Chapter VI: Part 6

Now followed extraordinary scenes. Austrian soldiers were seen fighting each other, while the Russians looked on. Amid the chaos a small group of staff officers appeared, casually enough, with a white flag, and announced surrender. Austrians were seen cutting pieces out of slaughtered horses that lay in heaps, and showing an entire indifference to their capture. Explosions of war material continued after the surrender.

The greatest surprise of all was the strength of the garrison, which numbered not 50,000 but 130,000, which makes of Peremyshl a second Metz. Different explanations are offered; for instance, troops which had lost their field trains and therefore their mobility are reported to have taken refuge in Peremyshl after Rava Russka, but surely the subsequent withdrawal of the blockade gave them ample time for retreat. A more convincing account is that Peremyshl was full of depôts, left there to be supports of a great advancing field army. In any case no kind of defence can be pleaded for the surrender of this imposing force.

The numbers of the garrison of course reduced to one-third the time during which the food supplies would last; but even so the fortress should have held out for a year. The epidemic diseases within the lines supply only a partial explanation. The troops, instead of being all Hungarians, were of various Austrian nationalities; and there is good reason to think that the conditions of defence led to feuds, brawls, and in the end open disobedience of orders. This was all the more likely because, while food was squandered on the officers, the rank and file and the local population were reduced to extremes, and because the officers, to judge by the first sortie, took but little part in the actual fighting. The wholesale slaughter of horses of itself robbed the army of its mobility. The fall of Peremyshl is the most striking example so far of the general demoralisation of the Austrian army and monarchy.

Peremyshl, so long a formidable hindrance to the Russians, is now a splendid base for an advance into Hungary.

_April 1._

I am afraid to-day, which, by the way, was Bismarck's birthday, is a bad date to put to any anticipations as to the war. But things seem to be taking a more definite direction than for some months past, and one may say that the possibility of decisive events is now in sight.

If one glances along both fronts, western and eastern, one sees, I think, only a single point at which a really decisive blow, military and political, is possible; it is, of course, the junction on the eastern front of Austro-Hungary and Germany. This has been clear to every one for some time past. But one may go further. The greatest strength of our enemies, both political and military, lies in two parts, Prussia and Hungary; and the gap between Prussia and Hungary is a very much wider one than the Austro-German frontier. In this gap lie Slavonic peoples, the Czechs (Bohemians), Moravians and Slovaks, whose representatives in arms have shown by extensive surrenders that their sympathies are rather with us than with the enemy. A number of mountain chains, the Carpathians, Giant Mountains, Erzgebirge and Böhmerwald, give this group rough geographical boundaries.

Germany, under the lead of Prussia, is a powerful and compact unit which has so far given itself heart and soul to this war. Divisions in the future here are by no means impossible. There have been brawls even in this war between Prussian and Bavarian troops (in the Argonne); and it is not difficult to picture a return of the old jealousies which less than fifty years ago put South Germany and Saxony into the opposite camp to Prussia. Here, too, the Böhmerwald, Thüringerwald and Erzgebirge have a traditional political and military significance; but such divisions are not at present in sight, and can only follow on decisive events on the western front. Prussia is at present not at all likely to be troubled by them.

It is very different with Hungary. What an extraordinary position this valiant people holds, drowned, as has been said, in an ocean of Slavs, and what vigour it has shown in maintaining it. The Magyar from Asia has planted himself on the rolling plains of the Theiss and Danube and, though he does not inhabit the surrounding mountains, he has managed to grip them into a strong kingdom with good geographical boundaries. He has made himself the equal, almost the predominant partner with Vienna and the Austrian Germans in the Austro-Hungarian state, and his strength rests in the deprivation of the surrounding Slavs of any equal voice in the destinies of this monarchy. He has gone wholesale for the intimate connexion between Austro-Hungary and Germany which makes the first an instrument of the policy of the second, with many incidental gains to himself at the expense of the Slavs.

Now for the Magyar has come a time of reckoning. Russia, the big brother of the Slavs and his own hereditary enemy, stands at his door. The protecting glacis of Galicia has been torn away and Peremyshl, the road out and the road in, has fallen. Even on the south there is a victorious enemy, the Serbian, who has just claims on some of his territory. To east, the sky is equally cloudy for him. Transylvania, a mountain barrier whose loss would leave him defenceless on this side, has a large Rumanian population, which his oppressive policy has driven to its natural affinities; and Rumania seeks the realisation here of her traditional ambitions.

The Russians are fighting their way from hill to hill through the Carpathians. The Austro-Hungarian army has suffered severely in each of the many counterstrokes which it had to attempt in the interest of the German plan of common defence. The cavalry is practically gone and the infantry is very exhausted. Sacrifice made to Germany at the beginning of the war, when so many of the Austro-Hungarian guns and motors were sent to the western front, have left their marks on the Hungarian artillery. The Carpathians are like a fan, and might perhaps have been held from the inside, but they have at many points been lost step by step; and once they are crossed, the converging passes will bring the Russians together into a compact mass on the further side.

There is one strong man in Hungary, Count Tisza, and he still reserves his hand. He is fighting meanwhile the desperate battle of the Austro-German connexion, to abandon which is to put Hungary at the mercy of Russia and to sign the abdication of the Magyars' mastery over his Slav subjects; but this seems to be the result which awaits him almost inevitably.

Germany is for every reason bound to do all that she can to save Hungary. But the Russian advance, whatever direction it takes, must make an ever-widening gap between the two allies.

_April 4._

I had known the airmen for some time. Sometimes I met them discussing sporting enterprises with their chief in the conspirative quarters of "Wiggins." Sometimes I dropped in at their spacious lodging in the town, where everything, meals, talk or plans, seemed to go with a peculiar briskness and lightness; in particular there was this touch about any of the several services which they rendered me. It was Russian in spirit, but in manner very reminiscent of England. Several of the airmen might be English, and one of them they call "the Englishman."

On every fine day we see the aeroplanes above the town, and at different points on both sides there are batteries for firing on them. There are no longer duels of airmen on the eastern front; there were two or three, but now they are apparently forbidden on both sides. It was felt to be waste to lose a competent airman in order to kill one of the enemy. This means that there is no such attempt on either side to drive the enemy from the air, as was anticipated by Mr. Wells. Thus on both sides the airman has come to stay, and the whole significance of his work is not in fighting but scouting. It is, of course, far the most valuable scout-work that can be done; altogether wider and more far-reaching than any other kind; and there can hardly be any doubt that in the future no Chief of Staff but will have to fly and to fly often. On nearly every one of Napoleon's battlefields one will find some commanding point from which he fought and won; there is no such point at Borodino or Leipzig, but that helps to explain why these battles were not won. Now, with the scope of operations and of pitched battles enormously enlarged, there has come also the ideal way of seeing.

On the other hand, the earth does not give up without a fight. Batteries capable of any direction and almost any elevation can guard those parts where the enemy's eye is most to be avoided. Experience on this side shows that the airman can be kept out of such parts.

The contest is an interesting one to watch. The airman has first to fetch inland, that is away from his own lines in order to get as much height as possible. The guns can hit far higher than the airman will fly, that is if they wish to see anything. The Austrian flyers are therefore well within range, and the Russians, who take more sporting risks, often go not much more than half the height of the Austrians. In this connexion one must remember the infinitely greater precision of the Russian artillery. On a fine day the buzz of the aeroplanes and the boom of the batteries are among the most customary sounds here. One sees the little puff of shrapnel at different points in the blue sky; the aeroplane always makes off as soon as possible, and it is seldom hit. It is hard to hit the motor, though I have seen an airship which we struck on one of its cylinders; shots on the wings or tail are seldom dangerous. The man who knows least of what is happening is the airman himself, for the noise of his motor drowns any other.

_April 6._

Yesterday I went out to the aerodrome. I was given some breakfast in a cottage, and saw the different types of machines while waiting for the Chief of the Section. I was also shown the little missiles which the Austrians and Russians respectively let fall: the Austrian is like a pointed thermometer and the Russian is like a rounded letter-weight with little wings. After a while there came over the high level ground a tall man with a swinging stride and a little grizzled man whose walk and manner spoke of quickness and decision. This last was the Chief of the Section, and he has a great reputation among Russian airmen. Two of the smaller machines went out scouting. One seemed at first a little unsteady, but the other made a splendid take-off and rose like a bird; soon one of them returned, having gone far beyond the enemy's line in an hour and a half. My turn came next, and I was seated in a larger machine with a most capable chauffeur, who sat in front of me. He cried: "Contact obtained"; the men fell back for a moment, and then we rushed smoothly along the ground, soon rising into the air. We made a circle above the town, returned over the aerodrome, saluted our friends and then struck away inland away from the front to get the necessary elevation. We passed over a map of ponds and villages and copses, all clearly marked in the bright sunshine, with the long ridge of the snowy Carpathians to the right of us. Then we turned and swept higher over the same ground as before straight for the lines. In front, at right angles to us, lay the dividing river like a long, twisted ribbon, and as soon as we neared it we swept to the right and along it. All the different points at which I had stayed came out clear in the sunlight. Here was the piece across the river where I had seen the scouting; there were "The Birds" with the high ruined church behind them; further came the smaller outpost; and in the distance lay the marshes in the neighbourhood of the Upper Vistula. We again faced about and this time passed right over the river which divided the hostile lines, following it further southward by the broken bridge and to the main road, near the point where I had sat at night among the sentries and to the hills which had been the scene of the action with the Tirolese. But for me the main interest of this, my first air ride, was that suddenly the unknown land beyond the fatal line was as clearly outlined as all that was so well known to me. Till now I had seen here a field and a line of ramparts, there a river with trees, and there again a hill. It is true that sometimes I had had good field-glass views of a given landscape with signs of life, but now to the naked eye both sides were for the first time parts of one common world, the dividing line ran thin and almost undividing, and all was alive. There occurs to one the notable description by Tolstoy of Nicholas Rostov looking across the field. The wonderful and real things that that field meant were gone. The tremendous and human struggle of all Europe was become a simple problem of science; one had mounted to the skies and reached what Napoleon, with his heartlessness and his seeing mind, had called "the celestial side of the art of war." What would he have given for this view, where his trained eye could have marked down not only the numbers indicated by slight symptoms, but the full bearing of each, suggested by the flash of genius so typical of him. Surely it was a measure of magnificent consolation for the enormous widening of the area of combat.

The dull flats beyond the river rose to higher ground eastward, and there on a high wooded plateau ran the railway dead straight, and at one point a stationary train marked the centre of many of our troubles, the point from which the 42-centimetre guns had been bombarding Tarnow. As our aeroplanes flew along the river, there flicked out from a copse a shot from a masked Austrian air-battery, posted there to keep off the too curious eye. I was told afterwards that there were other shots, but we did not see or hear them.

We returned as we came, making a great circuit away from the lines and wheeling always nearer to the earth. We made a straight drive over the aerodrome while the company of airmen stood at the salute, and after circling once more over the town came to the ground. We had had an hour's run, and our highest elevation was 1200 metres. It appeared that there had been awkward currents of wind and that we had wobbled a good deal, but it had not seemed so to me, and what I remembered was a smooth, regular motion and a broad back and a cool head in front of me.

_April 7._

My flying friends have a small but very interesting collection of letters which, with the leave of the authorities, no doubt on both sides, have been exchanged between them and the airmen of the enemy. It is headed simply, "Correspondence with the --th Austrian Section of Aviators." It opens with a letter from the Russian Chief of Section: "Airmen of yours have been taken prisoner in civil costume. They said that our officers have also, which we doubt. Please let us know what is the character of the serious wound of Lt. X, taken prisoner by you on January --th." This note was dropped on the Austrian aerodrome with two letters from Austrian prisoners. As the answer was delayed, the Russians dropped a second note, this time in German, on the same place. It reported that the captive Austrians were unwounded and proceeds: "Your note picked up at ---- on the ----th of March leaves the impression that our first message has not reached you; we therefore would respectfully ask you to answer our note. We also send a friendly-foemanly request that you will give us news of our airman, Lt. ----. He was taken prisoner on the --th of January and was wounded. We should like to know how it happened and whether the wound is slight or serious.--The Russian Flyers."

To this the following answer was received from the Austrian Chief of Section: "My hearty thanks for your letter, which I have just got. I am sorry that I have not had time to drop on you a photograph of the machine of Lt. ----. On March the --th and the --th we have dropped you news of your airmen taken prisoners _[the names follow_]. I therefore repeat that all four were unwounded and have probably been transported to the prettiest part of our country, Salzburg. Lts. ---- and ---- got a shot on their sparking apparatus. I have myself had a talk with Lt. ----. I saw _no signs_ of any wound. In future every note of yours will be answered, and the answer will be dropped on your aerodrome.--With best greeting, Your ever devoted enemy, August, Baron von Mandelslob."

To this the Russians replied, under name and address of the Austrian Chief of Staff: "Our hearty thanks for yesterday's note which dropped straight on our aerodrome. We are sorry not to be able to tell you to what part of our country your airmen have been sent, but we think that the address will soon be sent you by earth-post by the prisoners themselves. The _Albatross_ was shot to pieces, about thirty bullets in the wings and body. One bullet hit the propeller, but made only a smooth hole without any fissure. The two airmen, Lts. ---- and ---- are unhurt. With this note we shall drop on you two letters from the prisoners. Please address your next note as follows (----). God greet you.--The Russian Flyers."

The Austrians continued: "A few days ago our airmen, Captain ----, Oberleutnant ----, Oberleutnant ----, Professor D---- and two lieutenants with two airship chauffeurs, left Przemysl in a balloon and are lost. We beg you friendly-foemanly to drop on our aerodrome news of these officers" [_three signatures_]. Baron von Mandelslob also writes: "Many thanks for your last lines about the loss of our _Albatross_. I am sorry to say that we have not for some time had the honour of seeing Russian airmen among us on the ground. Will you be so kind as to forward to Omsk the accompanying note to our captive airman, Lt. ----? We will try to get the address of your airmen prisoners, and then you will be able to write to them. Best greeting."

The Russians reply: "A happy Easter. Many thanks for yesterday's letter. Your note will be sent at once to Lt. ----. On March --th we received a communication about three balloons from Pzremysl. It was signed by Captain Kahlen. As we do not know this gentleman, we address to you, with the friendly request to forward to him. All the three balloons landed in Russia. We have only private news of them, and understand that all the airmen were alive and well. We ask you to forward the four accompanying letters to the proper addresses. We have been waiting for an answer to our letter of the --th, and that is why these letters are late. What was wrong with your motor yesterday? We thought we should soon have the honour of seeing the enemy's airship land on our aerodrome. Best greeting and Easter wishes to all the gentlemen of the ---- Section of Aviators.--The Russian Flyers." This letter was dropped on the Austrian aerodrome, and also on the same day an Easter egg and a large box of Russian cigarettes. On Easter Sunday an enormous Easter egg, with the inscription in Russian "Christ is risen," was dropped from an aeroplane and, having a parachute attached to it, fell slowly on the Austrian lines.

_April 8._

It was Easter Eve. A wide awning had been set up, and in front of it an altar with flaming lights all round it. The tall priest served the Liturgy with wonderful spirit; sometimes it was a hurried and fervent whisper; sometimes his voice rose to a battle-cry, as when he powerfully swayed the Cross almost as if it were a weapon. On the grass, grouped in chance masses, stood the soldiers of the N regiment, most of them holding lighted candles, with their officers gathered in front. The young colonel stood near the priest; through Lent he had shown the example of rigorous fasting. On the other side was a strong choir of soldiers, led with the slightest movements of the hand.

The service begins with a time of waiting; then there are movements of expectancy, and the priest retires, as if to see whether the coffin of the Saviour is still in its place. He comes back and whispers, "Christ is risen," and these words, which are themselves in Russian like a whisper ("Christos Voskres") are taken up by the choir, first very softly and later rising to a song of triumph.

The service ends with the Eucharist. The words "Lift up your hearts" were a moment of wonderful spirit and elevation. The priest took the Sacrament on bended knees with the greatest reverence and feeling, and administered it to two of the soldiers.

Now every one, beginning with the colonel, approached in turn to kiss the Cross. Then each turned to his neighbour and gave the threefold brother's kiss, with the words "Christ is risen," to which comes the answer, "He is risen indeed." All the officers gave the kiss to the priest and the colonel. From the neighbouring lines shone out two projectors, whose lights crossed to form the first letter of the name of Christ--X.

We drove off to the officers' mess, which was in a large cottage. At the crowded tables there reigned the spirit of brotherhood. After the Emperor's toast the colonel and the regiment drank to King George and England, and all stood waving their glasses and roaring hurrah, while I went round and touched glasses with each. My toast was that the alliance should last on after the war. We had other toasts, the sisters of mercy, the colonel's wife, and above all the regiment. It was well on in the early morning when the young officers on horseback escorted their guests back to the town.

On Easter Sunday some of the Red Cross people went out to the front. At this point both sides had agreed not to shoot, and the men came out of their trenches and fraternised across the Dunajec, the Russians producing a harmonium. Newspapers were exchanged; and an Austrian officer sat down and wrote some impromptu verses, which he fastened to a stone and threw across. The verses began very peaceably, but had an unexpected end which, my friends felt, would be specially interesting to me. I give them in German with a translation--

Auf Grund der hohen Feier tage
Geändert unsere Feindeslage.
Wir leben heut' in tiefem Frieden:
Zur kürzen Zeit ist's uns beschieden,
Dann werden wir die Waffen mässen;
Jedoch soll niemals man vergessen
Den Stifter deiser Weltenbrand.
"Gott Strafe England."

The holy days of Easter-tide
Have set our enmity aside.
We live in perfect peace to-day:
'Tis but a little time we may,
Then to our weapons we must get;
But ever we'll remember yet
Who lit this fire of world-wide wrack;
O God, pay England back.

_April 9._

I have been visiting my friends at the Staff of the army at Jaslo. Even this place has not been immune, bombs have been thrown from aeroplanes, doing no damage to the army but wounding and killing some children.

I visited the General in command, who is in splendid spirits. He is the simplest of men, and stops in the streets to talk to the children or to any new arrival. He is happy now, because things are going forward.

The Staff lies in rather better quarters here, but with the same simplicity as when I first visited it at Pilsno. One of the regiments I knew came through in fine style with its colonel at its head; it had done forty-eight miles in two days, and was ready for any amount more. The different battalions were singing different soldiers' songs, each taking pride in getting a good swing and putting in the best foot forward. I was struck with one man who marched at the side leading the songs with a mouth like a brass instrument and a voice to match.

Two German airmen have just come down here. They had made a wide circuit, and were brought down by the failure of their motor. As always here, they are being well treated. Even in the case of spies caught red-handed, it is most difficult to get the Russian soldier to shoot, especially if the condemned shows any sign of fear.

Austrian soldiers are to be seen here everywhere. The Germans and Magyars are under close surveillance; but the Austrian Slavs are ordinarily allowed to wander about freely. Many of them have shown in the most thorough way their attachment to the Russian cause; but I am told on the best authority for this area, that there is not a known instance of their abusing their liberty to play the part of spies. At many points on the Austrian front the Slavonic cause is like a kind of contagion. Under German direction disaffected troops are moved from one point to another to escape this infection, and finally, at the first opportunity, come over _en masse_.

Every day the prisoners are gathered together in groups according to their various nationalities for examination. These interrogations, which are of a very systematic kind, obtain very interesting results. Most of the prisoners testify to a shortness of food, not only in the front but in the rear. Letters from home to them speak of the dearness of all food; some necessities cannot even be obtained for money, and different parts of the empire are applying to each other for them in vain. Nowhere is there any spirit left. The only comfort which the officers can suggest is to await some success from the Germans. Some, moreover, describe the officers as being never on view, except to abuse their men, treating them worse than cattle: "So that one does not know whether one is a man or not." Only one Austrian officer so far has been taken in this part with a bayonet wound. It is known that there have been further protests in Bohemia after the taking of Peremyshl, and that the severest repression has been used, also that two Polish regiments have been literally decimated, that is, that every tenth man in them has been shot. One man's brother writes to him that he is called for the first time to the army at the age of forty-eight, and in his part the last call covers those between forty-two and fifty-two. Other new battalions are formed, ninety per cent. of reservists and ten per cent. of wounded who have returned to the colours; in most of them there is now a hopeless mix up of all nationalities. Some describe their training as having only lasted four weeks. In all cases the preoccupation of the commanding officers is regarding retreat.

_April 11._

The centre of interest is now in the Carpathians. If Russia could have advanced with success against the strong German positions in East Prussia, she would have secured her right flank, but only as far as the sea, which would still have remained in German hands. On her left, her victories in Galicia have brought her to a very different barrier, which, if passed by her, will certainly remain impassable for the beaten enemy. It is a good thing that the Austrians, continually spurred forward by the Germans, have exhausted themselves in one desperate counter-attack after another on Galicia. It is a good thing that the Germans, realising what the ultimate defeat of Austria must mean to them, have diverted so many of their forces to this side. It is best of all that they have risked a desperate advance in the Bukovina and even as far as the Russian frontier, in the hope of dragging Rumania in on their side. The fall of Peremyshl has opened the gates of Hungary and has made possible a movement which threatens vital results on this front. Hungary and Prussia are the two keys to our triumph in this war. The one element in Austria that holds firm to the Prussian alliance is the Magyar; the one statesman in Austria is the Hungarian, Count Tisza, whose estate almost on the crest of the Carpathians is now in Russian hands. A Russian advance on this side can crush Hungary or cut her from Prussia. It can bring even the Magyar to wish for peace; it can finally put aside all action of Austria; and along the real barrier thus secured to the south, it can facilitate the concentration of the forces of the allies against the main enemy. It is, indeed, good that this effect comes at the time when we are hammering at the gates of Constantinople and opening up an effective advance from our western front.

But the task in the Carpathians is a stupendous one, and it comes when the Russian army has been tried to the full by the tremendous work which it has already gone through. We had in England no adequate army when the war began; we had not reckoned on the shameless violation of Belgian territory or on the obligations of a joint struggle with allies for the independence of Europe. Every one in Russia understands the miracle that we have done in creating so rapidly a really competent continental army on the basis of volunteer service, and every one sees that we were right to defer our blow till the great new instrument was whole and perfected. But it is Russia who has given us time for preparing our action on land; and the sacrifices which this has cost her are heavy indeed. The tremendous impact at Rava Ruska was followed by another prolonged and exterminating effort on the San, and this takes no account of the work which was done in holding the furious attacks of the main enemy in Russian Poland. These efforts put a terrible drain on the Russian resources. While we stood firm on the west, whole Russian regiments were almost annihilated in the victorious storming of one Austrian position after another. In my earlier visits to regiments I have often asked how many men of the first call still remain; sometimes only six of a company were still left, sometimes it was hardly more out of a whole regiment. It was an army already replaced at almost every point which had to attempt the conquest of the Carpathians.

The Carpathians are not the Alps. It might be easier if they were, for there would be fewer positions capable of being defended. They are a belt of high and higher hills some sixty miles or more in breadth, where whole armies can hold line after line. They are full of trees, water and mud. Only one double line of railway runs through them. As they have the shape of a fan spread northwards, the defence can concentrate backward along the various converging passes and can, in a relatively small space, almost block the narrow entrance to the Hungarian plain. But once that final barrier is passed, Hungary is lost. Any counter advance can be blocked without great expenditure of forces, and the conqueror will be free to advance southwards or westwards.

_April 12._

At the Staff of the Army I fell in with a number of casual acquaintances who all saluted me as "Mister." There was a keen young flying-man who was now going back to his cavalry regiment, and a colonel sent to take temporary command of an infantry regiment. The talk was in fragments and all of incidents of camp life or engagements. We knew that another advance had been made and that big things were going forward.

All night we travelled by train, with changes and queer moments in the dark when our luggage ought to have been lost but wasn't. In the early morning the Colonel and I were on an engine climbing the Carpathians along a fine double track. We sat like Dean and Archdeacon in little side stalls with our things stacked where there was least coal and bilge, while the engine-driver, a most intelligent man from the Caucasus, explained the difficulties of his work. The rise is a very steep one, and we had a front view of it, passing up long slopes or through strata of yellow rock. In these mountains one had at once the feeling of being altogether away from Russia; and the new Russian army notices blending with the earlier Polish and Hungarian inscriptions suggested the atmosphere of a big adventure. All along the beautiful slopes there was the look of a huge Russian picnic, soldiers sitting at rest in great boyish crowds very much as in peace time the peasants do on the sloping banks of the Volga. The bright dresses of the Ruthenian women and the almost theatrical picturesqueness of their men-folk touched the whole with novelty.

Alighting at a station near the top, I found the usual war crowd and park of waiting army carts, and a brisk-faced intendant who rapped out business-like answers to a running fire of questions from all sides. My own business was to get to General Dobrotin, and it was made easy by the appearance of a plain-faced officer who said, "He's the man who pours cold water over himself in the morning; give him to me; we know him all over the division." I was soon in a _formanka_--a sort of boat-like cart which works particularly well in the mountains--and making my way up the gorge, at first with a broad shallow river to my left and later branching into the hills. Here in a little gully lay a scattered village; and the notes of a mountain flute were wafted down the slope.

General Dobrotin and his famous division have had far more than their share of the great fighting in this war; and they have been given one critical task after another, because their action has so often been decisive. In no less than three great movements they made the first cut in, and held the ground won as a kind of pivot until the whole operation was successfully completed. It was so at Rava Russka, on the San, and at Muchowka. They had now been transferred to the other flank of our Army.

It was the second time that this division, now enlarged into an army corps, had had mountain fighting, to which the Russian soldier is much less accustomed than to the plains. This time the task was a stupendous one. The railway pass crosses one of the lowest parts of the Carpathians, but close to it rises the long, steep ridge of the Eastern Beskides, which is the actual crest of the range at this point. It is covered with forest, and forms a line of rounded heights which are often separated from each other by almost precipitous gullies. Along this line ran a chain of carefully prepared positions, which the Austrian officers regarded as inaccessible.

Dobrotin's force, brought up with the greatest secrecy, had in some cases hardly detrained before it was launched to the attack. It soon mastered the outlying ground and then marched from all sides to the attack of the main ridge. The Russian infantry, on which has fallen the brunt of attack in this war, does not ordinarily go forward in close columns like the German. Groups of men, led by the instinctive enterprise of the more daring, gain one point of vantage after another, each of which forms a pivot for an advance of the whole line. In night attacks the movement can, of course, be more general and more rapid. In any case the last hundred yards or so are covered at a rush; but there is an inevitable pause before the wire entanglements, which in front of the Austrian trenches are generally most elaborate and have to be cut through with enormous scissors under a storm of fire, especially of quick-firing guns.

The Russians went up the slope with unconquerable daring, the new recruits showing the same courage as those already seasoned by the war. The whole operation went with a simplicity which made short work of all obstacles. Under a furious fire the men swarmed into the Austrian trenches, at once overcoming all opposition. There is no easy retreat from heights of this kind; everywhere hands were thrown up and the positions were won. The Russians sit firm on the crest of the Carpathians.

The staff from which this crucial attack was directed lived like a little family of brothers in a farmhouse in the valley. The General, white-haired, with one eye left, and with two other wounds, but with a youthful vigour of voice and movement, lived among his officers with a comradely simplicity, now patting one on the back, now sharing with another a bench on which to draw up a report, now gazing with amused interest at the regimental chronicler at work with his typewriter. His was an authority absolute.

_April 14._

The F and J Regiments were to storm a height of about 2,500 feet on the further side of the Beskides and thus close the flank of the newly-won positions against any turning movement of the enemy.

I set out in the General's _britchka_ in a swirling storm of sleet. Ground could only be made very slowly; for the whole country was sunk in deep mud. On a slope in the road we came upon an ambulance transport stuck fast, with a couple of soldiers using all their expletives, which would have translated quite simply into English. Soon afterwards we had to leave the road and plough through spongy meadows intersected with ditches. At one ditch there were two sharp cracks, and here both our springs were broken.

It was a desolate halting-place, with no one in sight. My soldier-driver announced: "We shall go nowhere with this to-day." However, he set to work and showed prodigies of strength and resource, using broken boughs as levers, detaching certain parts of the carriage for strange uses in other places, and more than once lifting the cart almost off its wheels by its own strength. I made a fruitless journey for help; and a squadron passing on its way to the front could do nothing for us. My driver did, indeed, succeed in tying up the broken springs; but the most that he could hope for was to get back safely; so I went forward on foot over a bog and a moor, to the nearest village. Here I found a train of transports, whose captain kindly sent help to the _britchka_, and I myself went on to the staff of the J Regiment. This was in a Ruthenian cottage several miles behind the firing line; only orderlies were left here besides the Ruthenian family, which almost always remains in some corner of its hut during occupation by the Russians. These people had vigorous, handsome faces, and were dressed, men and women, in bright colours; they sat almost silent in an attitude of long waiting. While I was with them, orders came for the staff to move on: a squad of men marched in, and, saluting, took away the regimental flag, tramping off southwards. As the last man left, the Ruthenians began to talk, at first in whispers. Their language was Russian, their religion Uniat, and they had much more in common with the invader than with the neighbouring Magyar.

The delays had spoiled my chance of seeing the action, which was nearly over. Horses sent from the front took me on to the new headquarters of the F Regiment. It was a big cottage with two bare, spacious rooms. On the wall of one were pencil pictures of Hindenburg, surrounded with a laurel wreath, and Austrian ladies of various degrees of comeliness. The officer in charge made me comfortable; and from the outside room were audible the telephone reports from the battlefield. The first words that I heard were "rank and file many: number not yet ascertained."

The staff had left this cottage at six in the morning. At eight the Russians opened a heavy artillery fire which came home on a weak part of the enemy's line. At eleven the infantry left its trenches and advanced, point by point, making shallow holes with head-cover at each line when it halted. At five in the evening, being now within storming distance, the whole Russian line went forward. The Austrian front was pierced at two points; to left and to right their quick-firing guns continued to play with deadly effect, but with a third great sweep forward in the centre, the whole position were surrounded and carried, nothing being possible for the enemy except surrender. The regiment encamped on the conquered hill.

All this came in over the telephone, with first some and then more detail, as to the losses. "G. is killed"; "H. is shot in the ear"; "L. is wounded"; "G. is missing"; "G. is at the station, seriously wounded." The group of soldiers at the telephone were all taken up with the general course of the action. I asked the officer if G. was a great friend: "I am sorry for him," he said. "He's a comrade." Every word of the reports was checked by the receiver and then repeated to the divisional officers. It was clear that the Austrian positions were very strong, and that the chief damage was done by their machine-guns.

I was in bed in my corner, when there was a hubbub of rather exacting voices; it was a group of fifteen captured Austrian officers. One, who retained the habit of command, quieted the rest and then entered our room. He was a young captain, strong and healthy, and showed no sign of confusion or annoyance. He seated himself to the good meal which his captors had prepared for him, ate with appetite and, turning to the Russians, said vigorously, "I see no point in this war; it should be stopped: it is all England's fault." I interposed from my corner and asked for his reasons; he had none; he said, "That's the only way that I can explain it; England is the only real enemy of Germany; she has egged on the others indirectly; and she has kept her own fleet in harbour." We had a friendly discussion as to the facts of the matter, especially about the Austrian policy of aggression at the expense of the Slavs and Russia; and he ended by saying that he knew nothing of politics and did not think that officers ought to. He told me the Austrian trenches were flooded, and though the food was fair, the condition of the men was enough to make his heart bleed. When the hill was taken, he was at the telephone; he saw that the Russians were through on the left, that they were through on the right, and that they were storming the centre. "There was no point in running on them," he said simply, "so I surrendered. But I'm keeping you awake, am I not?"

A young sentry came in, saluted the regimental flag, and mounted guard over it, his face settling at once into a fixed stare. When I woke the next morning, the man, his pose and his stare were still the same.

Along the drenched road and fields came numberless batches of blue Austrian uniforms, prisoners, usually escorted only by one brown Russian. I had a lot of talk with some of these. "_Miserabel_" was their word for their condition before capture. All were sick of the war, "even the Hungarians now, though at first they liked it." "The main thing," said one, "is that people should not go on killing each other: nothing else counts. As to territory, it's all one to me to what State my home belongs; I only want to earn my living." "When you hear that in Russia," I said, "you will have the kind of peace that you ask for, but I don't think you ever will."

The colonel came back with his staff, drenched through, even to the case of his field-glass, but jubilant. After the rest came a middle-aged officer with his head bound up, and that gentle look which accompanies head wounds. He said in a conversational voice "Hurrah" and sat down. Some one asked him of his wound; and he simply answered, "Oh, that's nothing."

_April 16._

I have been to see one of the first regiments which I visited, in its new surroundings. When I was first with the H's, they were maintaining ground under difficulties. They were opposite a notable and commanding height, which could sweep the Russian line with a cross-fire or lodge bombs among the H's at short range. I remember in particular a visit to an exposed part of the trenches in company with two officers, one a fair-haired florid young man who sniped at stray Austrians, the other also young, but dark and sallow, evidently not strong, to whom this part of the front had been entrusted. When I said I should like to visit it, he said, "You'll be killed"; and when I rather pointlessly said, "That is interesting," he replied, "No, it is not interesting." He struck me and others as bearing a hard burden, and bearing it well. I remember the fair young man sniping at the enemy, and also dealing with a soldier who asked to be sent to the rear. "What's his wound? That's not much." "Yes, but he has a wife and three children." "Then I should say he is one of those who ought to stay: he has seen a bit of life."

I found the H's beyond the Beskides. My orderly and I rode over a broad shoulder, then crossed a gully, and climbed the main ridge at one of its lower points. The Beskides are the frontier between Galicia and Hungary, and they are in almost every sense a dividing line. From here the rivers flow respectively north and south--to the Vistula and Baltic or to the Danube and Black Sea. There is a marked difference between the views northward and southward. Though on a very much larger scale and with greater detail, it recalls the difference between the northern and southern views from Newlands Corner in Surrey. To the north, it is true, there are descending lines of hills, but they are uniform and severe, and covered mostly with firs. To the south opens up a whole series of Hascombes and Hind Heads and, best of all, Horseblock Hollows. It is an English forest, of oaks and elms and especially beeches; and the firs and pines, as in Surrey, are in relief and not in sole possession. Many of the hills are covered with brown fern like the hills in east Herefordshire. The earth is rich in soil, in water which seems to bubble to the surface as soon as one makes any hole in it, and also in snakes, of which a great number have been found wintering by the Russian soldiers wherever they have entrenched themselves. The streams are broad and clear with beds of stones and pebbles.

One looks in vain for any sign of the plain below. In every direction it is a sea whose waves are hills. This is all the more so because the broad belt of the Carpathians makes an enfolding curve forward and southward, both to left and to right. One sees in the distance other hills as high as the Beskides and to the east the towering mass of the High Tatra.

Near the ridge of the Beskides was a great park of horses, and along the top were trenches and soldiers. All the way down among the beeches one seemed to be riding straight on to the enemy, whose positions, unless absolutely enveloped in cloud, seem to be at less than half their real distance. Soon the horses had to be left in the wood; and crossing a narrow hollow we came out on a low, bare bluff which was the line of the H regiment. A green hill loomed up close above us, and every man and every line of the trenches could be distinguished. This was the enemy. It seemed only a stone's throw, but when the rifles and machine-guns first set to work here, they found that they did not carry the distance and stopped firing. A desultory cannonade was going on, but it ceased as the evening began to close in; mingled rain and snow were sweeping in gusts about us, and even the near distance was soon so shrouded as to seem for us non-existent. We were as if on a promontory in a dark sea.

By this time I was in the earth shelter of an old acquaintance, the commander of the battalion with whom I had passed a night some months before. How changed he was. Always the soldier, he had before looked the smart man of the world. Now he was grimed and tired and had something of the mild and enduring look of a hermit. The water came through our mud hut everywhere. As we sat eating biscuits and chocolate, another acquaintance came in and with almost such a smile as one might have in speaking of a wedding said, "You remember the fair young man; he is dead." I asked after the sallow young officer. "He is dead, too; both were killed when we tried to take the green hill opposite, they are lying out there now." The fair youth just before his death had telephoned "All in order," and he was first wounded in the open and then shot dead while looking through his field-glass. The H's were among the first to move on the Beskides, which they took at the rush. Here, on the further side, they had three tries at the green hill in front of us, two at night and one in the early morning; each time they had won the top, and each time the German troops, which had been brought up in large numbers to the defence of the Carpathians, proved too many for them, and they had to retire, leaving their dead behind. Each attack was made up the stiff ascent in mud knee-deep. Such is the price to be paid for each hill in the Carpathians.

All night the water poured in on my host and myself. We lay so as to avoid, as far as possible, its trickling on the face. At intervals in this unquiet night one saw the soldier servant rise from where he slept bowed on a box and move over our squelching floor of fir boughs to try some new plan to stop the dripping. My host said, "I'm used to it now." However, next morning he had a great inspection of earth shelters, with the result that we moved into the telephone hole. I asked a private if it was better there, and with a glad smile he said, "It's good there and it's good here; as long as we stand here we have got to suffer; soon there'll be peace."

The colonel, whose staff was some way behind, was of the same way of thinking. He used to like to say, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved." He had himself lived for a week in our night quarters, till he was driven out by a shell which fell a yard off and sent a beam flying past his head. Firing went on most of the time, and while I was there shots lodged on or near the trenches and at different points on our path up the Beskides. When I halted to look back from the crest, a man came up at once and said, "You're under fire." I remember the quiet reply of one of the soldiers when he was asked if there were any wounded that day. He said "Not yet."

I found the regimental staff, with the kindest of colonels, in an armoured blockhouse that had guarded the railway tunnel between Hungary and Galicia. I asked him after the two dead officers. The sallow young man was not dead after all. He had led the storming of the Beskides and was the first man into the trenches. "He saved the whole thing for us," said the Colonel, "and I am presenting him for the Cross of St. George."[1]

_April 17._