The Russian advance is now much more complete in southern Poland and is better lined up with the forces in Galicia. This advance tends to secure the Russian position on the northern frontier, where any German initiative becomes daily more hazardous. The ordinary fresh yearly Russian contingents mean an increase of half a million men. The arrangements for the wounded provide, if necessary, for over a million.
I have just made a journey over the country lying between Warsaw and Cracow, where the Russian advance is now proceeding. My previous communication spoke of the original line of Russian defence along the Bug, and the later and more advanced line along the Vistula and the Narew. Present events are rapidly converting the new advance west of Warsaw from a counterstroke into a general transference of the sphere of operations and a most valuable rectification of the whole Russian line.
In East Prussia the Germans are being slowly driven back by a double turning movement. Further westward the northern frontier of Poland is well secured. The Russians have now occupied and hold firmly Plock, Lodz, Piotrkow, Kielce and Sandomir, as also Jaroslaw and all the other passages of the river San. A glance at the map will show the importance of this line, which is only a stage in the general advance.
On the repulse of the German attack on Warsaw, the enemy was pressed back south-westward in three weeks of continuous fighting. Near Ivangorod, a famous Caucasian regiment forced the passage of the Vistula under the fire of German heavy artillery. The advance guard crossed the broad stream—here unbridged—in skiffs and ferry-boats, and held good under a devastating cross fire till the construction of a pontoon bridge allowed the passage of reinforcements. The supports coming along the river bank from Ivangorod had to advance through flooded swamps almost breast high. Their footing was made good at Kosienice, where desperate fighting took place. Later they made a series of brilliant attacks in forests, after which the Germans were thrown back on Radom. The general advance drove the enemy back beyond Radom and Ilza.
At the small town of Szydlowiec the German commandant threatened, as the Russians approached, to blow up the remarkable town hall, in Florentine style, conspicuous for thirty miles around, and the beautiful Gothic church, six hundred years old. The inhabitants offered to ransom them by a contribution of 5000 crowns. The offer was accepted; but twenty minutes later the town hall was blown up, and the church followed at the end of another quarter of an hour. This story was narrated to me with great indignation by the inhabitants.
Some miles in front of Kielce the Austrians—now abandoned by the Germans, who had retired—made a stand near Lesczyna on a high sandy position with a large fir copse in its centre and extending over a wide front. The attack on it was delivered by a Russian corps including a division mainly composed of Poles, and fell chiefly on an Austrian Polish regiment from Cracow. The assailants kept up a fire all day, and finally rushed the enemy's rifle pits with hurrahs. The Austrians left Kielce at night and in the early morning—some were captured by the Russians, who came in close upon their heels. They were pursued for some miles, and brought to action again later on the same day. Next day the Russian artillery was also heard to the south-east of Kielce. The Germans had retreated in the direction of Czenstochowa.
All this three weeks of fighting was in the characteristic Russian style: bayonet attacks were repeated for two hours; small units eagerly attacked larger ones of the enemy. In general the Russians outflanked the enemy, but in one case they broke through his centre. Often the Russian artillery caused him to decamp in the night.
Officers describe the enthusiasm of the rank and file as growing if possible greater. It is clearly visible in the rear of the army, and shown by the energy with which transport is being pushed up. The enemy has thoroughly destroyed the bridges, but they are quickly repaired, and meanwhile the ardour of the troops and of the transport trains minimises all delay.
It may be noted that the German rifle fire is superior to the Austrian. Some Austrian regiments have been found to be officered by Germans. The Austrian Slavonic regiments resist well for two or three days, but then break up and surrender in large bodies—they have sometimes asked for guides to take them to the Russian lines.
The inhabitants speak well of the Austrians, but with indignation of the Germans. Prisoners confirm the bad relations between the two allied armies, and Austrians and Germans when captured have to be kept apart.
I saw at Kielce ample evidence of the enthusiasm of the Poles for the Russian cause; they show the greatest courtesy and kindness, especially in the villages. I am told on good evidence that at Kalisz, when a German soldier defaced a portrait of the Tsar, a Polish official struck him in the face, and for this was bound to a telegraph post for two days, and then taken down and shot. All evidence of prisoners shows that the Russians are treating enemies as well as their own comrades—often I have seen them giving the captives the best of everything.
The following interesting proclamation was posted to-day by the commander of a Russian army corps at Radom, where the Germans had remained for over a month.
"Poles! Our wounded officers and soldiers, and also our prisoners who have fallen into the hands of the enemy and have passed through the town or province of Radom, speak with deep gratitude of your cordial treatment of them. You have tended the wounded, fed the starving, and clothed and sheltered from the enemy those escaping from captivity. You have given them money and guided them to our lines. Accept from me and all ranks of the army entrusted to me our warm and hearty thanks for all your kindness, for your Slavonic sympathy and goodness."
The theatre of the present operations is of crucial importance. Here Austria and Germany join hands. Serious reverses would compel them either to retreat on diverging lines, or to expose one or other of their capitals. Either event would have political consequences of the highest military significance.
November 9.
I left Warsaw on November 2 by motor and arrived without incident at Radom (sixty miles to south-south-west). The town was held by the Germans for a month and four days. They made themselves objectionable to the inhabitants, taking all supplies on which they could lay hands; but I came on no evidence of any particular outrages. The inhabitants showed the heartiest friendship to the Russians, as is recognised in the proclamation of the Commanding General which I have already quoted. Nothing could exceed the care and thoughtfulness of my own Polish hosts; the Russian soldiers, for instance the one who accompanied our party, were on friendliest terms of intercourse with the Poles, and the objection which the Poles previously had to speaking Russian had vanished as if by magic. It should be noted that the inhabitants of all this area are particularly strong in Polish patriotism. Beyond Radom the excellent high road to Cracow, running on an embankment and lined with poplars, was broken at every bridge and cut up for some distance by a road plough. Side tracks had been made at every necessary point. We travelled in the midst of troops all hurrying forward to participate in the taking of Kielce. They moved slowly along the road in straggling groups like an enormous family on its way to a huge picnic, but the unity of each regiment is never lost and the most remarkable impression which one receives is that of destination—of movement to "the appointed place." Every artificial barrier was little more than an occasion for thought and effort: the Russian peasant, everywhere accustomed to obstacles of this kind, has all sorts of ready and resourceful ways of surmounting them; and they call forth all his brotherly instincts of joint work and mutual help. Any number of men run up from their loose ranks to push a motor or cart or transport wagon over a marshy stream, and the travellers call back from their vehicle, "Thank you, brothers." It is like a current that slows up and takes thought against some barrier, but whose general movement seems not even to be checked. Some of the side passages looked very bad indeed, but every one somehow got through, no matter what the size of their carriage. Often at such points there were companies that rested along the grassy banks of the road; in other places one saw, to the side, great parks of small grey wagons. Those carrying straw for the bivouacs were in front; but sometimes one came upon a resting battery. The brotherhood between officers and men is another notable feature of the march of a Russian army.
At Szydlowiec, seventeen miles south of Radom, I saw the first signs of devastation, but these were not the work of the advancing Russian artillery but had been perpetrated deliberately by the retreating Germans. The tower of the town hall was crumbled to ruins. The church is not large, but has a high pointed roof, of which the open woodwork still remains, with the cupola as if caught astride of it in its fall. Inside, the beautiful painted inner roof is mutilated, but the monuments of the ancient Szydlowiecki family, and notably the graceful figure of a sleeping woman, have for the most part escaped. The floor was covered with rubbish and the damage is estimated at a very high figure. While I was in the church, the dignified old priest entered with six young men, who knelt with faces full of reverence before they set to work to clear the nave of rubbish. The Pole who told me the story of the ruin of the church told it quietly but with flashing eyes. He said the inhabitants asked rather that the whole town should be destroyed and the church be left standing. The only excuse was a few shots from the advancing Russian infantry and artillery, and there was no regular fighting there, the Germans making no resistance and retreating too quickly to blow up the castle.
After Szydlowiec, the Cracow road on its way to Kielce (twenty-seven miles) passes through country of quite a different character. A long rise, and we were now close up among the troops. At one point the long train of wagons branched away to a village on our left, and out of it by another road there came in another stream of fighting men. We passed some two hundred Austrian prisoners in their blue shakos and uniforms; they were all Poles, with hardly any guard but giving no trouble; one of them courteously stepped out of the ranks to pick up my field glass, which I had dropped. These men, who talked freely to us, did not look at all miserable, only confused. The Russians behaved to them as to their own people.
At last we came to the hills above Kielce. It was now clear what had happened. Troops of all kinds were streaming into the town and all resistance was over. On the main street we were stopped for a few moments by a general and his staff. At the chief hotel large parties of officers were sitting down to lunch. All the streets were full of movement, but with no sign of any conflict or friction—horses, dismounting messengers, soldiers eating, talking or resting, the townspeople standing watching, satisfying the requirements or questions of the newcomers or joining in their talk. We had no difficulty in securing good rooms, and our lunch was as good as it would have been in Warsaw. Many of the troops had passed or were passing on along the broad road in the direction of Cracow. Mounting the high hill south-west of the town we could see the scattered stream of men, horses and carts going forward past pleasant houses, hills and villages, and the thunder of artillery came to us from beyond a ridge in the distance. Our plans, however, prevented us from going further. At the hotel the regiment which had done most of the fighting was sitting at dinner and singing the regimental song and the national hymn. The song began with a Mahometan word, "God has given us victory."
Next day, November 4, with villagers guiding and recounting to us, we went over the scene of the last Austrian resistance about six miles east of Kielce. A long curving line of rifle pits ran over a broad high front; sometimes the line ran along the inside of an extensive copse of small fir trees; some of the pits contained extemporised pallets of fir boughs, in others were bullets, weapons or even letters. The Russian advance was indicated by two hostile lines running almost side by side, where within a few yards I picked up undischarged bullets of the two armies. In a little wooded cemetery on the bare ridge lay a number of bodies, Austrian and Russian, brought in by the villagers for burial. It was not a sight to dwell on; but one thing that I shall not forget was the body of a young Austrian of not more than twenty, full of grace and beauty, the head thrown back, the breast bared, and the hand lifted as if waving on the attack. Outside, other bodies were still being brought in, the Russians greatly predominating in numbers. Some Austrian wounded still walked about the village. One, with whom I spoke, had the lower part of his jaw bound up and complained that he could drink nothing. He was greatly depressed but had no rancour and evidently felt at home with the villagers, who were of the same blood and behaved to him rather as people would to an interesting traveller in their midst. He was a Pole from no further off than Cracow, where he was a master—"professor" as he put it—in a secondary school, a very intelligent and educated man who seemed quite out of place in a uniform and on a battlefield. He told me how they replied all day as best they could to a cross fire, till in the evening the Russians came on them shouting "Hurrah!" A day earlier, and we should have seen this fight. The Germans had left them in the lurch—"as they always do," he added. It was in the main a battle of Poles against Poles. He himself was a "Pan-Slavist," he told me, but could not say so because of his post. If the Russians got Cracow and maintained the appointment of Polish civil officials there, including a Polish Governor, as at present, he felt certain that all western Galicia would be on their side. I left him a little tobacco and took the address of one of his colleagues in Cracow. Heavy firing from the south was all the time audible.
We returned to Kielce, passing regiments of all kinds. On our way back to Radom my motor broke down, and after sitting for three hours amidst marshy ground, with wounded; transports and villagers passing and occasionally hearing stray rifle shots, I had to return again to Kielce for the night. The discomfort of this contretemps disappeared before the unconquerable wit and good humour of my French colleague, M. Naudeau, who improvised little songs on our mishap.
The next day, the 5th, there was nothing left but to return to Radom, occupying three seats which a Russian general, a man of charming simplicity, kindly put at our disposal in his motor. The strength of the Russian advance was everywhere before our eyes. The great stream was still flowing on. There were troops of all kinds—we inquired the name of each regiment, which they always gave in a kind of jovial chorus; there were food transports, field kitchens, pontoons and, not least important, the post. At one point we saw a large body of Austrian prisoners sitting by a wood and drinking water with their very small escort. These men helped some of our motors over difficult places. Streams, their bridges broken down, were still being crossed by the great onflowing current of men and wagons, only with more ardour than before. Teams of white horses, which, because of their conspicuousness, are only allowed to serve in the transport, were dashing through the mud and water with a fervour as great as if on the field of battle. At one place a bread wagon dropped all its cargo and turned over on its side, but horse and driver, evidently not noticing, carried it on into the stream with no diminution of pace—one wheel high in the air and the other broken beneath the wagon. Our General spoke frequently with the men; and we all helped one another through difficult places, on each occasion with a hearty "Once more thank you, brothers," from the General. Nothing will remain with me longer than these endless irregular lines of big, sleepy, almost stupid-looking faces moving at a walk which might last for ever, and all in one direction and all with set eyes, a people that lies down to sleep at the roadside, that breakfasts off stale biscuit soaked in water, that carries nothing but what it can put to a hundred uses, that will crouch for days without food in flooded trenches, that can die like flies for an idea, and is sure, sooner or later, to attain it, a people that never complain, a brotherhood of men.
In Radom I found our Russian orderly from Kostroma fraternising with the Polish servants, joining in their work and singing them songs of the Volga. I told him he was another Susanin who had led the foreigners into the marsh. We were soon on our way back to Warsaw.
November 25.
I have dealt with the Russian advance from Warsaw and Ivangorod, by which the Russian front was carried forward some one hundred and seventy miles in all from the original defensive line on the Bug and the communications of the Austrian and German armies were threatened in the neighbourhood of Cracow. This movement was necessarily completed by an advance of the Russian forces on the San.
After their first successes in Galicia the Russians had advanced as far as the Wisloka, but the German attempt on Warsaw from the west and south and a strong Austrian and Hungarian counterstroke on Galicia made advisable a temporary strategic withdrawal of the Russian line to the San, while all available forces helped in repulsing Germans further north. For nearly a month the Russian defensive line held good against superior Austrian forces on the San and in the south. Report says that bounteous rewards were offered to the Austrian troops for the reconquest of Lvov; and the Russian occupation of eastern Galicia was seriously endangered. The San varies in breadth from fifty to a hundred and fifty yards and is lined with marshes. Across this narrow obstacle Russians in trenches maintained an unbreakable resistance, repulsing all Austrian attempts at crossing.
I have seen many of the wounded of this long defensive struggle. Their temper is the same conquering spirit that has carried the general advance. I stayed at their hospital some days. A group of slightly wounded, mostly young men with bright, radiant faces and strong, lusty voices, sat up in bed recounting to me, one after the other, individual feats of daring done by their comrades. Throughout there was the feeling of individual superiority to the enemy tested by the heaviest conditions and sometimes by the wiping out of nearly all one's company or squadron. Most were wounded in the left arm or left leg in the trenches. Five or ten of the company would fall every day. The most exposed were the telephonists. Others fell in daring reconnaissances in boats across the river. All testified to the far heavier losses inflicted on the enemy. One simple young fellow crippled in a leg described how one did not in one's first day's fighting like to look out of the trenches. Then he showed how one began to peer about, and later one took no notice of bullets whistling round one, because of the sense that the army would surely go forward. One bright day he said to me, "It must be fine in the trenches to-day." This is the spirit of them all.
At last, when the Russians to the north had advanced and Sandomir had been taken, the word came to go forward. The river was crossed at night and the enemy driven from the trenches and neighbouring villages and further back. The advance was triumphant at all points. The Austrians were driven southward and westward. Some were pressed against the Carpathians, with two difficult passes which would hardly admit the passage of artillery and field trains; others were pressed back on Cracow where the line of the whole Russian advance is now complete.
The Russian impact on Cracow promises, first, a settlement of the destiny of western Galicia, where the population is Polish and very ready to respond to the appeal of Grand Duke. Next, a gap is made between the Austrians and Germans who are already retiring in mutual dissatisfaction in different directions, and whose political interests must more and more differentiate. Further advance through this gap will be on Slavonic territory, as southern Silesia up to the River Neisse is mainly Polish or Bohemian, and the Czechs in general are largely Russophil and quite hostile to Germany.
The Germans are doing all that is possible to make diversions on other sides. Stopped and driven back on the side of Mlawa, they have made a serious effort on both sides of the Vistula, near Plock, but have been decisively repulsed, the inhabitants giving effective aid in bridging the river. They are now attempting to force a strong wedge into the Russian front between the Vistula and the Wartha; but so far the Russian line, which is everywhere continuous and is reinforced wherever necessary with strong reserves, has successfully outflanked every local German advance.
Meanwhile a double Russian advance on East Prussia from east and south is overcoming the numerous obstacles and making rapid progress, avoiding and enveloping the thickset fortified line of the Mazurian lakes. Here, too, the subject population is chiefly Polish.
Retreating German troops in Poland, previously transferred from the western front, expressed to the inhabitants great despondency, even saying, "This is our last judgment" (Das ist unser Weltgericht). Many prisoners have displayed a similar mood.
November 28.
A Russian Field Hospital
A large, low, white building with a grassy court and outhouses; four large tents stand in the court; on the centre of the main building a white canvas band that bears in rough black letters the inscription: First Etape Lazaret of the Imperial Duma.
After a wonderful star-lit journey in a formanka or double-horsed cart with a courteous and humble old grey-haired peasant, I come on this building about half-past two in the morning. The last part of the journey was adventurous; the driver at one point wished to strike work, which resulted in a wait of nearly an hour; the way had to be asked of a group of soldiers with blackened faces seated round a camp fire, and of three sentries of the étape marching through the night with fixed bayonets, who challenged, "Who goes there?" and received with some hesitation the answer, "Our side" (svoi). One of them lowered his bayonet to be ready for any further emergencies. In the end I was guided to the lazaret, where I had a cordial welcome from the two sanitars on duty and was accommodated with a bed in one of the large tents, which was empty and ready for moving.
The Duma Lazaret was equipped chiefly by the energy and liberality of Prince Volkonsky, Vice-President of the Duma and one of its most respected and popular members. All parties are associated in the work; and Prince Volkonsky, who is a Conservative, has had the valuable help of the eminent Radical, Dr. Shingarev, who earlier earned a wide reputation as the organiser of the sanitary system in the province of Voronezh. Meetings of a committee are held in the Duma, and lately two other lazarets have been equipped and dispatched, one to the Prussian front and one to the Caucasian.
The first Duma lazaret was one of the earliest to arrive behind the front during the tremendous fighting in southern Poland and in Galicia. At Brody on the road to Lvov it gave preliminary treatment to thousands of wounded in the course of a few days. Later it was moved to Lvov, Sokal and Belzec, where I now found it. It had picked up on its road stray dogs which it had named after their places of adoption—Brodka, Rava, and Belzec.
The lazaret was equipped for two hundred patients, but at the time of my visit had only forty, as it was about to be moved further to the front. Operations were performed daily, to be ready for the move. I saw one poor fellow, very frail and no longer young, just after his leg was amputated; he was calling in a piteous way to his mother. In one ward the patients were in a late stage of convalescence from typhus, and in another lay one of the sanitars of the lazaret. In a far corner lay a poor fellow with a wound in the head; his case was hopeless, and he was communicated by the priest in an interval of consciousness.
The central wards were full of strong, lusty men, most of them young, some with bad wounds but nearly all getting the better of them. They were in many ways like dormitories of big schoolboys, all of them good comrades—during my stay of some days I only heard one altercation and that was mild and very short. They lived a chance corporate life of their own; and when I went round with cigarettes, there was always some one to see that tired or sleeping comrades got their share. There was very little groaning and no complaint; the men felt their wounds in the long night time, and sometimes one would mention that his wound was smarting. One Armenian, a weak-looking lad of the gentlest disposition, lay striving to bear his pain. "Oh!" he said as he fought it; and then, with closed teeth, "No matter; it doesn't matter; our Emperor ought to be rich; it had to be done—to beat the Germans; it doesn't matter."
Usually, however, the wound would only be mentioned in a side sentence in a narrative—"and then I got this," or it would be the occasion for a story of strong life and effort and the triumph of "ours." There was a peculiar delicate courtesy about the halest and strongest, who would shift their wounded limbs with an inviting gesture of the hand, making room for me to sit on their beds; and then there would rise a general stream of narrative where all joined in without ever seeming to interrupt each other, each telling of some daring feat of a comrade against all odds. One will not forget the figures leaning up in bed and the young, radiant faces; many of these men were cripples who will never fight again, but everything about them was full of health and fresh air and victory.
A young trooper told me of the actions of his regiment against the Hungarians. They have, it appears, a particularly mobile horse artillery, served with great accuracy by horsemen who fire with the left hand. They enticed the regiment up with displays of white flags and suddenly rent them with a murderous fire. For all that, as in practically all these narratives, in the end the Russians triumphed.
Others described the long defensive work on the San, with its narrow stream and muddy banks, and the final irresistible advance. There were two young men, one from Chernigov and one from Tauris, who beckoned to me each day, and with whom I spent several happy hours. When I asked for their addresses they wrote them down in form, beginning in the one case with "Wounded in arm" and in the other with "Wounded in leg." "Wounded in leg" was a sunny youth who, when we were photographed together, made quite a careful toilette. He was the boy who called out "What a splendid day! It's fine to-day in the trenches!" These two discussed with me all sorts of subjects, including the English sailors and the Grimsby fishermen, who appealed to them as "going for boldness." Another more elderly pair, one like a jolly farmer and the other like a brown-bearded stationmaster, worked out with me on the map the progress of the Russian army. Simplicity was the note of all, and it would have been hard to convince them that it was they more than any others who were now under the eyes of Europe.
There was another still more elderly couple that had an out-of-the-way interest. They were two old men, one of sixty-six and one of seventy-two, who had been shot by the Hungarians for sheltering Russian soldiers. One of them, a picturesque-looking person with round head and furry grey hair, told me of how he was locked up in his attic and then called down to be shot, while his womanfolk were reviled and struck. His leg was broken, but was mending. Both these poor old men were full of plaints and, after the Galician manner, insisted on kissing one's hand each time that one talked with them.
One of the most sympathetic figures in the lazaret was the priest, a man of the age and with many of the features of a Russian picture of the Christ. He was a monk from the famous Pochayev monastery in Volyn, sent hither by the Archbishop Eulogius. His was an entirely un-selfconscious nature, gentle, good and whole; and the care that he gave to the dying was like the best of man and of woman combined. I had some talk with him of the Uniats, that oppressed people under the heavy hand of Jewish taskmasters, which had held through centuries to its roots of parish organisation thrown out by the early Brotherhood of Lvov. We glanced in at one of their services in the quaintest little wooden church, where the singing was congregational and like a sad plaint.
Our priest every day read a short Orthodox service in the central ward, and on Saturday and Sunday served the full Mass in one of the largest tents. Some six of the soldiers were trained singers; the priest himself did not chant, and the words of the service came with all the more reality, especially the frequent allusions to the "Christ-loving army." At one point the priest went through the wards to repeat a part of the service; for, as he said, "our soldiers are deeply religious, and the patients will feel that they are left out." At the end all in the tent kissed the cross, and the priest then went to hold it to each of the patients in turn. He told us that at the mobilisation and before battle communions were frequent and that fasting was in such cases excused.
It was while I was here that the order to move forward arrived. The remaining wounded were arranged for in neighbouring hospitals; warm blue vests were served out to all for the journey. "We have much to be thankful for," said one soldierly fellow who looked like a sergeant and took a lead among the rest. "Our Emperor has indeed fed and clothed us." Everything was packed, the large farm buildings were left deserted, and the hospital moved forward in the track of Radko Dmitriev.
The Country and the War
I have just made a journey across Russia. The average opinion seems to be the same everywhere. The feeling expressed is quiet and sober; no boasting of any kind is heard anywhere; news of the war is treated on its merits, and anything that seems unsatisfactory is faced and is given its reasonable value. As to the ultimate issue, complete confidence is felt, and, in this feeling, satisfaction with what has been done and the determination to go through with the matter seem to have an equal share. Every one is clear that there can be no stopping half-way with the task unfinished; and the task, as it presents itself to the average man or woman, is that the crisis thrust upon us must not occur again. I say "thrust upon us" because, with average people even perhaps more than in official circles, and with the peasant more than all, there is the strongest feeling that peace has been wilfully disturbed by Germany, and that Russia was left no option but to hit back as hard as she could. A peasant cabman, fraternising with me on our alliance and promoting me in the course of our conversation to the second person singular, summed up the common instinct very well by saying: "How disagreeable He is" ("He" is always the enemy); "he makes himself nasty to every one," which is surely the chief reason why "He" is having a bad time of it now. "He might have smashed you or the French," my cabman goes on; "us he can only hit about a bit (pobit)," and his attitude is that of a big, kindly animal that is provoked into defending itself and others. "Pobit" is the ordinary expression of the soldiers for the work they have to do. A peasant servant puts it stronger and is sorry that I am not going to "spike" (kolot) any Germans, especially as she has made up her mind that they are going to kill me. "You had better tell me what to do with your things," she says, "for you're not going on a pleasure trip"; and she reminds me of this as I start by asking, "But when you're killed, though?" I quote this because this good woman has a brother in the Siberian rifles, of whom so many are lying under the great wooden crosses outside the wrecked village of Rakitna, and no doubt she judges of my chances by his; but she talks of him with the same equanimity. Beneath all this, there is the full and silent sense of all the sacrifices that are asked and a silent pride in making them. I have never heard this take words with the peasants, though it is behind everything they say; but it comes out often with those who have any responsibility for others and most of all with any who are in close touch with the common soldier. Those speak the strongest and simplest of him, who are only telling a friend their daily experience of him; and the selflessness of his courage and endurance keeps coming back on them as something that astounds and even confounds them.
All the life of the country that lies behind the line is centred in it. The nearer one comes up to the line, the more does one feel in the moral atmosphere a sense of satisfaction, of ease of mind. In the line itself all sense of self disappears, and the big band of brothers lives for its daily work and divides up everything in common. It is wonderful how far little resources can go when they are put together; one produces some chocolate, another a little store of comfits, a third hands round a flask, another supplies the cigarettes and another the matches, and a little feast is thus improvised by the half-light of a candle; all these stores are renewed at chance and are expended without reserve.
But it is farthest of all from the front that the sense of the war is most painfully felt, and that because it has to seek ways of finding its satisfaction. For this it seeks continually. Every now and then, in the capitals and all the big towns, a week is set aside for some special object: for the collection of warm underwear for the men in the trenches, for Christmas presents for the troops, for the families left behind, for the widows and orphans, for the supply of means for the crippled. At these times, which are constantly recurring, every tram or train is boarded and every restaurant is traversed by the collectors, who for each donation pin on a little special badge to secure the donor from any further importunity; but the badge is quite disregarded both by donors and collectors, and one sees many who have paid their due several times over. Thus the public is taxing itself over and over again for every need that it can think of.
The posters have a nervous force, such as the Petrograd one that begins and ends in large letters with the words "It's cold in the trenches." Several of them bear the signatures of members of the Imperial Family, one of the most simple and telling coming from a sister of the Emperor who is engaged in ordinary hospital work among the wounded. Another striking appeal, for the widows and orphans, is simply a twofold picture. Along the top in pale blue with a sullen sky of winter dawn above, a number of scattered soldiers, big and clumsy and heavily clothed, are running forward over a rough, flat field, with the lumbering run of a Russian porter at a railway station, their bayonets lowered and all with set faces; from a copse in the distance come puffs of smoke; and in front of the men, close behind his chief, who has already fallen, an officer has his hand thrown up in the air as a bullet carries him over. Underneath sits a group of dark-haired figures; a young wife with set and brooding face, and two young boys at once with fear and spirit in their eyes. I have asked that some of these posters should be sent to England, in case any could spare from their nearer needs something for the countless bereaved of Russia.
Every non-military unit of society is looking for a way of its own of helping. Mary Dolina, who might perhaps be called the Mrs. Kemble of Russian opera, has, with her many helpers, now given over thirty concerts of national and patriotic music for widows and orphans. The artists of Russia, banded together with special imperial approval, are giving movable representations in restaurants or in public squares, where, as in all other cases, the full collection goes to the army. The Press of Moscow is meeting to organise a day on which the Press will make a united effort for the same object. And then there are the collections for claims that make a special appeal, such as the devastated homes of Poland, Belgium and Serbia. The superscriptions adopted in these various endeavours are quite simple and usually take the form of offering a present—for instance, Petrograd to Poland, Moscow to Poland and Belgium, Artists to Soldiers, and so on. All this wealth of various charity is co-ordinated, and regularity of service is secured by committees of the most representative kind under the chairmanship of one or other member of the Imperial Family. The Emperor himself is constantly paying visits to the army with abundant supplies of medals for all the heavily wounded.
Among the links between front and rear are the frequent short visits to the capitals of those chief organisers of the Red Cross who must be everywhere. Prince George Lvov, one of the most admirable of Russian public workers, who organised relief during the famines and led the Civil Red Cross in the Japanese War, passes from Lemberg to East Prussia, or from Warsaw to the Caucasus, seeing as much as can come under one pair of eyes, and returning to Petrograd and Moscow to find ways of meeting each new need. Nicholas Lvov, a former Vice-President of the Duma, whose brother has fallen and whose eldest boy has been killed by shrapnel before Cracow, passes constantly between Petrograd and Galicia. Alexander Guchkov, the organiser of Red Cross work on the Warsaw front, who is constantly in the front line and was reported prisoner at Lodz, pays flying visits to Moscow. And all these glimpses of the realities of the war draw closer the ties between the army of defenders at the front and the country that is waiting to meet every sacrifice and to fill every gap. Russia will close the ranks till the work is done; and she can go on doing this after it has become impossible for our enemies.
December 18.
In Kiev, though there is every sign of its being in the minds of all, materially the war is hardly felt. It is in fact wonderful how little effect of this kind it seems to have made on the body of Russia. On the other hand, the atmosphere of nervous tension begins to disappear the moment one begins to get really near to the front. In the Red Cross offices at Kiev I found the same straining toward the front as elsewhere, only much calmer because these were people who had a big war work to do. Hospitals meet the eye in the streets at every turn.
Once in the train for Galicia it was again the war atmosphere and simplicity itself. The talk was all of people engaged directly or indirectly in it. A graceful old lady with a very attentive son was on her way to get a sight of her husband, one of the generals. A young officer, whose wound has kept him out of it for three weeks, is on his way to the front before Cracow. A fresh-looking young man, at first unrecognisable to his friends with his close-cropped bullet head, tells how he went on a reconnaissance, how he came on the Austrians, how their first line held up their muskets and when the Russians had passed on fired on their rear, how nevertheless practically all came back safe and sound. It was told with a kind of schoolboy ingenuousness and without suggestion or comment of any kind on the conduct of those concerned. Then followed an account of a war marriage, at first put off and then carried out as quietly as possible. All the friends of every one seemed to be at the war.
At the old frontier some of the buildings near the station were wrecked by artillery fire, and the railway was lined with a succession of solid hospital barracks, with the local commandant's flag flying over one of them. There was plenty to eat at the station; and though we moved on very quickly, every one from our crowded train managed to find a place in the Austrian carriages, chiefly because every one was ready to help his neighbour. The corridors jammed with passengers and kits, we moved on through the typical "strips" of Russian peasant culture, a pleasant wooded country, passing a draft detachment on the halt which waved greetings to us. My companion, Mr. Stakhovich, a phenomenally strong man and imbued by a fine spirit, was talking of the indifference of the Russian peasant to danger; he regarded it as an indifference to all sensations; anyhow they go forward, whatever the conditions, as a sheer matter of course. With the ordinary educated man the mind must be kept occupied with work if unpleasant possibilities of all kinds are to be kept out of it; but General Radko Dmitriev, to whom we are going, will jump up from a meal, however hungry, when there is a chance of getting under fire.
We draw up in the great station at Lvov. To the right of us stretch endless lines crowded with wagons, especially with sanitary trains. In the lofty passages and waiting-rooms are sleeping troops with piled muskets, some wounded on stretchers tended by the sisters of mercy who are constantly on duty here, and a crowd of men, all soldiers, coming and going. One passed many Austrian prisoners, of whom another enormous batch was just announced to arrive; and elsewhere a Russian private explained to me the excellent quality of the Hungarian knapsack, which he and his comrades had turned into busbies. One man was asleep inside the rail opposite the ticket office. He did not seem to mind how often he was woken up.
In the town everything is quiet, and life goes so naturally that no one could take it for a conquered city. In the country this might have been expected because far the greater part of the population is Little Russian; but in Lvov the Russians are only about 17 per cent. and the predominant element is the Polish (60 per cent.), the rest being Jews (20 per cent.) or Germans (3 per cent.). The university, the Press and the bulk of the professional class are Polish. This result is in character with the place, which has a peculiarly pleasing atmosphere of its own. But it is also a great tribute to two quite different influences: to those Poles who, though in no way tied to Russia, have preferred to all other considerations the corporate interests of their fellow-countrymen, and to the wise and sympathetic administration of the Russian Governor-General, Count George Bobrinsky.
December 22.
Lvov is taking on more of the character of a Russian town. Many of the Jews have left. The Russian signs over new restaurants, stores, etc., meet the eye everywhere. Of the Little Russian party which supported the Austrians, many have now returned and are making their peace with the new authorities. The Russian soldier is quite at home in Lvov, as one sees when the singing "drafts" swing past the Governor-General's palace; the Austrian prisoners in uniform, who are allowed liberty on parole, seem equally at their ease. Numbers of Russian priests are pouring into Galicia, but not fast enough for the Uniat villages which have embraced Orthodoxy; as soon as they arrive, peasants come with their carts and take them off to their parishes, without waiting for any formal distribution. The Uniat creed and ritual are practically identical with the Orthodox, so that the difference between the two was purely political. At the new People's Palace of Nicholas II, I saw a number of children, principally from families that had suffered severely at the hands of Austrian troops, receive Christmas presents on the day of St. Nicholas, who is the Russian Santa Claus. Archbishop Eulogius, in a very effective little address, told them that the biggest Christmas present which they were receiving was the liberty to speak their own language and worship in their own way in union with their Russian brothers.
Starting for the army, I spent a night of strange happening in the great railway station, as our train was delayed till the morning. At one time I went, in the frosty night, to look for it at the goods station, where there were endless rails and wagons, and found it after a long search. In the big restaurant four little boys made great friends with me, one of fourteen in uniform and spurs who had been serving as mounted scout with a regiment at the front, and one of thirteen who had attached himself in the same capacity to a battery. Both were small creatures, and the first was a remarkable little person, with all the smartness and determination of a soldier, relieved by an amusing childlike grace and courtesy. He said to me in a confidential voice, "I see you are very fond of little children," and he ordered with pride lemonade and chocolates for us both. He said the men at the front could last a week to ten days, if necessary, without any food but sukhari (army biscuit), so long as they had cigarettes. His imagination had been caught by the aeroplanes over Peremyshl, and also by the Carpathians, which he described with an up and down movement of the hand. He had a great disgust for anything mean and a warlike pride in the exploits of the soldiers of his regiment. His model was a boy, now a young man, who had been through the Japanese War. "If a general comes past," and he made a salute to show the extreme respect felt for his hero. Many a time in that long night, while the weary heads of doctors and sisters of mercy were bent in sheer tiredness against the tables, he would come and sit by me and ask me to read the war news to him, or to tell him about the English submarines. He left me with the smartest of salutes in the early hours of the morning.
Our train is an enormous one with endless warm carriages (teplushki) for the wounded. The staff of sanitars and sisters, working for the Zemstvo Red Cross, live in a spotlessly clean carriage, and there are special carriages for drugs, stores, kitchen, etc. They are simple and interesting people, and, as I am now in the Red Cross and have many interests in common with them, they kindly made me up a bed in their carriage, where we discussed Russia in all its bearings.
We carry a group of passengers who have all made friends after the Russian way. A colonel and his wife are going to fetch the body of a fallen comrade. Another colonel, a delightfully simple man with close-cropped hair, thin brown face and bright, clever eyes seems to know all the Slavonic languages and has much to say of the Austrians. He has seen twenty of them surrender to a priest and his clerk who came on them in a wood, made the sign of the cross and told them to come with them. In another place twenty-two Austrians were captured by two Russians. The Austrian officers put quick-firing guns behind their own rifle pits for the "encouragement" of their men, on whom he has seen them fire. They make their gunners fire every two hours in the night as a kind of exercise. He has seen them form their men in close column under fire and march them about up and down along the line of the Russian trenches. The Austrian artillery seldom takes cover; the Russian directs its fire on the enemy rather than on his batteries. In one place, heavy Russian artillery at a range of seven miles demolished an Austrian field train and two battalions who were lunching in the square of a small town. He is full of life and confidence, and all that he says breathes of fresh air and of work.
Our train made its way through to the furthest point up. We had to stop several times to let through the ambulance trains already charged with wounded, which take precedence. We had to go very slowly over several repaired bridges; and this was no simple matter, as we had twenty-seven long and heavy coaches. Some of these repairs were complicated pieces of work, as the bridges were high above the level of the rivers. At point after point, and especially on the Austrian sides of the rivers, we passed lines of carefully prepared trenches, and in one place there was a masterpiece of artillery cover, with every arrangement for a long stay.
The damage done by the artillery fire was sporadic—here a smashed station building, there a town where several houses had suffered. But there was nothing indiscriminate; and the Polish population, which showed no sign of any hostility to the Russians, seemed to find the war conditions livable.
As in other parts, I was specially struck by the easy relations existing between the inhabitants, the Austrian soldiers and their Russian captors. There were exceptions. I had some talk with a few Austrian Germans from Vienna. They were simple folk and seemed to have no grudge against the Russians; and the circumstance in their position which they felt most—they were only taken the day before yesterday—was that this was Christmas Eve, the "stille Nacht, heilige Nacht" of the beautiful German hymn, and that they were far from home among strange people. They kept apart as far as possible not only from their captors but from their fellow prisoners from Bohemia and Moravia. These last seemed at least quite comfortable, smoking their long pipes and leisurely sweeping the platforms. They were quite a large company. They understood my Russian better than my German. When I asked them how they stood with the German troops, instead of the sturdy "Gut" of their Viennese fellows, they answered with a slang word and a gesture. When asked about the Russians, they replied in a quite matter-of-course way: "We are brothers and speak the same tongue; we are one people." For any difficulties, the Poles often prove good interpreters. It is very different for the Austrian captive officers, who often cannot understand their own men.
These Czechs confidently assured me that any Russian troops that entered Bohemia would be welcomed as friends; and they claimed that not only the neighbouring Moravians and Slovaks but also the Croats further south were to be taken as feeling as they did. The Bohemians and Moravians seem to be surrendering in the largest numbers of all; and though the Viennese claimed that large numbers of Russians had also been taken, I cannot regard as anything but exceptional the enormous batches of blue uniforms that I passed on the road here. I asked these men about their greatcoats and was not at all surprised when they said they felt cold in them. It is nothing like such a practical winter outfit, whether for head, body or legs, as that of the Russian soldier.
We came very well over the last part of our journey. I was sorry to part with the friendly sanitars, who all seemed old acquaintances by the end of the journey and invited me to take up my quarters permanently with them. Theirs was more than ordinary kindness, as they had shared everything they had with me, including their little sleeping apartment. The bearer company under their orders is all composed of Mennonites, a German religious sect from South Russia which objects to war on principle and, being excused military service even in this tremendous struggle, seems to be serving wholesale as ambulance volunteers.
As there were none but soldiers about, these men helped me out with my luggage; and through the window of the First Aid point in Tarnow station, I saw another acquaintance waving me a welcome. This is the last point that the railway can serve; and my friends will go back with a full burden, which will keep the medical staff busy day and night all the way. One of my new companions, who has been out to a village to get milk for the wounded, has seen the shrapnel bursting; and the guns are sounding loud and clear near the town as I write this. It is here that the most seriously wounded must be treated at once, as a railway journey would simply mean death for them. This is brought home to one, if one only looks at the faces of the workers. Yet with this huge line of operations, and the assaults which may be made at any point of it, at any moment the nearest field hospitals may need to send off any wounded who can be moved without delay. Though the work is being done with danger all round, less thought is being given to it than anywhere that I have been yet.
Christmas Eve: peace on earth and good will toward men. And all through "the still night, the holy night," the sound that means killing goes on almost continuously. How can any one say prayers for a world which is at war, or for himself that is a part of it? May God, who knows everything, help each of us to bear our part and not disgrace Him, and make us instruments to the end that He wishes.
December 26.
Christmas day I spent in the hospitals. In one ward, at a local Austrian hospital, and full of wounded, I found that almost every one of the line of patients was of a different nationality. Going round the room, one found first a Pole of western Galicia, then a Russian from the Urals, next a Ruthenian (Little Russian) from eastern Galicia, next a Magyar from Hungary, and against the wall a young German from Westphalia. After him came an Austrian-German from Salzburg, a Serbian from southern Hungary, another Ruthenian, an Austrian-German from Moravia, an Austrian-German from Bohemia, and a Moravian from Moravia.
I spent a couple of hours here, talking sometimes with each of the patients, sometimes with all. The Pole knew only Polish and the bearded Russian, who had a bad body wound, was too tired to talk much. Of the Ruthenians one was a frail, white-faced boy from close to the Russian frontier who seemed, like most of his people, subdued, and confused with the strangeness of his position in fighting against his own people; the other was a lumpish boy without much intelligence. The thin, bearded Hungarian, who knew no German but a little Russian, was mostly groaning or dozing. The Salzburg Austrian was dazed and drowsy, but at intervals talked quietly of his pleasant homeland.
The German stood out from the rest. He was a bright, vigorous boy of twenty, had gone as a volunteer and was tremendously proud of the spirit of the German army. He had fought against the French during four days of pouring rain, mostly in standing water. The Bavarians, who seemed to have quarrelled with the other troops in that part, were making war atrociously, he said, knifing the inhabitants, insulting the women and destroying all that came in their way. He was later moved to the Carpathians, where one German division fought between two Austrian ones. They advanced in snow without field kitchens, and were not allowed to touch the pigs and poultry that they passed. However, they had enough to eat; and they were hoping to surprise their enemy, when the Russians fell upon them and left only the remnants of a regiment, many of the officers also falling. He himself was wounded in both legs, and was brought here in a cart.
Every German soldier has a prayer-book and a song-book. They constantly sing on the march, and find it a great remedy against fatigue. Songs of Arndt and Körner are very popular, and there is a new version of an old song, which is perhaps the greatest favourite; it begins—