Chapter VIII: Part III: The First Operations (3)

It is, therefore, necessary for the reader to appreciate at this terminal date, September 2-4, the moral strength of the enemy, and to comprehend in what mood of confidence the Germans now lay. With this object we must add to the story of the advance on Paris the subsidiary events which had accompanied that great sweep into the West. We must turn to the "holding up of Russia" upon the East by the Austrian forces, and see how the partial failure of this effort (news of which was just reaching the Western armies) was quite eclipsed by the splendid tidings of Tannenberg. We must see with German eyes the secondary but brilliant victory in front of Metz; we must stand in their shoes to feel as they did the clearing of Alsace, and to comprehend with what contempt they must have watched the false picture of the war which the governments and the press of the Allies, particularly in Britain, presented to public opinion in their doomed territories; and we must, in general, grasp the now apocalyptic temper of the nervous, over-strained industrialized population which is the tissue of modern Germany.

Not until we have a good general aspect of that mood can we understand either the war at this turning-point in its fortunes, or the future developments which will be traced in the succeeding volumes of this series.

I will, therefore, now turn to the three main elements productive of that mood in their historical order: the Battle of Metz, the Austrian operations against Russia, and, lastly, the great victory of Tannenberg in East Prussia, before concluding this volume with a summary of the whole situation in those first days of September, just before the tide turned.

THE BATTLE OF METZ.

The Battle of Metz, though quite subsidiary to the general operations of the war, and upon a scale which later operations have dwarfed, will be mentioned with special emphasis in any just account of the great war on account of its moral significance.

It took place before the main shock of the armies; it had no decisive effect upon the future of the campaign; but it was of the very highest weight, informing the German mind, and leading it into that attitude of violent exaltation on which I shall later insist in these pages, and which largely determined all the first months of the war, with their enormous consequences for the future. For the action in front of Metz was the first pitched battle fought in Western Europe during our generation, and to an unexpected degree it fulfilled in its narrow area all the dreams upon which military Germany had been nourished for forty years. It thrilled the whole nation with the news, at the very outset of hostilities, of a sharp and glorious victory; it seemed a presage of far more to come. The Battle of Metz was the limited foundation upon which was rapidly erected that triumphant mood that lasted long after the tide had turned, and that matured, when bad blundering had lost the victory in the West, into the unsoldierly, muddled hope that could fail to win, and yet somehow not lose, a campaign.

We have seen that the disposition of the French armies at the moment when the shock was being delivered through Belgium involved along the frontiers of Alsace-Lorraine the presence of considerable forces. These, once the operative corner had taken the shock, formed part of the mass of manoeuvre, and were destined in large part to swing up in aid of the men retreating from the Sambre.

But in the very first days of the war, before the main blow had fallen, and when the French General Staff were still in doubt as to precisely where the blow _would_ fall, considerable bodies had been operating in Alsace and over the Lorraine frontier. The whole range of the Vosges was carried in the second week after the British declaration of war--that is, between 10th August and 15th August. Mulhouse was occupied; upon Monday, the 17th of August, Saarburg, the most important railway junction between Strassburg and Metz, was in French hands. Up to that date, though such comparatively small forces were involved, the French had possessed a very decisive numerical superiority. It was not destined to last, for there was moving down from the north the now mobilized strength of Germany in this region; and a blow struck against the French left, with no less than four army corps, was speedily to decide the issue upon this subsidiary front.

This great force was based upon Metz, from which fortress the action will presumably take its name in history. It stretched upon the 20th of August from the north of Pont-a-Mousson to beyond Chateau Salins. Before this overwhelming advance the French left rapidly retired. It did not retire quickly enough, and one portion of the French force--it is believed the 15th Division (that is, the first division of the 15th Army Corps)--failed in its task of supporting the shock.

Details of the action are wholly lacking. We depend even for what may be said at this date upon little more than rumour. The Germans claimed a capture of ten batteries and of the equivalent of as many battalions, and many colours. Upon the 21st the whole French left fell back, carrying with them as a necessary consequence the centre in the Vosges Mountains and the right upon the plains of Alsace. So rapid was the retreat that upon the 22nd of August the Bavarians were at Luneville, and marching on Nancy; the extreme right of the German line had come within range of the forts north of Toul; and in those same hours during which, on that same Saturday, the 22nd of August, the 5th French Army in the north fell back at the news of Namur and lost the Sambre, those forces on the borders of Alsace-Lorraine had lost all the first advantages of their thrust into the lost provinces, had suffered defeat in the first striking action of the war, and had put Nancy in peril.

Nancy itself was saved. The French counter-offensive was organized on the 23rd of August, at a moment when the German line lay from St. Die northwards and westwards up to positions just in front of Nancy. It was delivered about a week later. That counter-offensive which ultimately saved Nancy belongs to the next volume, for it did not develop its strength until after Sedan Day, and after the end of the great sweep on Paris.

The situation, then, in this field (the very names of which have such great moral effects upon the French and the German minds) was, by the 2nd of September, as follows:--

The French had suffered in the first considerable action of the war a disaster. They had lost their foothold in the annexed provinces. They had put the capital of French Lorraine, Nancy, in instant peril. They had fallen back from the Vosges. They were beginning, with grave doubts of its success, a counter-offensive, to keep the enemy, if possible, from entering Nancy. They had lost thousands of men, many colours, and scores of guns, and all Germany was full of the news.

LEMBERG.

The foundation of the Germanic plan upon the Eastern front at the origin of the war was, as we have said, the holding up of Russia during her necessarily slow mobilization, while the decisive stroke was delivered in the West.

That is the largest view of the matter.

In more detail, we know that the main part of this task was entrusted to the Austro-Hungarian forces. The German forces had indeed entered and occupied the west fringe of Russian Poland, seizing the small industrial belt which lies immediately east of Silesia, and the two towns of Czestochowa and Kalish--the latter, in the very centre of the bend of the frontier, because it was a big railway depot, and, as it were, a gage of invasion; the former, both because the holding of one line demanded it (if Kalish and the industrial portion were held), and because Czestochowa being the principal shrine of the Poles, some strange notion may have passed through the German mind that the presence therein of Prussian officers would cajole the Poles into an action against Russia. If this were part of the motive (and probably it was), it would be a parallel to many another irony in the present campaign and its preliminaries, proceeding from the incapacity of the enemy to gauge the subtler and more profound forces of a civilization to which it is a stranger.

This local German move was almost entirely political. The main task, as I have said, was left to the Austrians farther south; and, proceeding to further detail, we must see the Austrians stretched in a line from near the middle Carpathians past the neighbourhood of Tomasow towards Tarnow, and this line distinctly divided into two armies, a northern and a southern. The two met in an angle in front of the great fortress of Przemysl. The northern, or first, army faced, as will be seen, directly towards the Russian frontier. It was the operative wing; upon its immediate action and on the rapidity of the blow it was to deliver depended the success of this first chapter in the Eastern war.

The southern, or second, army, which stretched all along the Galician plain at the foot of the Carpathians to the town of Halicz, had for its mission the protection of the first army from the south. It was known, or expected, that the first army would advance right into Russian Poland, with but inferior forces in front of it. It was feared, however, that the main Russian concentration to the south-east of it might turn its right flank. The business of the second army was to prevent this. The first army (I), being the operative body, was more homogeneous in race, more picked in material than the second (II), the latter containing many elements from the southern parts of the empire, including perhaps not a few disaffected contingents, such as certain regiments of Italian origin from the Adriatic border.

So far as we can judge, perhaps--and it is a very rough estimate--we may put the whole body which Austria-Hungary was thus moving in the first phase of the war beyond the Carpathians at more than 750,000, but less than 1,000,000 men. Call the mass 800,000, and one would not be far wrong. Of this mass quite a quarter lay in reserve near the mountains behind the first army. The remaining three-quarters, or 600,000 men, were fairly evenly divided between the two groups of the first and of the second army--the first, or northern, one being under the command of Dankl, the second under that of von Auffenberg. Each of these forces was based upon one group of depots of particular importance, the northern operative army (I) relying upon Przemysl, and the southern one (II) upon Lemberg.

It was less than a week after the first German advance bodies had taken the outer forts of Liege when Dankl crossed the frontier, heading, with his centre, towards Krosnik and farther towards Lublin. His troops were in Russian territory upon the Monday evening or the Tuesday, 10th-11th August.

The second army meanwhile stood fulfilling its role of awaiting and containing any Russians that might strike in upon the south. It had advanced no more than watching bodies towards the frontier, such as the 35th Regiment of the Austrian Landwehr, which occupied Sokal, and smaller units cordonned out southward between that town and Brody. Here, at the outset of the large operations that were to follow, it is important for the reader to note that everything depended upon the resisting power of the second, or southern, army.

Observe the problem. Two men, a left-hand man and a right-hand man, go out to engage two other men whom they hope and believe to be unready. The left-hand man is particularly confident of being able to drive back his opponent, but he knows that sooner or later upon his right the second enemy, a stronger man, may come in and disturb his action. He says therefore to his right-hand companion: "Stand firm and engage and contain the energy of your opponent until I have finished with mine. When I have done that, I shall turn round towards you, and between us we will finish the second man."

Seeing the paucity of Russian communications, and the physical necessity under which the Russians were, on account of the position of their depots and centres of mobilization, of first putting the mass of their men on the south, the physical impossibility under which they lay of putting the mass of their men in the north for the moment, the plan was a sound one; _but_ its success depended entirely upon the tenacity of the second Austrian army, which would have to meet large, and might have to meet superior, numbers.

The first army went forward with very little loss and against very little resistance. The Russian forces which were against it, which we may call the first Russian army, were inferior in number, and fell back, though not rapidly, towards the Bug. It relied to some extent in this movement upon the protection afforded by the forts of Zamosc, but it was never in any serious danger until, or unless, things went wrong in the south. The Austrians remained in contact (but no more), turned somewhat eastward in order to keep hold of the foe, when their advance was checked by the news, first of unexpected Russian strength, later of overwhelming Russian advances towards the south. Long before the third week in August, the first Austrian army was compelled to check its advance upon the news reaching it from the second, and its fortunes, in what it had intended to be a successful invasion of Russian Poland, had ended. For the whole meaning of the first Galician campaign turns after the 14th of August upon the great Russian advance in the south.

It was upon that day, August 14, that the Russian force, under General Russky (which we will call the second army), crossed the frontier. Its right occupied Sokal, its centre left moved in line with the right upon von Auffenberg's force directly before it.

The Russian mobilization had proceeded at a greater pace than the enemy had allowed for. The Russian numbers expected in this field appeared in far greater strength than this expectation had allowed for, and it was soon apparent that von Auffenberg's command would have to resist very heavy pressure.

But it would be an error to imagine, as was too hastily concluded in the press of Western Europe at the time, that this pressure upon the front of the second Austrian army, with its dogged day after day fighting and mile by mile advance, was the principal deciding factor in the issue. That deciding factor was, in fact, the appearance upon the right flank of von Auffenberg of yet another Russian army (which we will call the third) under Brussilov. It was the menace of this force, unexpected, or at least unexpected in its great strength, which really determined the issue, though this was again affected by the tardiness of the Austrian retirement. Russky's direct advance upon the front of his enemy extended for a week. It had begun when it had destroyed the frontier posts upon Friday, the 14th. It was continued until the evening of the succeeding Thursday, regularly, slowly, but without intermission. It stood upon the Friday, the 21st--the day on which the first shots were fired at the main Franco-British forces in the West, and the day on which the first shell fell into Charleroi station--not more than one day's cavalry advance from the outer works of Lemberg, but it was just in that week-end that the pressure of Brussilov began to be felt.

This third Russian army had come up from the south-east, supplied by the main Odessa railway through Tarnopol. It was manifestly threatening the right flank of von Auffenberg, and if a guess may be hazarded upon operations on which we have so little detail as yet, and which took place so far from our own standpoint, the error of the Austrian general seems to have consisted in believing that he could maintain himself against this flank attack. If this were the case (and it is the most probable explanation of what followed), the error would have been due to the same cause which affected all Austrian plans in these first days of the war--the mistake as to the rapidity with which Russia would complete her preparations.

The first outpost actions with the enemy, and even the more vigorous struggles when full contact had been established with this third army arrived thus from the south-east, only led the Austrian commander deeper into his mistaken calculation; for upon the Sunday, August 23rd, a local success was achieved which seems to be magnified by the Austrians into a decisive check administered to the enemy. If this was their view, they were soon to be undeceived. In those very days which saw the greatest peril in the West, the last days of August, during which the Franco-British Allies were falling back from the Sambre, pursued by the numbers we have seen upon an earlier page, the third and the second Russian armies effected their junction, the moment of their first joining hands being apparently that same Monday, the 24th of August, during which Sir John French was falling back upon Maubeuge. By the middle of the ensuing week they had already advanced with a very heavy numerical superiority upon the part of the Russians, which threatened to involve the Austrian second army in disaster. If that went, the first army was at the mercy of the victors upon the south, and with every day that passed the chance of collapse increased. Now, too late (so far as we can judge), the second Austrian army disposed itself for retreat, but that retreat was not allowed to proceed in the orderly fashion which its commander had decided, and in the event part of it turned into a rout, all of it developed into a definite disaster for the enemy, and as conspicuous a success for our ally. That this success was not decisive, as this great war must count decisions, the reader will perceive before its description is concluded; but it set a stamp upon the whole of the war in the East, which months of fighting have not removed but rather accentuated. It delivered the province of Galicia into the hands of Russia, it brought that Power to the Carpathians, it ultimately compelled Germany to decide upon very vigorous action of her own immediately in Poland, and it may therefore be justly said to have changed the face of the war.

To this great series of actions, which history will probably know by the name of Lemberg, we will now turn.

When this large Russian movement against the right of von Auffenberg's army, and the considerable Russian concentration there, was clearly discerned, the Austrian force was immediately augmented, and it was not until after the first stages of the conflict we are about to describe that it counted the full numbers mentioned above. But, even so reinforced, it was inadequate for the very heavy task which there fell upon it. It is not to be denied that its heterogeneous composition--that is, its necessary weakness in quality--affected its value; but the principal factor in its ill success was still the superiority of Russian numbers in this field, and this, in its turn, proceeded from a rapidity and completeness in the Russian mobilization for which the enemy had never made provision.

The action of the Russian left against von Auffenberg was twofold: Russky, from the north, was coming across the river Bug, and struck an Austrian entrenched line in front of Lemberg. His numbers permitted him to turn that entrenched line, or, at any rate, to threaten its turning, for Russky's right stretched almost to within cavalry touch of Tomasow. In combination with this movement, and strictly synchronizing with it, Brussilov was advancing from the Sereth River. Both these movements were being carried out full during the last days of August.

It was on Friday, the 28th of that month, that Tarnopol fell, as we have seen, into the hands of the Russians, and that Brussilov was, therefore, able to effect his junction with Russky in the north, and this success was the occasion of the first of those bayonet actions on a large scale wherein the Russians throughout the war continued to show such considerable personal superiority over their opponents.

When Tarnopol had gone, not on account of the loss of their geographical point, but because its occupation rendered the junction of the Russian armies possible, and their advance in one great concave line upon Lemberg, it was no longer doubtful that von Auffenberg had lost this preliminary campaign.

There are moments in war where the historian can fix a turning-point, although the decision itself shall not yet have been reached. Thus, in the campaign of 1793 between the French Revolution and its enemies, Turcoing was not a decisive action, but it was the necessary breeder of the decisive actions that followed. And in the same way Tarnopol, though but a local success, decided Lemberg. In the last days of August all von Auffenberg's right had to fall back rather rapidly upon entrenched positions to the south and east of Lemberg itself, just as his left had had to fall back on similar positions against Russky.

The action for Lemberg itself opened, by a curious coincidence, the campaign which was the anniversary of the first fighting round Sedan, and closed precisely at the moment when the tide of German advance in the West was turned.

Forty-eight hours decided the issue. It was, perhaps, Russky's continual extended threat to envelop the left of the Austrian position and to come upon Auffenberg's communications which was the chief factor in the result; but that result was, after the junction of the two Russian armies, no longer really in doubt. The first heavy assault upon the trenches had taken place upon the Wednesday morning at dawn; before nightfall of Thursday the two extremes of the Austrian line were bent back into such a horseshoe that any further delay would have involved complete disaster. It is true that the central trenches in front--that is, to the east of the great town--still held secure, and had not, indeed, been severely tried. But it remains true that von Auffenberg had committed the serious error of risking defeat in front of such a city. And here some digression upon the nature of this operation may be of service to the reader, because it is one which reoccurs more than once in the first phases of the war, and must, in the nature of things, occur over and over again before the end of it.

Examples of it already appeared in the first six months of the war, in the case of Lille and in the case of Lodz; and it is a necessarily recurrent case in all modern warfare.

A great _modern_ town, particularly if it has valuable industries, is a lure as powerful over the modern commander as was a capital or the seat of any government or even a fortress for those of earlier times. To abandon such a centre is to let fall into the enemy's hands opportunities for provisionment and _machinery_ for his further supply; it is to allow great numbers of one's nationals to pass as hostages into his power; it is nearly always to give up to him the junction of several great railways; it is to permit him to levy heavy indemnities, and even, if he is in such a temper, to destroy in great quantities the accumulated wealth of the past.

On account of all this, it requires a single eye to the larger issues of war, and a sort of fanaticism for pure strategy in a commander before he will consent to fall behind a position of such political and material value, and to let it fall to his opponent.

But, on the other hand, such a position is as bad in strategical value as it is good in material and political value.

If you suffer defeat in front of a great modern town, and have to retreat through it under the blows of the victorious enemy, you are in the worst possible position for conducting that retreat. The streets of the town (but few of which will run parallel to your course and can, therefore, serve as avenues of escape for your army) are so many defiles in which your columns will get hopelessly congested. The operation may be compared to the pouring of too much liquid into a funnel which has too small an orifice. Masses of your transport will remain clogged outside the place; you run the risk of a partial and perhaps of a complete disaster as the enemy presses on.

There is very much more than this. A great town cannot but contain, if you have long occupied it, the material of your organization; you will probably abandon documents which the enemy should not see. You will certainly, in the pressure of such a flight, lose accumulated stores. Again, the transverse streets are so many points of "leakage," into which your congested columns will bulge out and get confused. Again, you will be almost necessarily dealing with the complication of a mass of civilian conditions which should never be allowed to interrupt a military operation.

In general, to fight in front of a great town, when the chances are against you, is as great an error as to fight in front of a marsh with few causeways; so far as mere topography is concerned, it is a greater error still.

Lemberg did not, indeed, fulfil all these conditions. It is very large (not far from a quarter of a million people), with all its suburbs it is nearly two miles in extreme extent, and its older or central part is a confusion of narrow streets; but it is not highly industrialized, and the position of the Austrian armies was such that the retreat could be effected mainly from either side of the built area, particularly as the main enemy pressure had not come in front of the city along the Busk Road, but far to the east and south in the open field. But Lemberg was an exceedingly important railway centre (seven lines converge there), and it contained an immense amount of war munitions. When, therefore, the retreat was tardily undertaken, the fact that the more precipitate retirement had begun in front of the city and not behind it was of considerable effect in what followed.

To some extent von Auffenberg, in spite of the tardiness of his decision to retire, had protected his retreat. The main line of that retreat was established for him, of course, by the main Galician railway, which runs back from Lemberg to Przemysl. He prepared a position some two days' march behind Lemberg, and defended with a rearguard at Grodek the belated withdrawal of his main force. But from the nature of the Russian advance, Russky, upon von Auffenberg's left, perpetually threatened this railway; and Brussilov, upon his right, pressed the rapidly-melting mass of the varied contingents opposed to him through the difficult, hilly, and woody country of the foothills.

It was upon the Friday, September 4th, that the Austrian evacuation of Lemberg was complete, and that the Russian administration was established in the town. Before Monday, the 7th, the Austrian right had already half converted their retirement into a rout, and the great captures of prisoners and of guns had begun. That important arm, the irregular light cavalry of the Russians, notably the great Cossack contingent, found its opportunity, and the captures began upon a scale far exceeding anything which the war had hitherto shown or was to show for at least the next six months. The matter is of more importance, to our judgment of the war, in its quality than in its scale. In the very same week at Tannenberg nearly as many Russians had been eliminated from the Russian forces as Austrians were here eliminated from the Austrian forces. But the point is that, whereas in the Battle of Tannenberg envelopment, with its consequent slaughter of men who cannot escape and its wholesale captures, left the rest of the Russian army with its _moral_ intact, the Austrian losses were the product of a partial dissolution, and affected the whole of their southern army. First and last one-third of it had fallen _as prisoners_ into Russian hands, apart from the enormous number of killed and removed wounded. It could only just be said that that army remained in being upon Monday, the 7th September, with which date this section of my work ends. The other Austrian army to the north, its flank thus uncovered, was compelled to fall back rapidly, though the forces in front of it were small; and the Austro-Hungarian service never fully recovered from this great blow.

TANNENBERG.

The province of East Prussia is of a character peculiar in the German Empire and in Europe.

That character must be grasped if the reader is to understand what fortunes attended the war in this region; for it is a district which in its history, in its political value, and in its geographical arrangements has very powerfully affected the whole of the campaign.

Historically this district is the cradle of that mixed race whose strict, narrow, highly defined, but quite uncreative policy has now piqued, now alarmed, civilized Europe for almost two hundred years.

The Prussian, or rather the Prussian aristocracy, which, by achieving the leadership of Germany, has flung so heavy a mass at Europe, originated in the rough admixture of certain West German and Christian knights with the vague pagan population of the Eastern Baltic plain, which, until almost the close of the Middle Ages, was still a field for missionary effort and for crusade. It was the business of the Teutonic knights to tame this march of Christendom. They accomplished their work almost out of sight of the governing empire, the Papacy, and Christendom in general, with what infamies history records. The district thus occupied was not within the belt of that high Polish culture which is one of the glories of Europe. Nations may not inexactly be divided into those who seek and those who avoid the sea. The Poles are of the latter type. This belt, therefore, of _Borussia_ (whence our word Prussia is derived)--roughly from the Vistula up on to the Bight of Libau--was held by the Teutonic knights in a sort of savage independence. The Christian faith, which it had been their pretext and at first their motive to spread, took little root; but they did open those avenues whereby the civilization which Germany itself had absorbed from the south and west could filter in; and the northern part of the district, that along the sea (which is the least marshy, and, as that poor country goes, the least barren), was from the close of the Middle Ages German-owned, though for some generations nominally adherent to the Polish crown. The Polish race extended no farther northward in the present province than the lake country of its southern half, and even there suffered an admixture of Lithuanian and German blood.

That lake country well merits a particular description, for its topography has powerfully affected the war in the East; but for the moment we must chiefly grasp the political character following upon the history of this land. The chief noble of "Borussia," the governing duke, acquired, not from the empire nor perhaps in the eyes of Europe, but from the Polish monarchy, the title of king, and it must never be forgotten that the capital at Berlin, and the "Mark"--that is, the frontier march--of Brandenburg, though now the centre, are neither the origins nor the pride of the Hohenzollern power. They were kings of Prussia because Prussia was extraneous to the European system. There came a moment, as I have pointed out in an earlier page in this book, when the Prussian kingship and the electorate of Brandenburg coincided in one person. All men of education know, and all men whatsoever feel, what influence an historical origin will have upon national outlook. East Prussia, therefore, remains to-day something of a political fetish. Its towns may be called colonies of the Germans, the birthplaces or the residences of men famous in the German story. Its country-sides, although still largely inhabited by a population of servile memories and habits not thoroughly welded with their masters, do not take up great space in the view the German takes of the region. He sees rather the German landowner, the German bailiff, the German schoolmaster, and the numerous German tenants of the wealthier type who, though a minority, form the chief part of this social system. We shall see later what this miscalculation cost the great landowners during the Russian invasion, but we must note in passing that it is a miscalculation common to every people. Only that which is articulate in the States stands out large in the social perspective during periods of order and of peace.

The Prussian royal house, the Prussian aristocracy, have then for this bastion towards the east an especial regard, which has not been without its sentimental influence upon the course of the war; and that regard is very highly increased by the artificial political boundaries of modern times.

East Prussia is, for the Germans as a whole, their rampart against the Slav; and though, beyond the present purely political and only century-old frontier, a large German-speaking population is to be discovered (especially in the towns under Russian rule), yet such is the influence of a map upon a people essentially bookish in their information, that East Prussia stands to the whole German Empire, as well as to its wealthier inhabitants, for a proof of the German power to withstand the dreaded pressure of the Russian from the East.

It was to be expected, therefore, that two strategical consequences would flow from these non-strategical conditions: first, that the Russians would be tempted--though, no doubt, in very small force for such a secondary operation--to raid a district towards which the enemy's opinion was so sensitive; secondly, that enemy would be tempted, after each such effort, to extend a disproportionate force in ridding the country of such raids.

The Germans, for all the dictates of pure strategics, would hardly hold firm under the news that Slav soldiers were in the farms and country-houses, and were threatening the townsfolk of East Prussia. The Russians, though no direct advantage was to be gained, and though the bulk of their force must be used elsewhere, would certainly be drawn to move into East Prussia in spite of the known and peculiarly heavy difficulties to an advance which that province presented.

What were those difficulties?

They were of two kinds, the second of which has been, perhaps, unduly emphasized at the expense of the first.

The first was, that the Baltic extreme of this region lay at the very end of the longest possible line the Russians could move on. Even supposing their front extended (as soon it did) from the Carpathians to the sea, this Baltic piece was the end of the line and farthest from their material bases and their sources of equipment. It was badly served with railways, difficult of access from the soil lying to the east, and backed by that sparsely inhabited belt of Russian territory in which the modern capital of St. Petersburg has been artificially erected, but which is excentric to the vital process of Russia. As a fact, even after eight months of war, let alone in the first phases which we are here about to describe, the extreme end of this line was not attempted by the Russians at all.

Next to this extreme position, which was the first handicap, comes the region of the lakes, the nature of which was the second handicap.

The Masurian Lake district can best be appreciated by some description of its geology and its landscape. It was probably moulded by the work of ice in the past. Great masses of ice have ground out, in their very slow progress towards the sea over the very slight incline northwards of that line, hollows innumerable, and varying from small pools to considerable lakes; the ice has left, upon a background of sand, patches of clay, which hold the waters of all this countryside in brown stretches of shallow mere, and in wider extents of marsh and bog. The rare travellers who explore this confusion of low rounded swells and flats carry back with them to better lands a picture of one grossly monotonous type continuing day upon day. Pine and birch woods, often ordered with the regularity and industry of the German forest organization, but often also straggling and curiously stunted and small, break or confuse the view upon either side.

The impression of the district is most clearly conveyed from some sandy summit, bare of trees, whence a man may overlook, though not from any great height, the desolate landscape for some miles. He obtains from such a view neither the sense of forest which wooded lands of great height convey in spite of their clearings, nor the sense of endless plain which he would find farther to the east or to the north. He perceives through the singularly clear air in autumn brown heaths and plains set here and there with the great stretches of woodland and farmsteads, the stubble of which is soon confused by the eye in the distance with the barren heaths around. In winter, the undulating mass of deep and even snow is marked everywhere by the small, brown, leafless trees in their great groupings, and by the pines, as small, and weighted with the burden of the weather; but much the most striking of the things seen in such a landscape are the stretches of black water, or, if the season be hard, of black ice which, save when the snow has recently fallen, fierce winds will commonly have swept bare.

The military character of such a region will be clear. It is, in the technical language of military art, a labyrinth of _defiles_. Care has been expended upon the province, especially in the last two generations, and each narrow passage between the principal sheets of water carries a road, often a hard causeway. A considerable system of railways takes advantage of the same natural narrow issues; but even to those familiar with the country, the complexity of these narrow dry gates or defiles, and their comparative rarity (contrasted with the vast extent of waterlogged soil or of open pool), render an advance against any opposition perilous, and even an unopposed advance slow, and dependent upon very careful Staff work. Columns in their progress are for hours out of touch one with the other, and an unexpected check in some one narrow must be met by the force there present alone, for it will not be able to obtain immediate reinforcement.

Again, all this line, with its intermixture of sand and clay, which is due to its geological origin, is a collection of traps for any commander who has not thoroughly studied his lines of advance or of retreat--one might almost say for any commander who has not had long personal experience of the place. There will be across one mere a belt of sand or gravel, carrying the heaviest burdens through the shallow water as might a causeway. Its neighbour, with a surface precisely twin, with the same brown water, fringed by the same leaves and dreary stretches of stunted wood, will be deep in mud, but a natural platform may stretch into a lake and fail the column which uses it before the farther shore is reached. In the strongest platforms of this kind gaps of deep clay or mud unexpectedly appear. But even with these deceptions, a column is lucky which has only to deal in its march with open water and firm banks; for the whole place is sown with what were formerly the beds of smaller meres, and are now bogs hardened in places, in others still soft--the two types of soil hardly distinguishable.

During any orderly advance, an army proceeding through the Masurian Lakes will strictly confine itself to the great causeways and to the railway. During any retreat in which it is permitted to observe the same order it will be similarly confined to the only possible issues; but let the retreat be confused, and disaster at once threatens.

A congested column attempting to spread out to the right or to the left will fall into marsh. Guns which it has attempted to save by the crossing of a ford will sooner or later find mud and be abandoned. Men will be drowned in the unexpected deeps, transport embedded and lost; and apart from all this vast wastage, the confusion of units will speedily put such a brake upon the whole process of retirement that envelopment by an enemy who knows the district more thoroughly is hardly to be avoided.

It was this character in the dreary south of East Prussia which was the cause of Tannenberg, and as we read the strategical plan of that disaster, we must keep in mind the view so presented of an empty land, thus treacherous with marsh and reed and scrub and stretches of barren flat, which may be heath, or may be a horse's height and more of slightly covered slime.

The first phase of the business lasts until the 24th of August, beginning with the 7th of that month, and may be very briefly dealt with.

Two Russian armies, numbering altogether perhaps 200,000 men, or at the most a quarter of a million, advanced, the one from the Niemen, the other from the Narew--that is, the one from the east, the other from the south, into East Prussia. The Germans had here reserve troops, in what numbers we do not know, but perhaps half the combined numbers of the Russian invasion, or perhaps a little more. The main shock was taken upon the eastern line of invasion at Gumbinnen; the Germans, defeated there, and threatened by the continued advance of the other army to the west of them, which forbade their retreat westward, fell back in considerable disorder upon Koenigsberg, lost masses of munitions and guns, and were shut up in that fortress. The defeat at Gumbinnen occupied four days--from the 16th to the 20th of August.

Meanwhile the Russian army which was advancing from the Narew had struck a single German army corps--the 20th--in the neighbourhood of Frankenau. The Russian superiority in numbers was very great; the German army corps was turned and divided. Half of it fled westward, abandoning many guns and munitions; the other half fled north-eastward towards Koenigsberg, and the force as a whole disappeared from the field. The Russians pushed their cavalry westward; Allenstein was taken, and by the 25th of August the most advanced patrols of the Russians had almost reached the Vistula.

The necessity for retaking East Prussia by the Germans was a purely political one. The vast crowd of refugees flying westward spread panic within the empire. The personal feeling of the Emperor and of the Prussian aristocracy in the matter of the defeated province was keen. Had that attempt to retake East Prussia failed, military history would point to it as a capital example of the error of neglecting purely strategical for political considerations. As a fact, it succeeded beyond all expectation, and its success is known as the German victory of Tannenberg.

The nature of this victory may be grasped from the accompanying sketch map.

From the town of Mlawa, just within Russian Poland, beyond the frontier, runs, coming up from Warsaw, a railway to Soldau, just upon the Prussian side of the frontier. At Soldau three railways converge--one from the east, one going west to Niedenberg and the junction of Ortelsberg, a third coming in from the north-east and Eylau.

From Eylau, through Osterode, the main international line runs through Allenstein, and so on eastward, while a branch from this goes through Passenheim to the junction at Ortelsberg.

Here, then, you have a quadrilateral of railways about fifty miles in length. Within that quadrilateral is extremely bad country--lakes, marshes, and swamps--and the only good roads within it are those marked in single lines upon my sketch--the road from Allenstein through Hohenstein to Niedenberg, and the road from Niedenberg to Passenheim. As one goes eastwards on that road from Niedenberg to Passenheim, in the triangle Niedenberg-Passenheim-Ortelsberg, the country gets worse and worse, and is a perfect labyrinth of marsh, wood, and swamp. The development of the action in such a ground was as follows:--

The Russian commander, Samsonoff, with his army running from Allenstein southwards, was facing towards the west. He had with him perhaps 200,000 men, perhaps a trifle less. His reconnaissance was faulty, partly because the aeroplanes could discover little in that wooded country, partly because the Staff work was imperfect, and his Intelligence Department not well informed by his cavalry patrols. He thought he had against him to the west only weak forces. As a fact, the Germans were sending against him what they themselves admit to be 150,000 men, and what were quite possibly nearer 200,000, for they had drawn largely upon the troops within Germany. They had brought round by sea many of the troops shut up in Koenigsberg, and they had brought up the garrisons upon the Vistula. Further, they possessed, drawn from these garrisons, a great superiority in that arm which throughout all the earlier part of the great war was the German stand-by--heavy artillery, and big howitzers capable of use in the field.

On Wednesday, 26th August, Samsonoff first discovered that he had a formidable force in front of him.

It was under the command of von Hindenburg, a man who had studied this district very thoroughly, and who, apart from his advantage in heavy artillery, knew that difficult country infinitely better than his opponents. During the Wednesday, the 26th, Hindenburg stood upon the defensive, Samsonoff attacking him upon the line Allenstein-Soldau. At the end of that defensive, the attack on which was badly hampered in so difficult a country, von Hindenburg massed men upon his right near Soldau. This move had two objects: first, by pushing the Russians back there to make them lose the only good road and railway by which they could retire south upon their communications into the country whence they had come; secondly, to make them think, in their natural anxiety for those communications, that his main effort would be delivered there to the south. As a fact, it was his intention to act elsewhere. But the effect of his pressure along the arrow _a_ was to give the Russian line by the evening of that Wednesday, the 26th of August, the form of the line 1 upon Sketch 73.

The advantage he had thus gained in front of Soldau, Hindenburg maintained by rapid and successful entrenchment; and the next day, Thursday, 27th August, he moved great numbers round by railway to his left near Allenstein, and appeared there with a great local superiority in numbers and in heavy guns. By the evening of that day, then, the 27th, he had got the Russian line into the position 2, and the chief effort was being directed along the arrow _b_. On the 28th and 29th the pressure continued, and increased here upon the north; the Russian right was pushed back upon Passenheim, for which there was a most furious fight; and by the evening of the 29th Samsonoff's whole body was bent right round into the curve of the line 3, and vigorous blows were being dealt against it along the arrow _c_, which bent it farther and farther in.

It was clearly evident by that evening, the 29th of August, that Samsonoff must retreat; but his opportunities for such a retreat were already difficult. All he had behind him was the worst piece in the whole country--the triangle Passenheim-Ortelsberg-Niedenberg--and his main avenue of escape was a defile between the lake which the railway at Ortelsberg uses.

His retirement became hopelessly congested. Further pressure along the arrow _d_, during the 30th and 31st, broke that retirement into two halves, one half (as at 5) making off eastwards, the other half (as at 4) bunched together in a hopeless welter in a country where every egress was blocked by swamp and mire, and subjected to the pounding of the now concentrated ring of heavy guns. The body at 5 got away in the course of the 1st and 2nd of September, but only at the expense of leaving behind them great numbers of guns, wounded, and stragglers. The body at 4 was, in the military sense of the word, "annihilated." It numbered at least two army corps, or 80,000 men, and of these it is probable that 50,000 fell into the hands of the enemy, wounded and unwounded. The remainder, representing the killed, and the chance units that were able to break out, could hardly have been more than 20,000 to 30,000 men.

Such was the victory of Tannenberg--an immensely successful example of that enveloping movement which the Germans regarded as their peculiar inheritance; a victory in nature recalling Sedan, and upon a scale not inferior to that battle.

The news of that great triumph reached Berlin upon Sedan Day, at the very moment when the corresponding news from the West was that von Kluck had reached the gates of Paris, and had nothing in front of him but the broken and inferior armies of a disastrous defeat.

THE SPIRITS IN CONFLICT.

At this point it is well to pause and consider an element of the vastest consequence to the whole conduct of these great campaigns--I mean the element of German confidence.

Here we have a nation which has received within a fortnight of its initial large operations, within the first five weeks of a war which it had proudly imposed upon its enemies, the news of a victory more startlingly triumphant than its most extreme expectation of success had yet imagined possible.

Let the reader put himself into the position of a German subject in his own station of life, a town dweller, informed as is the English reader by a daily press, which has come to be his sole source of opinion, enjoying or suffering that almost physical self-satisfaction and trust in the future which is, unfortunately, not peculiar to the North German, but common in varying degree to a whole school of morals to-day. Let him remember that this man has been specially tutored and coached into a complete faith in the superiority of himself and his kind over the rest of the human race, and this in a degree superior even to that in which other nations, including our own, have indulged after periods of expanding wealth and population.

Let the reader further remember that in this the Germans' rooted faith their army was for them at once its cause and its expression; then only can he conceive what attitude the mind of such men would assume upon the news from East and from West during those days--the news of the avalanche in France and the news of Tannenberg. It would seem to the crowd in Berlin during the great festival which marked the time that they were indeed a part of something not only necessarily invincible, but of a different kind in military superiority from other men.

These, from what would seem every quarter of the globe, had been gathered to oppose him, merely because the German had challenged his two principal enemies. Though yet far from being imperilled by so universal a movement, he crushes it utterly, and in a less time than it takes for a great nation to realize that it is under arms, he is overwhelmed by the news not of his enemy's defeat, but rather of his annihilation. Miles of captured guns and hour upon hour of marching columns of prisoners are the visible effect of his triumph and the confirmation of it; and he hears, after the awful noise of his victories, a sort of silence throughout the world--a silence of awe and dread, which proclaims him master. It is the anniversary of Sedan.