It is difficult to believe that the Government of the Czar, had it survived, would have permitted this offensive to take place; a few ambitious Generals may have been in favour of it, but the rulers of Russia had realized that autocracies which made war on the Central Empires, were undermining the last barrier against the advancing flood of democratic sentiment, and were, in fact, cutting their own throats. Both at the Imperial Court and in Government circles, German influence was gaining ground, and the Russian people as a whole were profoundly pessimistic. Germany was considered irresistible, officers of high rank admitted that if Mackensen invaded Bessarabia, salvation could be found only in retreat. They talked of a retirement to the Volga even, and the Rumanians listened with dismay.
In all human probability, the proposals for an offensive made to the Conference at Petrograd were intended to deceive the Western Allies, and to gain time for the final liquidation of Rumania. Already the Russian Government controlled Rumania’s supplies of ammunition,[35] and, by an adroit interpretation of Articles VIII and IX[36] of the Military Convention, the Rumanian Army had, for all practical purposes, been brought under the Russian High Command. The next step was to assume control of the Rumanian civil administration. On the pretext that the confusion and congestion on the Moldavian railway system would preclude offensive operations, the Russian General Staff suggested a wholesale evacuation of Rumanian elements from Moldavia into Russian territory. This evacuation was to include the Government, the civil population, and all military units not actually on the front. Apart from its total impracticability with the communications available, the object of this suggestion was sufficiently clear—it was the conversion of Moldavia into a Russian colony. When that had been accomplished, a separate peace could be concluded between Russia and the Central Empires, and the prophecy of Baron von der Büsche[37] would have been amply verified.
During the proceedings of the Conference there had been much talk of revolution, but few of the Allied representatives believed in it. Society in Petrograd scoffed at the idea of a political upheaval, it was held to be impossible while the lower classes were so prosperous and comparatively well fed. At the end of February the Conference broke up, the British, French and Italian delegates left by the Murmansk route, convinced that, at last, the Russian “steam roller” was going to advance.
A few days later the Revolution began. The soldiers joined the people. Their motives for so doing were natural and logical, they should have been a lesson to those who were next to try to rule in Russia, if vanity and false ideas had not conspired to make Kerensky the puppet of occidental plans. Many senior generals supported the Revolution. Their motives were variously ascribed to patriotism and ambition—when generals and soldiers act alike a distinction must be drawn.
Western democracies gave an enthusiastic reception to the new order in Russia—so much so that our Ambassador in Petrograd, of all men the most innocent and above suspicion, was accused of complicity in the revolutionary plot. Liberals spoke of the awakening of Russia, and they were absolutely right. It was, indeed, an awakening of oppressed, exploited people, and was thorough, abrupt and rude. Officials in Paris and London were not without misgivings, but they perceived some advantages in the situation—a central soviet at Petrograd, or even a Republic, ruled by idealists, would be a more docile instrument than the Government of the Czar. Superficially, they were right. This shortsighted view was justified by events during the first four months of confusion and excitement. Fundamentally, they were wrong. They had misjudged the Revolution, and had not recognized that lassitude and exasperation pervaded the Russian armies, and that men in this frame of mind were better left alone.
The fate of Rumania had trembled in the balance when left to the tender mercies of the men who ruled in Russia under the old régime. The Revolution had brought a chance of respite, and admitted a ray of hope. Great Britain and France could have helped the Rumanian people by using their influence to insist on strict adherence to the terms of the Military Convention. If this had been done, and if patience and foresight had been exercised, the natural desire of the Army and the Government, to take an active part in the reconquest of their territory, might have been gratified on sane strategic lines. The Rumanian Army might have been reorganized and re-equipped, and then could have played a useful part in a concerted Allied plan.
This was not to be. The Allied plan was fixed and immutable. Though everything had changed in Russia, this plan was the direct outcome of Gourko’s fantasies: it consisted in a gigantic offensive operation, without adequate communications and with ill-equipped armies, on more than one hundred miles of front. The Rumanian forces were to be wedged between two Russian armies and thus deprived of the power of independent movement, while their rôle was limited to that of an insignificant fraction of an incoherent mass. Ignorance and optimism ruled the Allied Councils; they were to be as fatal to Rumanian interests as Russian guile and greed.
I returned to Jassy from Petrograd towards the middle of March. The Russian forces in Moldavia had caught the revolutionary infection; their Commander-in-Chief, a Russian prince, had found prudence to be the better part of valour and assisted at committee meetings wearing a red cockade. Revolution softens the manners and customs of even the most violent natures. Officers, who a few months before had kicked their soldiers in the streets for not saluting, now, when they got a rare salute, returned it with gratitude.
The Rumanian peasants remained faithful to their King and Government. They had suffered much, but their pride of race and native sense prevented them from flattering the hated intruders by imitating Russian methods for the redress of wrongs. In Jassy, some Socialists who had been arrested were liberated by their friends: these may have included some Rumanians, but their number was not considerable and their activities were not a source of danger to the commonwealth, which was threatened only from outside.
On the front an extraordinary situation had arisen. Fraternization between the opposing armies was general and unrestrained, except on the Rumanian sector. The Russian soldiers were in regular correspondence with their Austrian and German adversaries, by means of post-boxes placed between the lines and verbal intercourse. Men, whose respective Governments were still at war, fished in the waters of the Sereth. “Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so.” No doubt these anglers thought, with Isaac Walton, that they were brothers of the angle. Barbed wire was put to peaceful uses, entanglements were used as drying lines and were covered with fluttering shirts. The revolution had accomplished something; it had given some very dirty soldiers the time to wash their clothes.