FOOTNOTE:
[1] Sokol is a Slav word for “a hawk,” or “a falcon.”
CHAPTER II
THE AUSTRIAN DEBACLE: FROM LEMBERG TO JAROSLAV
We shall now proceed to follow the fortunes of the Russo-Austrian campaign immediately after the capture of Lemberg in the early days of September. Such a substantial success naturally put the Russians in good heart. Rewards were judiciously distributed on the recommendation of the Grand-duke Nicholas, Generals Russky and Brussiloff each receiving that most coveted of decorations, the Cross of St. George. It was likewise officially notified that between August 17 and September 3, a period of rather more than a fortnight, the Tsar’s forces operating against the Austrian host of General von Auffenburg had advanced no less a distance than 220 versts, or roughly 150 miles. During the same period there had been practically no lull in the fighting, which for sheer sustained fury would appear to have been little less sanguinary than that between the German and Franco-British armies in the West.
It was about this time that the Daily Telegraph, in an editorial setting forth the general situation of affairs after some five weeks of war, called attention to the influence being slowly but none the less surely exercised by the Russian field-armies. After pointing out that the crisis of a great war had worked wonders in the way of a more perfect understanding between the Russian and British peoples, the writer went on to say:
“The extraordinary prowess of the Russian Army has already begun to draw the ordinary Briton out of his absorption in the military situation in France, and to keep him in mind of the fact that the arena of this war is not any one country, but the Continent of Europe. He realises more fully than before that every blow struck at the Central European Powers on their eastern frontier is, in the long run, as telling as any reverse inflicted upon them in the western theatre of war. But he ought to realise it more fully yet. The position is that the long series of Russian successes, culminating in the Austrian overthrow at Lemberg and Halicz, has cast the whole Austro-German war-plan into confusion, which may at this moment be affecting the German operations in France in the most serious degree. The main Austrian Army in Southern Poland is now being attacked with unsparing energy. Its situation is rendered desperate by the destruction of the Second Army at Lemberg, which lays open its right wing to assault by the victorious troops of General Russky. Should the great battle now raging end in another such defeat as has already been inflicted there will be nothing remaining in the field that can stay the Russian march to Berlin. The rapidity of the Russian mobilisation and of the movement of the Russian forces to the attack is one of the several absolutely vital things with which Germany did not reckon. The brilliancy of their performance in the field has surprised the enemy no less. Deeply involved as Germany is in the French campaign, dares she provide the heavy and immediate reinforcements for which her Ally is clamouring? Dares she, on the other hand, refuse them? That is, put simply, the fatal dilemma on the horns of which the monstrous ambition of German militarism is like to perish.”
If this last pertinent question was not destined to be immediately answered, the military situation now began to be one of increasing menace for the Austro-German Allies. In war one is bound to get a vast amount of “claim and counterclaim” on the part of the contending nations. On September 6 the Tsar’s Government took the step of publicly characterising as “wilful falsehoods” certain Austrian and German official reports of recent successes. It was claimed, in disproof of these statements, that in the region between the rivers Vistula and Bug the Russians had, up to and including September 4, captured many Austrian guns, 150 officers, and 12,000 men. It was added that, “having broken the Austrian resistance,” the Tsar’s army was already continuing its victorious advance southwards from Lemberg.