So the tragic year came to an end. The Russians had passed through their fiery ordeal, and had emerged with a new courage and a new hope. On the map the Germans looked like victors, but actually they had failed. The Russian armies were intact; the Germans could not push on in the wilderness, and at the close of the year they lay waiting the uncertain future amidst dismal swamps and meres.
CHAPTER XLI.
MIDSUMMER ON THE WESTERN FRONT.
Three days after the Battle of Festubert[61] came to an end, another European nation flung itself into the welter of strife. Italy declared war on Austria. The story of why she did so, and how she fared during the year 1915, will be told in our next volume. We may safely postpone an account of the Italian campaign, for, like our great adventure in Gallipoli, it was a side-show. Nevertheless it employed no less than twelve Austrian army corps, and thus largely reduced the forces which the enemy could employ in France and Flanders and the Eastern theatre of war.
Italy set herself the very difficult task of conquering the Trentino,[62] and in order to do so had to force the barrier of the Alps. For six months she fought with great firmness and much sacrifice amidst lofty snowclad mountains, and battered unceasingly at the great Austrian fortresses established amongst them. By the end of the year her soldiers had occupied a rich and well-populated portion of what the Italians call "Unredeemed Italy," had secured their northern flank, and had firmly established themselves along the line of the river Isonzo.[63] They had also captured 30,000 of the enemy, 5 guns, 65 Maxim guns, thousands of rifles, and a great deal of other war material, and were in a favourable position for an advance in the spring. Should this advance be successful, Austria would lose her two great seaports, and, except along the coast of Dalmatia,[64] would be cut off from the sea.
July was but nine days old when good news arrived from South Africa. The Union forces under General Botha[65] had conquered German South-West Africa,[66] and the colony had passed into British hands. The story can wait until our next volume, in which we shall survey the progress of our arms not only in "German South-West," as South Africans call it, but in the Cameroons and in German East Africa as well. From the first the Germans knew that their overseas possessions were doomed. Powerless on the ocean, they were utterly cut off from their colonies. Their overseas forces were fighting, as it were, in water-tight compartments, without hope of reinforcements or supplies from the Fatherland.
We will now return to the Western front, and learn something of what happened in North France between the close of the Battle of Festubert and the great British attack of September. At home people believed that a big push would be made in the West during the summer months; but to their astonishment the Allies did not attempt an offensive on a large scale. The Russians, as you know, were then passing through a fiery ordeal; and their newspapers constantly asked why the Allies did not attack the enemy, and draw off from Russia some of the fury of the German onset. The fact was that the Allies were not in a condition to assault the German lines with any great hope of success. Though they now outnumbered the Germans on the Western front, they were still deficient in machine guns, heavy artillery, and stores of shell. The battles of Festubert and of the Artois had taught them that to hurl infantry against trenches which had not been previously wrecked by artillery fire was simply to send men to their death. They had also learned that piercing the enemy's line on a narrow front served no useful purpose. Driving tiny wedges into the German position was not only costly, but a waste of time. A big rent must be made, in order that cavalry might be launched through the breach against the lines of communication. For such an operation they had not as yet sufficient artillery, so they decided—