Nothing was more discouraging than this hopeless inferiority in long range guns. Assaulting troops, no matter how spirited and courageous, cannot hold their advance in the teeth of a bombardment that scatters emplacements like chaff before the wind and shocks men into a state of insensibility. The stunning effect of massive, high explosives is more important than the casualties caused by direct hits. Nerves are palsied, then fly from control under unremitting blasting salvos. Fortifications are blown to atoms, and debris thrown up like vomit in a deafening belch, a bolt of hottest hell; while the earth quivers like a frightened living thing. And if modern warfare has demonstrated one thing more than any other, it is the prime necessity of artillery support, especially during the attack. After three years' experience, the French and British Staffs laid down the rule that for an offensive to be made with any hope of success, there should be a field gun covering every ten yards of the objective and a heavy gun every thirty yards.
The British provided fifty-six heavy guns and howitzers per division, and of these twenty-nine were six inch and over.
The French had fifty-eight guns in each division, forty-six of which were six inch and over.
These divisions were made up of two brigades of two regiments each, a total of fourteen thousand four hundred men.
The Americans in France had two regiments of 75 mm. guns and one regiment of 155 mm. guns for every combat division on the first lines. At Archangel there was not a six inch gun in the Allied Command until the late days of spring when the Americans were evacuated. There was only the Russian naval howitzer on the armored train. And the only other heavy guns were two Four Point Five howitzers of the 41st Royal Field Artillery.
Besides this fatal lack of artillery, the Allied Command was miserably supplied with other armament. In the early days we had only a few machine guns and these were Vickers, with water cooled system, that became frozen and would not function in the severe cold. We had few Trench Mortars and no rifle grenades or hand grenades. But most disheartening of all were the Russian rifles issued to the infantry. They were manufactured in our country by the million for use of the Imperial Army; long, awkward pieces, with flimsy, bolt mechanism, that frequently jammed.
These weapons had never been targeted by the Americans, and their sighting systems were calculated in Russian paces instead of yards. They had a low velocity and were thoroughly unsatisfactory. The unreliability of the rifle, prime arm of the infantry, was an important factor in the lowering of Allied morale.
2. Underestimation of the enemy forces and his military capacity.
The Allied military authorities looked with contempt upon the Bolshevik movement, and viewed it as simply a sporadic outburst of outlawry that would pass like all disorganized brigandry.
The facts were that this war was waged against the government of the Russian people. The de facto authority was in the hands of Lenine and Trotsky at Moscow. The Omsk group was distinctly an expression of the minority and the ancient Imperialists who were obstinately impervious to the new Russia flaming in revolution against age long abuses and tyrannies of the old order that could never be returned. The Omsk group never quickened any popular response. It lacked essential authority. The spectacular success of Admiral Kolchak before Perm was not followed through, and his government waned while the Bolsheviks grew in strength every day.