A visitor to the scene of the desperately sustained struggle for the line of the river San points to the melancholy fact that at one point alone where 200,000 men were locked in a death-grapple for upwards of a week (numbers larger than those engaged either at Gettysburg or Waterloo), the name of the wretched little village would not be known to one in a thousand who looked at the map. Yet the reaper Death found fearful employment during those seven or eight days of pitiless slaughter. “At the summit of and just beyond the crest of the hill is the line where stood the Austrian artillery in their efforts to encounter the hell of heavier fire let loose on them by the Russians. The heaps of brass cartridge-cases show how stubbornly the Austrians contested this ridge. Here and there one sees where a big shell landed true. Splinters and bits of wheels scattered in every direction spell the end of this particular gun-crew. Behind this the Austrians seem to have had a cavalry support of some kind, for in a little hollow just over the ridge we come upon a mass of cavalry accoutrements. The large metal helmets of the Austrian dragoons are scattered everywhere, some of them twisted by bits of shell, others punctured with the single bullet-hole which, coupled with the deep brown stain on the inside, tells what happened to the unfortunate who owned it. We find one on which the name and regiment of the wearer is written, a name no doubt that when published as among the dead will bring misery and suffering to some home in the beautiful valley of the Danube, where even now perhaps the wife or mother anxiously awaits news of this very one who sleeps now in a great trench with hundreds of his fellows.”
It is a relief to turn momentarily from such scenes of horror and bloodshed to the humorous aspect—grimly so, perhaps, but none the less humorous—of war. Thus, for example, there is something of a Gilbertian touch about the “interchange” of the Kaiser’s hunting-box and the Tsar’s hunting-box (the latter’s at Spala, near Tomascheff) in the two Polands. The Russians appear to have seized upon the one and the Germans upon the other, and to have thoroughly despoiled them. Still on the grimly humorous side (“the hostilities in Poland are taking on a very embittered and cruel form,” he says), the Daily Telegraph’s Petrograd correspondent tells of the form of receipt(!) that the German troops would leave with the ignorant peasantry after commandeering all sorts of supplies. Two such written acknowledgments which were shown to the correspondent ran: “I am much obliged to you for your beautiful horse,” and “Whoever presents this at the end of the war will be hanged.”
This same Telegraph correspondent states in definite terms of the Russians that “looting and licence are unknown, and everything taken is paid for in hard cash. They are welcomed as deliverers by the Polish peasantry, who bring them refreshments and cigarettes, for which payment is refused.”
A hundred German cavalry entered the town of Turburg on September 29. They quartered themselves at the mansion of a prominent member of the Duma, M. Vasilchikoff, ill-treated his servants, and demanded 250 buckets(!) of brandy, beer, and schnapps. They then cleared the little town of all food and clothing, leaving slips of paper on which was scribbled, “The Russian Government will pay.” They wound up by carrying off a priest and the local Rabbi as hostages of war.
Another hundred German cavalry encountered twenty Russian cavalry, who incontinently fled with the loss of one wounded. As he lay on the ground, still able to use his carbine, he took careful aim and picked off three of the pursuing Prussians. The peasantry would have carried the wounded trooper to safety, but he resolutely replied, “No! I will never hide from Germans.” For this he paid with his life, for the enemy, who had abandoned their pursuit of his comrades because his good shooting had made them suspect an ambush, returned and promptly shot him dead. It is only fair to add that on an occasion when the Russians discovered that a number of peasants had been hanged by the enemy, they retaliated by hanging from trees three German officers and nineteen men. Of such acts of savage reprisal there are doubtless numerous unrecorded instances.
An “iron vineyard” is the slightly decorative description applied to a German position during the holocaust of Russian Poland, by a Russian War Correspondent who was not permitted to indicate the precise spot from which he was writing. He adds the grisly comment that the “vintage” of that iron vineyard was the blood of 6,000 German soldiers. The surrounding forests had been razed as if shaved by a gigantic razor. A large village that had occupied the scene of this unnamed battle had totally disappeared, as having proved an obstacle to the Russian advance and a support for the German retreat.
One of the episodes inseparable from a warfare in which members of the Royal Families of every one of the great Powers are playing a soldier’s part, took place on October 11. On that day Prince Olaf, son of the Grand-duke Constantine, received a wound in the leg “in a successful skirmish with a German patrol.” At first it was regarded hopefully as being but a trifling injury, but an operation became necessary and the young Prince died, pneumonia doubtless supervening. He passed away in the presence of the Grand-duke and Duchess and of his brother, Prince Igor. It is one of the bitterest ironies of war that this gifted young man’s leanings and aspirations had always been rather literary and musical than martial. At the Lyceum, which he left only in 1913, he enjoyed such a brilliant career as a student that his tutors did their best to dissuade him from overtaxing a constitution never too robust. He published an essay on the works of Pushkin which was acclaimed as a model of discerning and discriminating criticism. Prince Olaf’s natural inclinations were of the simplest kind, and he hated the rigidity of etiquette.
An author much admired by him, the Polish novelist Sinciewitz, took service with the Tsar’s Army. Apparently he was wounded and taken prisoner, though there seems still some confusion as to what really happened to him.
Had the Austrians in Galicia fared better or worse than their opponents believed they would at the outset? A difficult question to answer off-hand, but at all events the Russians had the best of reasons to be thoroughly delighted with the progress of the Tsar’s arms in three months of war, in the earlier stages of which the plucky Serbian resistance to the legions of Francis Joseph had proved of considerable utility. Says a well-informed critic of the Russo-Austrian campaign:
“Success at the outset of a campaign has an influence of the highest value upon the armies engaged. In this case the Russians had the prospect of securing fairly easy victories at the outset, and, at the very least, the certainty of being able to march far into hostile territory without having any very serious obstacle to overcome. It was not likely that the German armies, weakened as they were by the very conditions under which the war opened, would attempt any stubborn resistance in advance of the line of fortresses along the lower Vistula and at the extremities of the Frisches Haff. And it was quite certain that the Austrians would not make any prolonged resistance in Eastern Galicia. Their first serious stand would not be met until the neighbourhood of Przemysl was reached.”