not an exaggeration to say that I have met and talked with between five hundred and a thousand officers. Yet I feel that I am only now beginning to realize what this war means to Russia, and the temper that it has slowly but surely developed in her armies and in her peoples. Never I think have the stamina and the temper of a country been more fiercely tested than have those of Russia during the campaign which has been going on in Galicia since May last. All the world realizes in a general way what the Russians had to contend with, and all the world knows vaguely that Russia has a front of 1,200 versts to protect, and appreciates in an indefinite kind of way that such a line must be difficult to hold. But though I have been here for eleven months, I never formed any adequate conception of how great was this problem until I undertook to cover the Front, from its far fringe in Bukovina to its centre on the Warsaw Front.

During the past two months it has been all but impossible to follow movements with any clear understanding of their significance. We have all known that the Russians were retiring from position after position before overwhelming attacks of the enemy; and with very few exceptions, the world has concluded, and the enemy certainly has, that flying before the phalanx of the Austro-German legions with their thousands of massed guns, fed with clockwork regularity with munitions and supplies brought up by their superb railway systems, was the wrecked and defeated Russian Army, an organization that it would take months of rest and recuperation to lick into the shape of a virile fighting force once more. I have never shared this opinion myself, for we who were in Manchuria ten years ago learned to know that though it was quite possible to drive the Russians off the field, it was equally impossible to destroy their moral or break their spirits. A month after Lio Yang the supposedly defeated Russians took the offensive at Sha Ho and came a cropper. Again in January another offensive was developed and failed. They were ready once more at Moukden and lost badly. By September had peace not intervened they would have fought again. Even the Japanese were beginning to feel the discouragement of the Russian persistency in refusing to accept defeat as final. The Manchurian campaign was unpopular, not in the least understood, and yet the Russian moujik hung on and on month after month. The Japanese knew their mettle and admitted it freely.

For a year now we have had the Russians again at war. But this time the situation is quite different. The war touched the slow lethargic rather negative Russian temperament from the start, by its appeal to their race sympathies, which is the one vital chord that can always be touched with a certainty of response, in the heart of every Slav. From the first month, the popularity of the war has grown steadily, until to-day it has the backing of the entire Russian people, barring isolated groups of intriguers and cliques controlled and influenced by German blood. I have talked with officers from every part of this Empire, and they all tell me that it is the same in Siberia as it is in European Russia. The moujik in his heavy, ponderous way is behind this war. No matter what pessimism one hears in Petrograd or Warsaw, one can always find consolation as to the ultimate outcome by going to the common people, those who patiently and stoically are bearing the burden. This is the strength of Russia and this is why Russia and the Russian Armies are not beaten in Galicia, are not discouraged and have not the vaguest idea of a peace without a decision any more than the Englishman, the Frenchman or the Belgian.

In so vast a theatre as this, it is utterly impossible to form clear and definite opinions as to what has taken place even in the past year, and it may be imagined with what difficulty one can predict the future. But there is one thing in war that is greater than an advance or a retreat, greater than a dozen battles, and greater than the speculations of experts, and that thing is the temper and stamina of the men and the people who are fighting the war. Given that and one can look with comparative equanimity upon the ups and downs of the vast tactical and strategical problems which develop now in East Prussia, now in Poland and again in Galicia. There was one great strategic aim of the Germans in their Galician movement, and that was to crush the Russian Army, hand back to Austria her lost province, and then hurry back to the west to attack England and France. It is true that Germany has driven the Russians from position after position; it is true that she has given back Lwow to the unenthusiastic Austrians, who with trembling hands accepted it back as a dangerous gift, and it is true that the world looks upon the recapture of Galicia as a great moral blow to the Russian arms. Thus far has Germany achieved her ends. But she has not destroyed the army, she has not discouraged the troops, and with the exception of one army, now repaired, she did not even seriously cripple it.

The plain facts are, that by a preponderance of war munitions which Russia could not equal, supplied over lines of communication which Russia could not duplicate, Germany forced Russian withdrawals before her, for men cannot fight modern battles with their fists. The glory of the German advance will be dimmed when the world really knows exactly what Russia had in men and in arms and munitions to meet this assault, the greatest perhaps that has ever been made in military history. Indeed the surprise of the writer is not that the Germans won but that they did not crush the army before them. This retreat from the Dunajec will form a brilliant page in Russia’s history, and an object lesson to the whole world of what a stubborn army composed of courageous hearts can do by almost sheer bravery alone. The Russians have come through their trial by fire. Barring one army they have probably suffered far less in personnel than the loss they have inflicted on their enemy. They have reached, or approximately reached, another point of defence. Their spirits are good, their confidence unshaken, and their determination to fight on indefinitely, regardless of defeats, is greater than it ever was before.

The Germans have failed in their greatest aim—as the case stands to-day. One cannot doubt that the high authorities in Berlin must realize this truth as surely as the military brains do on this side of the line. The Germans have shot their first bolt, a bolt forged from every resource in men and munitions that they could muster after months of preparation. The Russians have recoiled before it and may recoil again and again, but they always manage to prevent it from accomplishing its aim. At the moment of writing Germany faces the identical problem that she did two months ago, excepting that she now occupies extra territory, for the most part in ruins. The problem before her is to repeat the Galician enterprise on an army infinitely better than the one she broke in May. If she can do this she will have the identical problem to meet on some other line in another two months, and after that another and another. It is simply a question of how much time, men and resources Germany has to spend on these costly victories, if indeed the next proves a victory, which is doubtful. She may do it once, she may do it twice, but whenever it may be there will come a time when she can do it no more, and when that time comes Russia will slowly, surely, inexorably come back, step by step, until she has regained her own, her early conquests, and has Germany on her knees in the East. It is futile to speculate as to time. It may be months and it may be years. But it is most surely coming eventually.

THE GERMAN DRIVE IN GALICIA