The German Emperor’s beautiful hunting-box at Rominten near Insterburg, where he had been wont to sojourn every autumn for the shooting of elk and other big game, fell into Russian hands. The following humorous extract is from a letter written home by one of the officers who had the good fortune to be temporarily quartered amid such luxurious surroundings:
“After a series of terrible battles, we are reposing on William’s magnificent estate. Undreamt-of beauty is all round us. The place is splendidly equipped, so that we have at our disposal everything we could wish for, and we are riding his celebrated horses, and enjoying delicious dinners prepared by his man cook. Especially beautiful is the park, with its glorious shady avenues. It swarms with rare animals, and birds are flying free everywhere. By the way, our soldiers have caught a William parrot in the park. It speaks excellent German, but our men are teaching it their own language, and it is learning to address its Imperial master with compliments I should blush to repeat in company.”
Another isolated but interesting incident of this Prusso-Polish frontier fighting was the destruction near Mlawa, on September 5, of the Zeppelin airship Z 5,—the second Zeppelin known to have been brought down in this region since the commencement of hostilities. The Z 5 had been cruising in the neighbourhood for several days, and it was not until the date mentioned that her movements were observed to be growing very irregular and uncertain. She tried hard to shape a course for her own frontier, but finally collapsed in some fields. It was then found that her envelope had been literally riddled by Russian bullets. Her crew managed, however, to blow up the airship, whose commander, severely wounded, requested to be placed out of sight behind a haystack, so that he “might not witness the end of his dear Zeppelin.”
A possible explanation of Von Hindenburg’s advance to the Niemen was that the German General Staff hoped by a serious threat in this direction to lead the Russians to diminish the pressure upon Galicia in order to reinforce their right. At the time of the operations Colonel Shumsky, perhaps the best-known military writer in Russia, pointed this out, and at the same time suggested that the menace from East Prussia could have no serious result. “Will the Germans,” he asked, “compel us to abandon the operations in the Carpathians and throw our forces across to the Niemen, or shall we compel the Germans to restrict their activity on the Niemen, and fling themselves into Cracow and Galicia to save Austro-Hungary? The advance of the Germans from East Prussia cannot have any decisive object. A lightning-like stroke could only be delivered if the Germans were finished with France and could move all their forces against us.”
It appears that something was done to draw reinforcements from the western theatre of war for the German armies on the Polish frontier. Reserve and Landwehr troops organised since the declaration of war were moved in the same direction, and, according to Russian estimates of a subsequent date, by the end of September the Germans had concentrated twelve army corps of about 400,000 men on the frontier in the centre about Thorn and Posen. It appears, however, that at the time the Russian Staff did not realise that this formidable concentration was in progress, and thought that their opponents were putting forth their chief efforts on the two flanks of the long curved line northwards—for the struggle in East Prussia, and southwards for the defensive campaign in Galicia.
The Germans, however, were preparing for a serious stroke in the centre of the Polish theatre of war, and, despite his failure on the Niemen, the chief command of this great effort was entrusted to General Hindenburg. The fame he had acquired by his expulsion of the enemy from East Prussia had only been slightly overclouded by the defeat on the Niemen, and it was thought that the German generals in East Prussia could be safely left to defend against Rennenkampf’s farther advance through the wilderness of forest, marsh, and lake which forms the natural barrier along the frontier of the province.
The German plan was to abandon the mere passive defence of their frontiers, assume the offensive, and strike a blow directly against Warsaw and the group of fortresses beyond the Vistula that form the citadel of the Russian power in Poland. The German armies were to advance from the borders of the provinces of Posen and Silesia in a converging march upon Warsaw. The left column from Thorn was to advance along the south bank of the great bend of the Vistula which runs north-westward from Novo Gorgievsk by Plock. The central column from the Posen frontier was to march on Lowicz and the great factory town of Lodz—after Warsaw the largest place in Poland—the third column, which had already occupied Czenstochowa, just inside the Russian frontier towards Silesia, was to protect the flank of the advance and march on the Vistula in the direction of Ivangorod. A fourth column was to march on Kielce, forming the link with an Austrian advance through Northern Galicia towards the river San, which was intended to reoccupy Jaroslav and raise the siege of Przemysl.
The country through which the line of advance lay was the undulating Polish plain, a district with many clumps and belts of forest, and almost destitute of good roads. Once the weather broke, at the end of autumn, much of the ground would be reduced to a marshy condition that would make it impassable until the first frost of winter hardened it again. The German Staff hoped to carry through the campaign while the region was everywhere practicable, and, even if Warsaw were not captured, to make the Vistula their line of defence, where, having secured the railways behind them, they might hope to hold their own on a front shorter by many hundred miles than the long curving frontier of their own territory.
It was expected that the first movement into the Polish plain would have the result of forcing the enemy not only to abandon the advance already begun towards Cracow, but to evacuate a considerable part of the ground they had overrun in Galicia, and at the same time to withdraw some of their forces from the East Prussian border. German reports went to show that the enemy had no large forces in the country between the middle Vistula and the Posen-Thorn frontier. The first stage of the German advance would, therefore, not be likely to meet with any very serious opposition.
Why, it may be asked, had not the Russian military authorities taken fuller precautions, in the earlier days of the war, for safeguarding the Polish territory from invasion and spoliation? Why had not the immensely long and valuable line of the river Vistula in particular been occupied in heavy force at the time of the mobilisation in August? A semi-official statement of mid-October replied definitely to these criticisms. It was pointed out that the consideration was a purely military one. It was a fundamental rule of warfare to sacrifice everything of lesser importance to the main issue. Thus, the first “impudent invasion” from the German side had demanded a large transfer of troops. Next the Austrian concentration in Galicia, and their attack in the Lublin district, had needed a big force in that quarter. Thirdly, the invasion by way of Eastern Prussia had required substantial means to deal with and crush it. “This temporary victimisation of the Vistula district is the outcome of a praiseworthy decision of our strategy. Now the situation is different, and strategic and other aims coincide upon the Vistula until the enemy has been finally beaten.”