CHAPTER III
THE EVENTS PRECEDING ACTUAL HOSTILITIES
Why were there no Russian soldiers in the neighbourhood of Kalisz in the beginning of August, 1914? The answer is simple.
Kalisz is an open town, with a single line running to Warsaw, 140 miles, via Lodz and Lowicz. The nearest branch lines are the Warsaw-Tchenstochow on the south, with nearest point to Kalisz about ninety English miles away; and the Warsaw-Plock line to Thorn, with nearest point to Kalisz, also about ninety miles. So far as transport was concerned, the Russians were not in it at all.
For on the German side of the frontier there is a complete and very elaborate network of railways, so that the Teuton could mass 1,000,000 men on Kalisz long before the Muscovite could transport 100,000 there. This is what harassed the last-named Power—want of railways. Wherever they tried to concentrate, the Germans were before them, and in overwhelming numbers. It is her elaborate railway system that has enabled Germany to get the utmost from her armies—to get the work of two or three corps, and in some cases even more, out of one. Her railways have practically doubled her armed force—this at least.
The Germans are masters of the art of war, and have been so for fifty years; the Russians are hard fighters, but they are not scientific soldiers. The Germans have consolidated and perfected everything that relates to armed science; the Russians have trusted too much to their weight of numbers. Yet the Bear, though a slow and dull animal, has devilish long and strong claws; and, like another animal engaged in this contest for the existence of the world, has the habit so provoking to his enemies, of never knowing when he is beaten.
The reason, then, that there was no sufficient force, if any force at all, near Kalisz when the treacherous Teuton suddenly sprung hostilities upon her on the 1st August, 1914, was that the Muscovite, through apathy inherited from his Asiatic ancestors, combined with a paucity of money, had no railways, while his opponent had one of the most complete systems of locomotive transport for men and material that is to be found in the whole world.
It was its isolated situation and great distance from a base that made Kalisz the weak point on the Russian frontier, and the German Eagle saw this and swooped on it as a bird of prey on a damless lamb.
But the Russian base, if distant, was strong, and the force and material at Warsaw was powerful and great, and was in ponderous motion long before the Vulture had picked clean the bones of her first victim. Russia has no great fortress on the German frontier. This is another serious fault of defence. Railways and fortresses are the need of the Northern Power to enable her to control effectually the bird of ill omen which has so long hovered over Central Europe, unless that bird is to die for all time, which is what should be, and which is what will be, unless the folly of the nations is incurable.