War has brought Wiggins and me together in novel surroundings. He has a liking for all that is venturesome and an innocent predilection for anything that partakes of conspiracy. Wiggins sits and collects all the military telegrams from the different fronts, including the western; Wiggins reads, answers and transmits private telegrams from Russia to other countries. Wiggins goes through the letters found in the enemy's trenches, and his staff is competent to deal with all the Babel of languages of Austria. Wiggins interrogates the prisoners and fixes the movements of the enemy's troops; there is a delightful caricature of him, standing like a wild boar at bay, among a crowd of gaping Austrians. Wiggins looks after the aeroplanes; and sometimes goes himself on the most perilous of scouting expeditions. On one of these I found with him a man of the most quaint simplicity, an artist, who used to sit down between the lines and sketch the enemy's positions. He described with an impersonal unconcern how the bullets passed him. "But what do you do when you have finished?" I asked. "Oh, I go on to another position." "But surely it is very dangerous work?" "Yes, I suppose there are about ninety-nine chances in a hundred of my getting killed; but I haven't any children. I should rather like to do my work from an aeroplane; I think that would be safer."
"Wiggins" asked my help in reading some of the letters from the trenches. One way or another, I have seen a good many of these. The great thing that strikes me is that they are so good—that the war after all brings out the best of every one. The Italian letters (of soldiers in the Austrian army) are particularly graceful and pretty; but then most Italians are gentlefolk. One writes: "I hear that T. is a prisoner and with the Russians and that they are much better off than in the line of fire." Another, hoping for the end of the war by Christmas, writes: "For the Babe Jesus we hope for peace." "Angelina" writing to "Carissimo Gustavo" ends thus: "If we are meant to be married, few letters are enough; and if we are not, no letters are any use."
I came out on the muddy little square and to my surprise caught the notes of a melody that was for many years prohibited in Poland. It was "Poland is not ruined yet," the battle-song of the Polish legions that fought under Dombrowski against Russia for Napoleon and for Polish independence. The words were different but not in spirit; they were the famous "Slavs come on." I was surprised, because I was in purely military surroundings at the staff of our army. But the men who were singing were all Slavs of non-Russian origin, they were a military unit in Russian uniform and marched round the square in front of Radko Dmitriev, who, with all others present, stood to the salute. To these troops he then distributed crosses and medals of the George for signal bravery, and they sang him another Slavonic air, a Bulgarian hymn in honour of himself. Behind him stood a number of Czech (Bohemian) prisoners; and the troops next played the Bohemian salute and the Czech National Hymn; some of the prisoners were in tears. Turning to them, the General said that as Slavs they could have no doubt as to the welcome that awaited them in Russia, where all that was possible would be done for their comfort, and that when the war was over they would return home, and he hoped that they would find their country free. The last words were, at his desire, repeated to them by the interpreter.
No wonder that the Slavs of Austria are coming over in great masses and begging for employment on the Slavonic side; while the fictitious unity of Austria, a mechanism for turning to German uses a country which is three-quarters Slavonic, is crumbling before the eyes. German ambitions are being reduced to count only on the services of instruments that are really German.
March 9.
I crossed the river and followed the line of the entrenchments. The men were resting in the evening before their earth-burrows. I passed along to the corner of our positions; in the half-light one could stand on the earthworks and see without being shot at. The enemy, who were Hungarians, were only six hundred yards off. Between the two lines ran a broad causeway built in time of peace, part of a great dam of which sections are occupied by us and other sections by the enemy. Here, where for a short distance it becomes neutral, all sorts of queer things are possible. Our scouts can pass under partial cover along either side of it, and constantly do so. The enemy makes no counter-moves; his advance sentries stand only just outside his wire entanglements, and creep in and report the moment they see any movement outside; he does not even open fire. The Russian soldier, who here, as elsewhere, has a complete moral and physical superiority, goes out on little night raids, sometimes in small companies, sometimes alone, to hear the conversation of the enemy, which if Slavonic can be readily understood by him, or, still better, to catch a "tongue," that is, to bring home a captive sentinel for information. This is why the enemy's sentries retreat. If fire were opened, it would only tell the Russians just what they want to know, namely, in what strength the positions are occupied.
I should like to have stayed here, but there were other things to see; so, with a soldier guide, I passed over some flat, marshy ground to a forward angle of our lines. We found our way by passing the field telephone through our hands, which is also a good means of seeing that it is in order. In the dusk, with the sense of danger and mystery around us and stray bullets sometimes coming from the enemy, my companion spoke in short and simple sentences, of which one would like to have preserved every word. "He" (the German) must be having a bad time; why doesn't he see it? We are drawing in on him from all sides; the Austrians will be no use to him; they are nervous and fire at everything, and seldom hit anything; our people only fire to hit.
In a stone cellar with nothing above it, for the whole village was destroyed soon after it was taken, there are gathered the officers of the battalion. The commander, Lukich, is a genial, communicative man who has knit them all together into a little family; indeed, two of the captains are cousins, and the commander has living with him in his mud hut his nephew, a boy of fifteen, who has been allowed to spend his holidays at the war. Not many of those who set out for the war are left now, and that alone makes a closer brotherhood among the rest. They all smile at Lukich's inventiveness and resource, and are all very fond of him.
Lukich gives elaborate instructions for the night's scouting. Pavel Pavlovich, whose turn it is to go, is a splendidly built man with a great head and big brown eyes: "an ideal fighting man," I am told. He is down with a very bad chill, and reports himself quite unfit. Lukich says that he always has to send out sick scouts. "Don't laugh," says Pavel Pavlovich; "I can hardly keep on my legs." However, without further words he gets ready for his night's job. Half-an-hour later he appears in a long white dressing-gown which hangs carelessly over his huge figure, and with him are thirty picked men—for there are always plenty of volunteers for this work—drawn from different companies. All are clad in white, and when first I stumbled on them in the darkness, though I knew they were there, I took them for a row of posts. Lukich made them a little speech, telling them that some one from their English allies had come to see them and that he hoped they would do well.
Their job was to crawl some one thousand yards, to overhear the conversation in the enemy's trenches and judge of the numbers there, to catch a sentry if possible, to cut through some of the wire entanglements, and, above all, to throw some hand-grenades into the Austrian lines. Each man had a definite task; the bomb-throwers were trained men, and several carried huge scissors for cutting wire. As the Austrians sometimes pass an electric current through the wires, these scissors often have wooden handles.