Day by Day with the Russian Army, 1914-15

by Bernard Pares

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.