Side by side with this may be read the testimony of Professor Pares of the Liverpool University, whose intimate knowledge of the country and its language admirably qualified him for the work of a correspondent with the Tsar’s headquarters. Dr. Pares is just as emphatic as the correspondent just quoted on the subject of the enthusiasm and unanimity pervading all classes of the community with whom he came in contact. He pays a passing tribute to the high efficiency of Russia’s hospital arrangements, to the fine and self-sacrificing labours of all from the highest to the lowest, and to the serenity and confidence manifested on every side. He saw the Grand-duchess Olga, sister of the Emperor, working as a Sister of Mercy, “under all the ordinary discipline and conditions,” and heard how hard she had had to labour after the early battles of the campaign, when hospitals designed for the accommodation of 200 patients were compelled to accommodate at least 300 each. “One feels it is a great wave rolling forward with one spirit driving it.”
Dr. Pares was present when the Tsar in person visited Vilna, riding through the streets quite unguarded. Vilna has for the most part a Polish population, and from all sides the Tsar was greeted with an enthusiasm that must have deeply touched and moved him. In the hospitals the Professor conversed with many of the wounded belonging to both sides. On the part of most of the Austrians, he says, he found a general disposition to believe that they had been thoroughly overmatched on the battle-field. A Russian lad of nineteen or twenty, who had been sent back home, not on account of wounds but because of physical overstrain, remarked almost with tears, “They are firing on my brother and not on me. That is not right—I ought to be where they all are.”
A story worth interpolating here on account of its military significance has reference to a rumour that the German Emperor had addressed a letter to the Dowager-Empress of Russia, calling her “cousin,” in an attempt to induce her to use her good offices with the Tsar in order to bring about peace. This missive eventually reached the headquarters of the Grand-duke Nicholas, who is said to have returned it to the Tsar with the laconic comment: “If you do, our armies will mutiny, and there will be a revolution in all the Russias.” It is only a soldier’s story, but it explains, especially in the final sentence, why Russia has beaten the Austrian, German, and Austro-German armies successively.
Nothing could be more noteworthy as emphasising the Russian record of initial difficulties triumphed over than the preponderance of Austro-German railway power in the vast war-area. General Kuropatkin, the Tsar’s Commander-in-Chief in the war with Japan, had as far back as 1900 called attention to this marked superiority in the Central Powers’ means of transport. Doubtless upon his initiative, the Russian railway lines along the Polish frontier were improved to a certain extent. But, as Austria and Germany were correspondingly busy, doubtless much of what Kuropatkin had written more than a dozen years before remained true in 1914—indeed, the celerity with which the enemy were enabled to rush masses of troops to all their frontiers must have been one of the earliest things to impress any student of the struggle. This is how Kuropatkin phrased his plea for a good deal more energy in the matters of railway development:
“By the expenditure of vast sums of money, Germany has made ready in the most comprehensive sense to march rapidly across our borders with an army of one million men. She has seventeen lines of railway (twenty-three tracks) leading to our frontiers, which would enable her to send to the front more than five hundred troop-trains daily. She can concentrate the greater part of her armed forces on our frontier within a few days of the declaration of war; while, apart from this question of speedy mobilisation, she has at her command far greater technical resources, such as light railways, artillery, ordnance, and engineering stores, particularly for telegraphs, mobile siege parks, etc., than we have. She has also made most careful preparation for a determined defence of her own border provinces, especially those of Eastern Prussia.
“The first-class fortresses of Thorn, Königsberg, and Posen are improved yearly, entrenched camps are built at the most important junctions, and material lies ready stacked for the rapid semi-permanent fortification of field positions. The crossing-places on the Vistula have been rapidly placed in a state of defence, as have also the various towns and large villages. The whole population, indeed, is making ready for a national struggle.
“In the matter of railway development the Austrians have also left us far behind. While they, by means of eight lines of rail (ten tracks), can run two hundred and sixty trains up to the frontier every twenty-four hours, we can only convey troops up to the same point on four lines. As any of their troops on the frontier would be in advance of the Carpathians, this range was formerly looked upon as an obstacle to retirement, and to communication between Galicia and the rest of Austria. But in the last ten years it has been pierced by five lines of railway, and preparations have been made to lay three more.”
It will be perceived that General Kuropatkin cherished no optimistic illusions as to the ultimate aims and aspirations of Germany, neither did he believe that the shock could be much longer delayed, having regard to the immense burden of armaments.