Many of my friends have urged me not to publish this, the second volume of Field Notes from the Russian Front, on the ground that the fortunes of Russia and the Russian armies were on the wane, and that the optimism which I have always felt has proved itself unfounded by the events of the past few months. It is for the very reason that conditions in Russia are momentarily unfavourable that I am glad to publish this book at this time, as a vindication of my faith and belief in the common soldiers and officers of an army with which I have been associated for nearly a year.

During the advances and successes in Galicia and Poland a year ago I found the Russian troops admirable, and now in the hour of their reverses and disappointments they are superb. I retract nothing that I have said before, and resting my faith in the justice of the cause, the unflinching character of the people, and the matchless courage of the Russian soldiers, I am glad in this moment of depression to have the chance to vindicate my own belief in their ultimate victory in the East.

The Russians for more than a year have laboured under innumerable difficulties. Without munitions, and handicapped in a hundred ways, they have held themselves intact before the relentless drives of the most efficient army in the world. Though they have fallen by the hundreds of thousands, their spirits have not been broken. The loss of Warsaw and numerous other positions has not shaken their morale. History will record this campaign as one in which character fought against efficient machinery, and was not found wanting. In the final issue I have never doubted that character would prevail. When the Russians get munitions and their other military needs, they will again advance, and no one who knows the Russian army doubts that within it lies the capacity to go forward when the time is ripe.

Nothing is more fallacious than to judge the outcome of this campaign by pins moved backward or forward on the map of Europe. There are great fundamental questions that lie behind the merely military aspects of the campaign; questions of morals, ethics, equity, and justice. These qualities, backed by men of tenacity, courage, and the capacity to sacrifice themselves indefinitely in their cause, are greater ultimate assets than battalions and 42-centimetre guns. That the Russians possess these assets is my belief, and with the fixed opinion that my faith is well-founded, and that the reverses of this summer are but temporary and ephemeral phases of this vast campaign, it is with equanimity and without reservation that I have authorized my publisher to send these pages to the printer.

The defects of hurriedly written copy are of course apparent in these notes, but, as in my first volume, it has seemed wiser to publish them with all their faults, than to wait until the situation has passed and news from Russia has no moral value.

STANLEY WASHBURN.

Petrograd, Russia,
September 3, 1915.