The Story of the Great War (Vol. 1-8). Various Authors

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СКАЧАТЬ reserves to press on, they might have broken the allied line at this point.

      The effect of the gas was that of a horrible form of asphyxiation; the soldiers who did not succumb retreated in face of a weapon which could not be countered by any in their possession. The casualties were heavy, the sufferings of the wounded indescribable in their torment. From the military point of view, which holds that war is killing and that any method whatsoever is warrantable, the attack was a success as it gained ground, and for the time being confused the enemy. But it was a form of attack which could succeed only once. After the soldiers were provided with proper respirators containing a chemical antidote, they were in no danger of being "gassed." Among those in the thick of the gas attack were the first Canadian contingent, who bore themselves with unflinching fortitude, not only that, but after the first surprise of the attack was over, the survivors charged with rare heroism.

      Strategy which formerly meant the swift movement of a few thousand troops to one flank or another overnight, or in a two or three-hour march, now means the concentration of hundreds of thousands by railway trains upon a particular point and of many thousands of guns and enormous quantities of material of every kind from shells to that for building railroads to keep up with your advance.

      But the general of to-day no less than the general of yesterday, would always know where his enemy is most vulnerable, and strike him at that point. In the spring of 1915, the line of least resistance for the German army was obviously to the east where the loose organization of the Russian army, lacking munitions, was stretched over a front of over a thousand miles.

      The French were better off in munitions, and their army and the British had a front of four hundred and fifty miles of intact trench line. It is estimated that in order to hold a battle front with modern troops, about three thousand men to the mile are required. This does not mean that there are three thousand actually on every mile; but counting the thin line in the trenches, the thicker line in the reserve trenches and the soldiers who are out of the trenches resting and the battalions in reserve and the reserve supplies of men in the depots who can promptly be brought into action.

      For example, to hold a mile of the famous Ypres salient might require double the number of men necessary to hold a mile where the lay of the ground was in the favor of your troops. Owing to the use of motor trucks and to railway trains, whenever there is an attack, concentration of men at any point is very rapid. Holding to this rule, the Germans maintained all through the summer of 1915, 1,500,000 men on their western front, and they had that number at least to spare for their eastern front. Field Marshal von Hindenburg said that by hammering he would get Warsaw, and he was to keep his word with stolid German persistence. Napoleon, who had depended upon the number of his guns, would have fully appreciated the Austro-German plan of action against Russia.

      The Russian army has been compared to cotton wool. The farther you went into Russia, the more cotton wool there was. The Russian army would yield, but there never seemed any end of it. Gaining a passive victory over the Russian army has also been compared to brushing the snow off the front doorstep. The more you brushed, the more snow banked up. Russia could afford to lose territory equivalent to the area of all France without having received a vital blow. Russia has plenty of room in which to retreat, as Napoleon learned. She is confident in the safety of her distances. When the enemy falls back she follows on his heels.

      At the end of the winter, 1914–15, she was still in the possession of a large portion of Galicia. But the Germans were preparing a battering ram which their generals thought irresistible. Their plan now was to deliver so hard a blow at the Russian that he would be forced to yield a separate peace. Von Mackensen formed his unprecedented phalanx of soldiery and of artillery in Galicia and destroying all the fortifications and covering the trenches with torrents of shell fire he skillfully worked his legions forward, first breaking the Przemysl line, which compelled a general retreat, and then breaking the Lemberg line. Thus, having beaten back the Russian left wing, the Austro-Germans turned their attention to the Warsaw front and there repeated the same organized machine method of warfare. There were no brilliant strokes of genius, but merely the use of superior systems of railroads in making the concentration; of trained engineers and workmen in advancing the railroad lines; of systematic overwhelming attacks at critical points, directed by the unsurpassed German staff organization.

      With the fall of Warsaw the Russian army was inevitably badly broken. They had lost multitudes of prisoners, and staggering quantities of material. But still it remained an intact army. It was not decisively beaten. The prisoners were taken by brigades, regiments, and divisions—thousands of them in reserve, without a rifle in their hands, as they waited their turn to pick up the rifle of a dead man. For six months, March to August, the greatest of all campaigns in numbers of troops and length of line continued in the east, Von Mackensen and the Austrians striking in the south and Von Hindenburg in the north. Its details will be read in the history which follows. Characteristic of either adversary was his method. The German with concentration of population, resources, artillery, soldiery, and organization, and the Russian part, glamorous, slow, yielding to the terrific blows, flowing back like an ebb tide, and taking his time, never risking a decision, his army never surrounded or cut in two.

      While Von Hindenburg's guns were hammering the Russians in front, German political influence was occupied in Petrograd in the rear, where certain official circles were under German influence in the hope of getting Russia to capitulate. The situation was the most critical for the Allies since the Battle of the Marne. A most influential court party was undoubtedly in favor of capitulation. Russia was bleeding cruelly. She was suffering the psychological as well as the material effects of defeat. In Paris and London the possibility of having to go on with the war without the Russian's assistance had become a serious consideration. In short, the fate of Europe was then in the hands of diplomatic and court intrigue.

      According to the accounts it was the mass of the Russian people whose pressure undoubtedly defeated the aims of German diplomacy. Uninformed of the real situation, conscious only of the enormous cost of the war in blood and treasure, their spirit of race patriotism was undaunted. They realized if Russians in high places did not, that surrender by Russia then meant a defeat, which would set the Russian power back for another fifty years. England could make peace and be in possession of more territory than she had at the beginning of the war. France could be certain of retaining what she had before the war. But Russia had not only lost Poland, but the Slav had bowed the knee to the Teuton.

       At the same time there was widespread unrest among the Russian people. They felt that they had deserved victory, but had been denied it. It was not a question of the grand duke's skill in conducting the retreat from Warsaw, or his indomitable will and sturdy patriotism, but of satisfying popular sentiment. The announcement that the czar himself was to take command unified and heartened the Russian people, who felt that "The Little Father" was the natural God-given head of the army.

      There was discontent in Russia too, with the situation on the western front. All the news that Russia had from France was of an occasional hundred or five-hundred-yard trench won or lost, while the Russian army had been swept from Galicia and been swept back again and had gone through the fearful ordeal of the retreat of July and August. Why shouldn't France and Britain do something to release the pressure on the Russians? For not the least of the advantages the Central Powers had had was single-headed direction. They represented one united force, working out a consistent and simple plan of campaign. But Russia, England, and France had to cooperate in council.

      With Russia so hard pressed and with the danger of her yielding to the Germans so deeply impressed on London and Paris there was nothing for the French staff to do but to respond by some sort of action in loyalty to her allies as a matter of military necessity if not of military wisdom. The attacks in Artois had fully demonstrated the arduousness and cost of any such undertaking, particularly until there was an unlimited supply of shells to draw on. A gain of two or three miles' depth on a front meant no positive advance for either side, but rather a waste of life. Indeed, any considerable attack on that western trench line which СКАЧАТЬ