A unique opportunity for propaganda had presented itself. The Germans utilized it to circulate letters inviting the Russian and Rumanian soldiers to desert their “real enemies”—France and England. These appeals had no effect. The Russians received them philosophically; they had, already, got a sort of peace and, in the front-line trenches, a sufficiency of food. The Rumanians had other reasons for rejecting such advice. Peace with invaders had no meaning for them, their only friends were France and England. The peasants realized instinctively that Russia was a foe.
In their impatience for offensive action, the Allies failed to grasp some essential features of the situation, which might have been turned to good account. The Russian armies were in a state of convalescence after the first fever of the revolution, the majority of the men were inert, if not contented, and no longer indulged in deeds of violence; they were still influenced by the revolutionary spirit, but not in a rabid sense. They were a source of contagion to the enemy but, relatively, harmless to themselves. Fraternalization on the Rumanian front was more hurtful to the Central Empires than to the Allies. The Austro-Hungarians were war-weary and demoralized; inactivity had encouraged hopes of peace and, after close on three years of war, such hopes die hard. Even the Germans were disaffected, their iron discipline had grown more lax. During one of my visits to the Russian trenches, a German private brought a message from his comrades, advising the “Soldiers’ Committee” to cease passing convoys along a certain road, because “our pigs of officers may make us shoot.”
Disintegrating forces were at work among the enemy troops; they were the product of social and political conditions and, whatever might be their later repercussion, from an immediate and practical point of view, they were more powerful aids to victory for the Allies than any offensive on this front. A premature Russo-Rumanian offensive, with unwilling Russian soldiers, could have but one effect—its futility was evident to the humblest combatants in the opposing ranks; it could only serve to rally doubters and, thereby, postpone another revolution. That revolution was inevitable: it might have been precipitated by an intelligent adaptation of Allied policy to facts.
So far as could be seen, the Allies had no policy at this period. Statesmen no longer ruled. The German system had been followed by making the General Staffs omnipotent. To men obsessed by one single facet of a many-sided problem, the Russian Revolution was an incident without significance beyond its bearing on the Western Front; for them the Russian armies were machines, whose functions had undergone no change as the result of revolution. They regarded an offensive on the Eastern Front as a subsidiary operation, which would relieve the pressure in the West: that was the aim and object of their strategy, and everything was subordinated to the achievement of that end.
With very few exceptions, the Russian Generals who had retained commands, after the abdication of the Czar, favoured the Allied plan; it appealed not only to their personal ambition but also to a conviction, which they shared with many others, that further slaughter would allay political unrest. The most influential member of the new Russian Government was Kerensky, an idealist whose support for any enterprise could be secured by flattering his vanity, which, as with many democratic leaders, had assumed the proportions of disease. The motives of this man were comparatively disinterested, but he was young and inexperienced. He became the most ardent advocate of the offensive plan and turned himself into a recruiting sergeant instead of directing the affairs of State. Brains and calm judgment are seldom used in war. It is much easier to enrol thousands of simple men to serve in what the Russians called “Battalions of Death” than it is to find one man possessed of sense. Kerensky raised many such battalions and, to do him justice, he did not deceive the victims of his eloquence more completely than himself.
In Rumania hope alternated with despair in regard to future operations; the former was spasmodic and inspired by the French Military Mission, the latter was bound to invade any reflective mind. Certain Rumanian Generals were frankly optimistic in regard to the reconquest of Wallachia, others professed to be so to gain the approval of the French. With either of these two types discussion was impossible; it would have been cruel to rob them of any source of consolation by insisting on the truth.
General Ragosa, who commanded the 2nd Russian Army, expressed himself emphatically against a renewal of offensive tactics by Russian troops, before they had been equipped on the same scale as other armies. He declared that Brusiloff’s much advertised offensives had been conducted without due preparation or regard for loss of life, and that though that general had gained much personal glory, he had broken the spirit of his men. The attitude of the rank and file more than confirmed this view; the revolutionary soldiers lacked neither patriotism nor courage, but they had come to suspect and hate the blundering, ruthless generals who held their lives so cheap. They knew that on the Western Front slaughter was mitigated by mechanical devices, whereas they were regarded as mere cannon fodder and of less value than their transport mules. When French and British officers urged them to make further sacrifices, they put a searching question: “Do your soldiers pull down barbed wire entanglements with their bare hands?” Such questions were disconcerting to fervent foreign propagandists, and did not stimulate their curiosity to hear other unpleasant truths. In spite of the fact that “Soldiers’ Committees” had been established in almost every unit, and were largely, though not completely, representative, these spokesmen of a mass of inarticulate opinion were neglected by the partisans of immediate offensive action, who seemed to have forgotten that the Russian Revolution had ever taken place.
Once again, the Western Powers were asking the armies on the Eastern Front to do what their own armies would not have been allowed to do. Their motives were selfish and their propaganda false: when ignorance is wilful it becomes immoral, when combined with mediocrity of mind, it fails to recognize the natural limitations of a situation and has a boomerang effect. Wise men, however immoral they may be, know where to stop; the stupid, when unrestrained by fear or scruples, push blindly on and never seek enlightenment, they cause more suffering by their folly than the most cruel tyrants by their vice.
At the beginning of July the offensive began; by some it was called the “French” offensive, and the name was not inapt. It came as a surprise to the enemy Army Commanders, who had not expected this solution of a problem whose political aspects were causing them grave concern. The Austro-Hungarian and German soldiers could still be counted on to retaliate if attacked; this sudden onslaught put an end to the fraternalization between the armies and could be dealt with easily by even an inferior number of well-led and well-organized troops.
The history of these ill-fated operations is too well known to need recapitulation. By the end of July the Russo-Rumanian offensive had collapsed completely. The Russian forces were everywhere in retreat, the Rumanians, after making a twelve-mile advance and fighting with great gallantry and determination, were forced to withdraw to the line from which they had started, owing to the retirement of the Russian armies on both their flanks.