I saw off a train of Russian wounded. They were most brotherly and thoughtful for each other. An Austrian patient told me he was happy and had made great friends with the Russian next to him. The electric trams are used for ambulances, and the chief buildings are turned into hospitals. The biggest is in the Polytechnicum, and is served practically by Poles. The big Russian hospital of the Dowager Empress is very well equipped. The Red Cross organisation is in the hands of eminent public men; such as Homyakov, Stakhovich and Lerche, who visited England with the party of Russian Legislators in 1909. Count Vladimir Bobrinsky, another member of that party, is chairman of the relief committee appointed by his cousin the Russian Governor-General of Galicia. The town is old and pleasing, set in undulating country. It is in excellent order. A little sporadic street firing was quickly suppressed. All inhabitants throughout the conquered territory must be at home from ten in the evening till four unless they have special permission. How well this rule is kept one could judge when returning from the station. No one was out except Russian sentries and Austrian policemen, who have been continued on their work. Otherwise one sees no signs of a conquered town.
The day the Russians entered, the Polish paper issued its morning edition under Austrian control and its evening edition under Russian. The electric lighting and tramways continued working and the shops remained open. The fighting, which was most severe, was all outside. But even on the sites of engagements the amount of damage done by artillery is limited to few places and few houses, and cultivation is now going on, without any signs of war, close up to the present front. A general order forbids the leaving about of any refuse. There is no friction between the Little Russian peasants and the troops or the new administrators; but the Jews adopt a waiting attitude. The general position is a great credit to the Russians, and gives ample proof of their close kinship with the great majority of the conquered population.
October 26.
I have visited some of the battlefields of Galicia. It is much too early to attempt any thorough account of these battles; nor did the conditions of my visits make any complete examination possible.
The chief harm which Germany and Austria could inflict in a war against Russia was to conquer Russian Poland, whose frontier made defence extremely difficult. Regarding this protuberance as a head, Germany and Austria could make a simultaneous amputating operation at its neck, attacking the one from East Prussia and the other from Galicia. But the German policy, which had other and more primary objects, precipitated war with France and threw the bulk of the German forces westward. Thus the German army in East Prussia kept the defensive, and Austria was left to make her advance from Galicia without support.
The Austrian forces on this front were at first more numerous than the Russians. The Russians had been prepared to defend the line of the Bug, which would have meant the temporary abandonment of nearly all Poland. But the alliance with France and England made it both possible and desirable to advance, and at the battle of Gnila Lipa the army on the Austrian right was driven back beyond Lvov (Lemberg), the town falling into Russian hands. The next great fighting was for the possession of the line of the river San.
It must be remembered that while the fighting lines ran roughly from north to south, the frontier line here ran from east to west. Thus the left of each force occupied the territory of the other. The first decisive success had been that of the Russian left in Galicia; but the Austrian left and centre were still allowed to advance further into Russian Poland. A double movement was then undertaken against them. While General Brusilov pushed home in southern Galicia the success already obtained on this side, and thus secured the Russian left flank from a counter-offensive, General Ruzsky, the conqueror of Lvov, came in on the Austrian centre at Rava Ruska, while other Russian armies, detached from the reserves standing between the Russian northern and southern fronts, and making good use of the advantageous railway connexion, arrived to the north of the Austrian left. Seldom has a tactical battle been planned on so large a scale. The Austrians, threatened at this point with outflanking on both sides, after several days' hard defensive fighting, withdrew with a haste that had the character of a rout, and which only saved them from complete annihilation. Their centre, like their already beaten right, retired southwards toward Hungary, while their left, just escaping the peril of being surrounded, fell back rapidly in the direction of Cracow, where it was strengthened by further support from Germany. Two German corps had already joined it, but too late to avert the reverse already described. The success of Brusilov at Gorodok (Grodek) secured to the Russians the line of the river San as far as Peremyshl (Przemysl).
This series of operations, after the Russian evacuation of East Prussia necessitated by the strong German movements on the northern fronts, left Russia with the following line of defence: the Niemen, the Bobr, the Narev, the middle Vistula, the San (to Peremyshl) and the Carpathians. This line includes the larger part of Russian Poland, the city of Warsaw, and western Galicia, with its capital, Lvov. This line is infinitely more satisfactory than that of the Bug. Its security on the south depends in part on the action of Rumania, but a counter-offensive from Hungary has already been repulsed on this side. On the north, attempts of the Germans on Grodno and on Warsaw have been triumphantly repulsed; and the Russians have since fought with success along almost the whole line; a serious German and Austrian effort is to be anticipated on the middle Vistula and the San.