And the worst of it was that for years previous to the outbreak of the war the two principal races inhabiting Poland—the Poles and the Jews—had been fighting each other, with the Russian sympathies strongly on the side of the Poles. Now when war overtook this unfortunate country, both the Poles and the Russians threw themselves like hungry wolves upon the unfortunate Jews. They were driven out from their villages, often the entire population irrespective of age, sex, or condition. They were made to wander from one place to another, like so many herds of cattle, except that no herd of cattle had ever been treated as cruelly as these poor helpless droves of women, children, and old and sick people whose men folk were fighting for their country while this very country did its best to kill their families. This is not the place or time to go into this horrible catastrophe, beyond stating this fact: In July, 1914, Poland had been inhabited by millions of hard-toiling people who, though neither overly blessed with wealth or opportunities, nor enjoying conditions of life that were particularly conducive to happiness, were at least able to found and raise families and to sustain an existence which was bearable chiefly because of the hope for something better to come. Six months later—January, 1915—these millions had stopped toil, for their fields were devastated, their cattle had been killed or driven away, their houses had been burned down. Hundreds of thousands of them had been forced to flee to the interior, other hundreds of thousands had died, some through want and illness, some during the fighting around their homes, some through murder and worse. Families had been broken up and others wiped out entirely, and thousands of mothers had been separated from their children, perhaps never to see them again. Even if, in isolated cases, destruction, and even death, was merited or made inevitably necessary, in the greatest number of cases the suffering was as undeserved as it was severe.
From a military point of view the net result of the fighting during the first six months of the war most decidedly was in favor of the Germans. February, 1915, found them conquerors along the entire extent of the Russo-German front, and the Russians those who had been conquered. In spite of the successful campaigns which German arms had won, however, they had fallen far short of what they had apparently set out to do, and in that wider sense their successes came dangerously near to being failures. But even at that they were still ahead of their adversaries; for though they had not gained the two objects for which they had striven most furiously—the possession of Warsaw and the final destruction of the offensive power of the Russian armies—they held large and important sections of the Russian Empire, they had driven the Russians completely out of Germany and forced them to do their further fighting on their own ground, and they had reduced the effectiveness of their armies by vast numbers, killing, disabling, or capturing, at a most conservative estimate, at least twice as many men as they themselves had lost.
During the first three weeks of August, 1914, the Russian armies had invaded East Prussia and laid waste a large section of it. Then came the débâcle at Tannenberg, and by the middle of September, Germany was freed of the invader, who had lost tens of thousands in his attempt to force his way into the heart of the German Empire. Not satisfied with these results, the Germans on their part now attempted an invasion of large sections of West Russia, pursuing their defeated foes until they reached the Niemen and its chain of fortresses which they found insurmountable obstacles. It was once more the turn of the Russians, who now not only drove back the invading Germans to the border, but who by the beginning of October, 1914, faced again an invasion of their East Prussian province. However, less than two weeks sufficed this time to clear German soil once more, and by October 15, 1914, the Russians had again been forced back across the border. By this time the German Commander in Chief, Von Hindenburg, had learned the lesson of the Niemen. Instead of battering in vain against this iron line of natural defenses, he threw the majority of his forces against Poland, and especially against its choicest prize—historic Warsaw. October 11, 1914, may be considered the approximate beginning of the first drive against the Polish capital. During about two weeks of fighting the German armies advanced to the very gates of Warsaw, which then seemed to be theirs for the mere taking. But suddenly the Russian bear recovered his self-control, and with renewed vigor and replenished strength he turned once again against the threatening foe. By October 28, 1914, the Germans in North and Central Poland and the Austro-Hungarians in South Poland had to retreat.
November 7, 1914, became the starting date for the third Russian invasion of East Prussia. The Germans now changed their tactics. Instead of meeting the enemy's challenge and attempting to repeat their previous performances of throwing him back and then invading his territory, they restricted themselves, for the time being, to defensive measures in East Prussia, and launched a powerful drive of their own against Russian territory. For the second time Warsaw was made their goal. By this time, to a certain extent at least, the offensive momentum of both sides had been reduced in speed. Where it had taken days in the earlier campaigns to accomplish a given object, it now took weeks. Of course the rigors of the eastern winter which had set in by then played an important part in this slowing-up process, which, however, affected the speed only of the armies, but not the furor of their battling. December 6, 1914, brought the possession of Lodz to the Germans, and on the next day the Russians were taught the same lesson before the Mazurian Lakes that they had taught to the Germans a few months before when they faced the Niemen. East Prussia up to the Lakes was in the hands of Russia, but beyond that impregnable line of lakes and swamps and rivers they could not go.
In the meanwhile the drive against Warsaw was making small progress in spite of the most furious onslaughts. There, too, a series of rivers and swamps—less formidable, it is true, than in East Prussia, but hardly less effective—stemmed the tide of the invaders. For more than two weeks, beginning about December 20 and lasting well into January, the Russians made a most stubborn stand along the Bzura and Rawka line, and successfully, though with terrible losses, kept the Germans from taking Warsaw. However, in order to accomplish this they had to weaken their line at other points and thus bring about the collapse of their drive against Cracow, by means of which they expected to gain from the south the road into Germany which had been denied to them again and again in the north.
The end of January, 1915, found the Germans practically as far in Poland as the beginning of the month. It is true that they had made little progress in four weeks, but it is also true that they had given up none of the ground they had gained. And with the coming of February, 1915, they reduced their offensive activities at that part of the front and turned their attention once more to East Prussia. The second week of February, 1915, brought to the Russians their second great defeat on the shores of the Mazurian Lakes. By February 15 East Prussia again had been cleared of the enemy, and parts of the Russian provinces between the border and the Niemen were in the hands of the Germans who apparently had made up their minds that they were not going to permit any further Russian invasions of East Prussia if they could help it. They now held a quarter of Poland and a small part of West Russia, while the Russians held nothing except a long battle front, stretching almost from the Baltic to the Carpathian Mountains and threatened everywhere by an enemy who daily seemed to grow stronger rather than weaker.[Back to Contents]
PART VIII—TURKEY AND THE DARDANELLES
CHAPTER LXXXII
FIRST MOVES OF TURKEY
The entrance of Turkey, the seat of the ancient Ottoman Empire, into the Great War in 1914, with its vast dominions in Europe, Asia, and Africa, created a situation which it was appalling to contemplate. The flames of world war were now creeping not only into the Holy Land, the birthplace of Christian civilization, but to the very gates of Mecca, the "holiest city of Islam." Would the terrible economic struggle in Europe, the war for world trade, now develop into a holy war that would bring the religious faiths of the earth on to a great decisive battle ground?