In Russia it is not a simple matter to change one’s “front.” For many months I have been associated with the group of armies over which Alexieff presides, where I have been able to move about from army to army with the utmost freedom. When I decided to change my base to the head-quarters of Ivanov and the front of Galicia I found myself surrounded by difficulties. For more than a month now, one could enter Warsaw without a permit or travel on the roads or pass to and from any of the towns in the area of war. I applied to my army friends in Warsaw and they, by permission of General Alexieff, kindly lent me a young officer whose duty it was to deliver me into the hands of the staff of the Galician Front. We left Warsaw in my motor, not even knowing where the staff of Ivanov was, for at that moment it was on its way to a new destination, the retirements General Ivanov. My car in a Galician village. General Ivanov is a man of about sixty, with a kindly gentle face and a low and musical voice. It is impossible to imagine him ever becoming excited or ever making a sudden movement. Everything about him suggests calm, balance, poise and absolute self-control. As he speaks only Russian I was obliged to talk with him entirely through an interpreter. He has very deep blue eyes with a kindly little twinkle in them that one suspects might easily turn to a point of fire if he were roused. Since meeting After a few commonplaces he asked me what I wanted. I told him quite frankly that from a news point of view, Russia, and the Galician campaign especially, was little known in the West. That the public in the West were depressed over the Russian reverses in Galicia, and that all of the friends of Russia wanted to know as accurately as possible what the conditions were in his armies. He leaned back in his chair and studied me closely for fully a minute, and then smiled a little, and the interpreter translated to me: “The General says that you may do what you like in his armies. He will detail an officer who speaks English to go with you. You may He then sent for the officer who was to be our guide, and presently there appeared a tall, handsome young man who was introduced to us as Prince Oblensky, a captain of the Chevalier Guards, now serving as personal aide-de-camp to General Ivanov. From the moment that we met him the Prince took charge of us completely, and for two weeks he was our guide, philosopher and friend. In passing I must say that I have never known a man of sweeter disposition and a The point of view that I found at Ivanov’s staff was this. Russia with her long front could not be strong everywhere at once. Her railroad system and her industrial organization were in no way equal to the German. Their sudden concentration was irresistible, and almost from the start the Russians realized that they would have to go back. It was hoped that the Germans could not maintain their ascendancy of ammunition and strength beyond the San. Indeed, for a few days there was something of a lull in which the Russians made gains in certain places. Then the flow of ammunition was resumed, and from that time it was pretty well understood that the Grodek line, and Lwow, would be held only as rearguard actions to delay the German advance, and to take from them the maximum loss at the minimum sacrifice. This particular staff, in whose hands rested the conduct of the whole manoeuvre, had then the task of withdrawing these armies over this vast front in such order and symmetry that as they retired I had just come from Petrograd where the greatest gloom prevailed in regard to the evacuation of Lwow, and I was surprised to find that no one here attached any great importance to Lwow. One officer of general’s rank remarked, “We do not believe in holding untenable military positions for moral effect. Lwow is of no great value to us from a military point of view, and the way the line developed it was impossible to stay there without great risk. So we left. By and by we will go back and take it again when we have more ammunition.” This was the first time that I heard this statement, but since then I have heard it at least a hundred times made by officers of all ranks from generals down to subalterns. All agreed that it was disappointing to come back after having fought so many months This retreat with all its losses and all its sacrifices has not, I think, shaken the courage of a single soldier in the whole Russian Army. They simply shut their teeth and pray for an opportunity to begin all over again. All eagerly assured me that the Germans and Austrians had lost far more than the Russians, and I was told by a high authority that the Germans estimated their own losses in two months at 380,000 killed, wounded and missing. One man significantly put the situation, “To judge of this movement one should see how it looks behind the German lines. In spite of their advances and bulletins of success, there has been great gloom behind their front. We know absolutely that every town and even every village in Eastern Silesia is filled with wounded, and in Breslau and Posen there is hardly a house that has not been requisitioned for the accommodation of wounded. Since Another statement which at first struck me as curious, but which I have since come to understand, was that the morale of the Austrians has been steadily decreasing since the capture of Przemysl and the fighting on the San. Since visiting Ivanov I have been in six armies and have talked in nearly all with the men who have been examining the Austrian prisoners. Their point of view seems to be pretty much the same. And when I say the Austrians, I mean, of course, the common soldiers and not the authorities or the officers. The Austrian soldiers’ view is something like this: “We have fought now for a year, and in May we had practically lost Galicia. The end of the war, for which we have never cared, was almost in sight. We hoped that soon there would be some kind of peace and we could go home. We had lost I think this point of view is more or less typical, and it accounts in a large measure for the fact that even though they are advancing the Austrians are still surrendering in enormous blocks whenever they get the chance of doing so without being caught in the act by their Allies. For the most part the men that I talked with here thought that the army had retired about as far as it would for the present. But one feels Throughout Russia to-day the strength of the war idea is growing daily. Every reverse, every withdrawal and every rumour of defeat only stiffens the determination to fight harder and longer. Time is their great ally they say, for Germany cannot, they are certain, fight indefinitely, while they believe that they can. These opinions are not my own but the opinions of Russians. These men may be unduly enthusiastic about their countrymen, but what they say I have since heard all over the army at the Front; whether they are right or wrong When I left Petrograd I was not cheerful as to the outlook in Galicia. When I left Ivanov’s head-quarters I felt more optimistic than I had been in six weeks. HUNTING FOR THE ARMY OF THE BUKOVINA |