GopghtN . 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
COLOURS OF WAR 
 
COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT CROZIER LONG 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCMBNER'S SONS 
 
 1915 
 

 Copyright, 1915, by 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 Published November, 1915 
 
 NOV 27 1915 
 'CLA414791 
 
TO 
 
 T. L. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THIS book is the material of a picture, 
 not a picture. When watched from far, 
 war appears as a quarrel, a few battles, 
 and some manifestations of human nature. It 
 is easily grasped and painted. Books on war 
 written at a distance have unity. 
 
 Seen from very near, the outlines get rough ; 
 details expand, spoiling the great features ; and 
 the colours dissolve into blotches. A picture 
 might best represent what happens in war; 
 colours in confusion on a palette best convey 
 what is seen. 
 
 Some of the matter here appeared in the 
 London Westminster Gazette and the London 
 Fortnightly Review; some in American jour- 
 nals ; but the book is not a reprint of articles. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter p AGE 
 
 I. Germany 1 
 
 II. Lost Russians 26 
 
 III. Work 49 
 
 IV. Messiah 76 
 
 V. Warsaw 100 
 
 VI. Hindenburg's Rink .... 125 
 
 VII. The Front of Cracow . . . 142 
 
 VIII. Galician Catastrophes . . . 169 
 
 IX. Arms and Men 199 
 
 X. Finis Poloniae 224 
 
 XI. Transport 242 
 
 XII. Soldiers 266 
 
 XIII. Ultima Ratio 287 
 
COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 GERMANY 
 
 I AST memories seldom match first mem- 
 j ories. On 7th August, a week after 
 Germany went to war, I reached Hol- 
 land from Berlin. At a station near the frontier 
 were the station-master, a sentry, and a boy. 
 Soldiers in uniform, reservists still in civil 
 dress, and policemen had swarmed in the sta- 
 tions to the east. The boy, who was pale and 
 dirty as few Prussians are, wore a helmet and 
 he swung a toy sword far too long. He watched, 
 with sleepy eyes; and he sang, provocatively, 
 as if he knew who was in the train, the "Watch 
 on the Rhine," Fest steht und treul Fourteen 
 years before, I entered Germany by another 
 frontier. School children, welcoming at the sta- 
 tion a Hohenzollern prince, sang the "Watch 
 on the Rhine." The children were small; half 
 of them were girls; and the warlike music 
 
 seemed incongruous. After that I never heard 
 
 l 
 
2 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 children singing war-songs. Now, even with 
 battles and sieges almost within hearing, there 
 was something incongruous in the boy, his mar- 
 tial squeak, and the sword as long as himself. 
 
 Some people were thrown out of Prussia. We 
 went with songs. The platform at Hanover 
 was occupied by soldiers of the reserve, tired 
 and dusty men, who might have walked all 
 night. In came the train with the missions of 
 England and Belgium. The reservists demon- 
 strated with the "Watch on the Rhine"; and 
 some menaced. After that there was singing 
 all the way. Soldiers sang out of passing trains. 
 Reservists, laden with parcels, sang as they filed 
 into the stations; and children joined in. At 
 Wuntsdorf, drawn up as soldiers, Red Cross 
 nurses waved flags, and welcomed us, waiting 
 for our songs. The English enemies, and the 
 Belgians, stared. A conductor got out of the 
 train; a whisper went round; and the nurses 
 began to sing. They sang " Deutschland, 
 Deutschland iiber Alles" to the hymn music 
 of Haydn; when they reached the end "Flour- 
 ish, German Fatherland!" they began again; 
 they sang three times, mechanically in soldier 
 fashion; and in the same soldier fashion they 
 sang the "Watch on the Rhine." The nurses 
 kept order; none threatened; but their faces 
 
GERMANY 3 
 
 were spiteful and pained; and as the train 
 moved they waved us ironically away. When 
 we stopped in the night, the silence was broken 
 by singing in the distance; by disciplined shouts 
 that the Watch on the Rhine stood fast and 
 true; and that Germany is over everything on 
 earth. 
 
 This singing at night was the first thing that 
 gave colour to the war. Things had gone too 
 fast for colouring. Before Wednesday the 29th 
 July the crisis was not understood. After the 
 mobilisation in four military districts of Russia, 
 clear-headed men expected war; but it needed 
 news of frontier skirmishes and air raids, pub- 
 lished before the result of the Ultimatum was 
 known, to convince the public that war had 
 come. On Friday, the Emperor moved from 
 Potsdam to Berlin. Martial law was pro- 
 claimed. Many foreigners first heard of it 
 when they used their own languages in telephone 
 conversations. Only German might be spoken. 
 In the afternoon white martial law posters ap- 
 peared. They appealed for order, and prom- 
 ised a mild administration. Notices in the Post 
 Offices regulated correspondence. For frontier 
 provinces only open letters in German were 
 passed. Beyond this, my corner of Berlin 
 showed no sign of war. 
 
4 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 In the centre there were no demonstrations. 
 Men stared at the Russian Embassy in Unter 
 den Linden. The French and British Em- 
 bassies attracted no attention. In the east of 
 Unter den Linden near the Palace, on the Pal- 
 ace Bridge, in the Lustgarten, and in the square 
 north of the Palace, a crowd waited. People 
 were quiet; they read the afternoon editions; 
 and except for an attempt, which led to nothing, 
 to sing "Deutschland, Deutschland iiber Alles," 
 they were silent. At six o'clock an officer came 
 to a window of the Kaiser's rooms, and said 
 that the Kaiser would speak. The Kaiser with 
 the Empress and his sons Adalbert and Oscar 
 walked on to the balcony. 
 
 I saw him for the first time since trouble be- 
 gan. He was yellow, but erect and calm; he 
 wore the grey-green uniform and the spiked 
 helmet covered with uniform cloth which in 
 the next days were seen everywhere. He spoke 
 without emphasis, very low, and I heard noth- 
 ing but the beginning: "A heavy storm . . ." 
 and the sentence, "They have thrust a sword 
 into my hand" — "Man driickt mir das Schwert 
 in die Hand." The Kaiser said that the envy of 
 neighbours had made war imminent; that war 
 would cost the people much blood and goods; 
 and that the foe would learn what it was to 
 
GERMANY 5 
 
 attack Germany. He told the people to go to 
 the churches and pray for the army. Later 
 he drove down Unter den Linden in a yellow 
 motor-car. The crowd cheered, and the trum- 
 peting which clears a path in peace time failed. 
 Next day the Kaiser's movements were ham- 
 pered by crowds; and the Biirgermeister asked 
 that the demonstrations should cease. 
 
 On Friday, the German Government in- 
 structed the Ambassador at St. Petersburg to 
 say that if Russia within twelve hours did not 
 cease preparations for war, Germany would 
 mobilise. France was asked to say within 
 eighteen hours what she would do in case of 
 war between Germany and Russia. On Satur- 
 day, the Declaration of War to Russia was not 
 known. The Foreign Office had no information. 
 Communication with St. Petersburg ceased. 
 The Russian Ambassador, M. Sverbeyeff, told 
 me he had not been at the Foreign Office since 
 Friday morning. There had been a demon- 
 stration; members of the Embassy feared to go 
 out. I told them that good order was kept. 
 Events proved them to be right; they were at- 
 tacked as they started from Berlin. 
 
 At a quarter to six, when I left the Embassy, 
 Unter den Linden was crowded. A civilian pro- 
 claimed from the top of a motor-cab that war 
 
6 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 had begun. The crowd cheered. The speaker 
 was a member of the Reichstag. War had 
 been declared at St. Petersburg on the preced- 
 ing midnight. This evening red posters flamed 
 on the pillars. The posters gave the order of 
 the first days of mobilisation; and ended, "and 
 so on," leaving the duration of mobilisation in 
 doubt. The Kaiser again spoke from the Pal- 
 ace. He said that he forgave those who had 
 spoken ill of him; and that he knew no parties, 
 only Germans. 
 
 From this day Berlin felt the social and 
 economic reaction of war. The city was cut off; 
 the train service ceased; no foreign letters were 
 delivered, and few German. In some places the 
 issue of internal money orders was suspended. 
 Letters from West Europe were delayed at 
 Cologne; money from abroad could not be had. 
 Foreign cheques had no exchange. Speculating 
 bankers paid three-quarters of the peace value; 
 and booked the balance. The run on Savings- 
 Banks and on banks for gold soon ceased; but 
 little gold could be had. Mobilisation carried 
 off workmen. The City Railway, the Under- 
 ground, and the tramways shortened their ser- 
 vices. Women trained as conductors, and con- 
 ductors too old to fight learned to drive. Motor- 
 cabs and horse-cabs disappeared. They were 
 
GERMANY 7 
 
 mobilised as men were. When a motor-cab's 
 hour came, it made for the Templehof Field in 
 South Berlin. There, cabs were massed in 
 companies, taught to advance, to retreat, to 
 thread their ways in curves like manoeuvring 
 war-ships. Drivers took fares up to the last 
 minute. The order was good. 
 
 The demeanour of the people was confident 
 but depressed. I heard some cheering, and in 
 cafes much singing; but there were many 
 anxious faces. In German acquaintances I 
 found dread of the coming sorrows and losses. 
 There was no newspaper sensationalism. The 
 reports of frontier fighting were reserved; the 
 first report said, "We lost two wounded; en- 
 emy's loss unknown." Most wars begin with 
 paper victories. The public's nerves were 
 strained. On Saturday the story spread that 
 the Crown Prince had been murdered by two 
 Russians. A citizen with a reputation for 
 truthfulness described the deed, as he saw it; 
 such is war psychosis. 
 
 Nervousness grew; and many lost their 
 heads. The Ministry of War asked the people 
 to look for spies and to prevent attempts against 
 railways and telegraphs. Railway carriages 
 were posted with warnings. The public set it- 
 self to help. Russians drew suspicion; later 
 
8 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 other foreigners were watched; and at last Ger- 
 mans. Sharp-eyed men seized an officer who 
 wore with a faded tunic suspiciously new 
 trousers; and, sure that he was a Frenchman 
 supposed to have poisoned wells at Metz, 
 dragged him to the police. In peace time the 
 officer would have slashed his assailants' faces. 
 A builder's cashier who had himself chased spies 
 in Wilmersdorf drew suspicion. He protested. 
 His accent proved he was a Dresdener. Spies, 
 said the spy-chasers, always speak fluent Ger- 
 man. The spy-chasers searched, and found no 
 money. This proved he was a spy. They con- 
 tinued to search, and unearthed small notes. 
 The notes, the crowd reasoned, were bribes for 
 soldiers. An American journalist was seized at 
 Gumbinnen. He appeared in the newspapers 
 as a Russian Grand Duke. Patriots of South 
 Germany searched for an imaginary automobile 
 which carried from France to the Russian Treas- 
 ury five million pounds in gold. 
 
 Trouble was threatened by the food question. 
 There was food for a fortnight, and freight traf- 
 fic ceased. Prices rose, and attempts were made 
 to exploit need. Housekeepers were frightened 
 into paying a mark a pound for flour. Such 
 cases were few. The Commandant in the Mark, 
 General v. Kessel, fixed maximum prices of 30, 
 
GERMANY 9 
 
 27, and 20 pfennings for wheaten flour, rye 
 flour, and salt. The timidity and selfishness of 
 citizens who had no notion of war took forms 
 of humour. Someone asked the Foreign Office 
 whether war could be postponed — he wanted 
 to search Leipzig. A druggist's sufferings were 
 real. He sold an elixir for making artificial 
 sunburn. In the week of crisis pillars glowed 
 with puffs of the bottled sunshine. The soldiers 
 with martial law proclamations covered the 
 posters up. The druggist, saying that he had se- 
 crets, gained admittance to Kessel, and begged 
 the general to make his bill-posters take the 
 proclamations down. Under Nationalist agita- 
 tion, sign-boards and notices in French, after- 
 wards in English, were removed. A "Cafe 
 Frangais" was among them. The sign-board 
 was sold as old wood; the buyer, a joiner, who 
 knew no French, pleased by the decorative let- 
 ters, set it in his garden, and caused a local war. 
 After the first days, the mobilisation was 
 seen. Through the streets in fours, in civilian 
 dress, without arms, marched men of the re- 
 serve and Landwehr. All carried brown card- 
 board boxes of the kind used by tailors' packers. 
 These were town reservists, not very strong, 
 puffy and dull-eyed; warlike only by their 
 tramp and the zeal in their songs. Women 
 
10 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 and children walked beside them, and showed 
 no feeling. The cheers were weak. There was 
 no hilarity, sporting war spirit, or no drunken- 
 ness. The reservist columns stopped traffic, 
 wound into barrack yards, and came out in 
 uniform, mixed with active soldiers. The ac- 
 tive soldiers were brighter and stronger. The 
 physical gains of soldiering quickly pass. 
 
 The spirit was good. All who had to serve, 
 and all who could serve, rushed to serve. The 
 old men, women, and children were proud when 
 their kinsmen left. At the declaration of war a 
 student whom I knew, an untrained member of 
 the replacement reserve, was sailing on Lake 
 Constance. His parents and sister dreaded that 
 he would come late, and be disgraced; at his 
 return they showed more joy than if he had 
 come safe from battle. I heard that a Land- 
 sturm man, not called up, offered to personate a 
 friend in the Landwehr whose family conditions 
 made service a hardship. The offer was not 
 taken. I heard, too, of a deserter who returned 
 from France when the negotiations looked 
 dangerous. He had run away through hatred 
 of army life. He refused to report to the War 
 Office, and take advantage of amnesty, because 
 if war were avoided he would have to complete 
 his term. He was a weak man, ready to help 
 
GERMANY 11 
 
 his country in war, but not in peace. The of- 
 ficers behaved well. I saw many, in field uni- 
 form with the cloth cap which did not always 
 hide the helmet spike. Their conduct was a re- 
 proach to some civilians, who mishandled en- 
 emy subjects. The newspapers condemned these 
 outbreaks. 
 
 In the first days there was a rush to the 
 churches. For marriages of soldiers formalities 
 were relaxed. Before I left Berlin there were 
 some thousands of war weddings. Outside a 
 church in southwest Berlin, couples waited in 
 queues. There were soldiers in uniform; reserv- 
 ists in civil dress with bandboxes; girls by 
 themselves keeping places for bridegrooms who 
 came late; and bridegrooms waiting for brides. 
 Some brides were rich girls; some, servants with 
 red arms, straight from work. In this way 
 were wed the Kaiser's sons, Adalbert and Oscar; 
 and Moltkes, Biilows, Bluchers, Delbriicks, and 
 Siemenses. With some the God of War dealt 
 hardly. An officer found on reaching Berlin 
 that his betrothed had gone to Chemnitz, his 
 garrison town. The trains passed; the officer, 
 unwed, left for the front. In a church of Tel- 
 tow, a bride fell dead as the wedding-ring was 
 put on her finger. The soldier bridegroom sa- 
 luted, and walked out of the church. 
 
12 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 In politics I was struck by the indifference to 
 England. The question which seemed most im- 
 portant, whether England would support Russia 
 and France, caused no debate. Perhaps news- 
 papers were asked not to raise it. I believe the 
 first article in a Berlin newspaper appeared on 
 Tuesday morning; it was written by Count 
 Reventlow, who predicted that England would 
 join Germany's foes, and said that it mattered 
 little. More than three days before English and 
 German publics knew, I was told by a German 
 official that we were in the war. The story 
 casts light on diplomatic history. . 
 
 On Saturday, not aware that Germany and 
 Russia were formally at war, I called on the Di- 
 rector of the English Department of the Foreign 
 Ministry. I did not know this official; I knew 
 that he was working with the Chancellor on the 
 negotiations with England; that he knew Eng- 
 land well; and that he had friendly relations 
 with Englishmen. Without telling me that a 
 declaration had been delivered to Russia at mid- 
 night, he spoke as if war between Russia and 
 Germany was a fact; and he said that England 
 was on the side of Russia. Germany could do 
 nothing to prevent this. I asked whether he 
 was speaking of accomplished facts, or fore- 
 casting the future on the basis of present con- 
 
GERMANY 13 
 
 ditions. He repeated that England was in the 
 war, and said he was sorry. What I heard 
 later in other quarters convinced me that our 
 Government had come to no decision; or that 
 if it had, it had not let Germany know. On 
 Sunday, hoping to clear up the mystery, I 
 again called. It was still two and a half days 
 before our Ultimatum. This time the same of- 
 ficial told me without doubt that England was 
 in the war. It was all over; nothing could be 
 done; and no purpose would be served by dis- 
 cussion. I showed him a Berlin morning paper 
 with quotations from a London newspaper 
 which is looked on by Germans as the organ of 
 the Foreign Office. The London newspaper 
 made clear that no decision had been come to; 
 it implied, if anything, that England would 
 keep out. The Director of the English Depart- 
 ment refused to read this; he made a gesture 
 which suggested surprise that any one should 
 consider England's participation an open ques- 
 tion, and said, "It's no use. It's all over." I 
 assumed that negotiations with England had 
 ceased. I asked when our Embassy would 
 leave. Could newspaper correspondents leave 
 with it? They could, I was told, if the Em- 
 bassy consented. At the Embassy I heard 
 that there was no question of leaving. Nego- 
 
14 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 tiations were proceeding amicably; and the 
 statement of the Foreign Office caused surprise. 
 I learned next morning that a colleague, who 
 visited the same official two days before the 
 Ultimatum, was told the same story. The 
 incident made a stir; I believe it provoked a 
 protest from our Embassy. The motive of the 
 Foreign Office remained a puzzle. After our 
 declaration of war the reason, though not the 
 motive, became plain. While the negotiations 
 for our neutrality proceeded, the higher officials 
 of the German Foreign Office must have known 
 that England would intervene. They knew 
 that their army was to march through Belgium; 
 and that this, independently of other causes, 
 meant war with England. Probably the Gov- 
 ernment was influenced into accepting the 
 Staff's plan by the belief that, Belgium or no 
 Belgium, it would face to fight England. It can 
 hardly be doubted that a Government so well 
 informed as the German knew more than the 
 British public knew of Anglo-French and Anglo- 
 Russian negotiations. After war between Ger- 
 many and the Dual Alliance began, the for- 
 mality of negotiation with England had to be 
 observed; otherwise the plan to march through 
 Belgium would be revealed. Germany was able 
 to prepare for certain action against us at sea, 
 
GERMANY 15 
 
 at a time when our mind was not made up. 
 The incautiousness of the Foreign Office offi- 
 cial might have upset this calculation; a sharp 
 thinker might have guessed that the violation 
 of Belgian neutrality, the certain cause of 
 British intervention, had been decided on be- 
 yond recall. 
 
 At the beginning of the crisis British residents 
 prepared to leave Berlin. Few got away. The 
 last train for Flushing left at midday on Mon- 
 day. Early in the morning I found at the 
 Zoological Garden station, the nearest station 
 to the British quarter, about a hundred British 
 subjects. They had enough luggage to fill ten 
 vans. The train had one van. At the central 
 Friedrichstrasse station conditions were the 
 same. Refugees who made for the Silesian 
 terminal station saved themselves and their 
 property. At the other stations, mountains of 
 trunks, with the belongings of British govern- 
 esses and music students, were left behind. 
 
 On Tuesday morning public buildings were 
 guarded. The police feared bombs. The cen- 
 tral telegraph office in Franzosischestrasse was 
 closed. In other offices telegrams for England 
 were refused; later, telegrams in German were 
 taken; later we heard that England was re- 
 jecting telegrams in German. At one o'clock 
 
16 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 the Reichstag met in the Palace to hear the 
 Emperor's Speech from the Throne. The So- 
 cialists stayed away. At three I went to the 
 sitting in the Reichstag building in Konigs- 
 platz. The sitting lasted till six. The Chan- 
 cellor spoke for half an hour. The Reichstag 
 unanimously voted a War Credit of two hun- 
 dred and fifty million pounds. Other war laws 
 passed. These legalised maximum prices and 
 compulsion to sell; provided for the support of 
 soldiers' families; for securing the solvency of 
 Sick Insurance Bureaux; for amendment of the 
 Imperial Debt Law. The Chancellor thanked 
 the Reichstag; the Reichstag cheered for Em- 
 peror and Fatherland, and adjourned. 
 
 The sitting showed that the Social-Demo- 
 cratic party supported the Government; and 
 that Belgium had been chosen as the path of 
 attack on France. The invasion of Belgium, 
 the Chancellor said, was a breach of interna- 
 tional law; he said that France had planned to 
 invade by Belgium; and he pleaded necessity. 
 Feeling that war with England was near, I 
 watched the members. I judged that they did 
 not see that England was in the war, or did not 
 measure the seriousness of the fact. The policy 
 of the Socialists was foreseen. Before the war, 
 the party newspaper Vorwdrts condemned Aus- 
 
GERMANY 17 
 
 trian policy towards Servia; preached that 
 Germany must bring Austria to reason, and 
 that she need not support an obstinate ally. 
 This policy offended Socialists, with whom pa- 
 triotism had begun to melt cosmopolitan ice. 
 The Russian Wing, the extreme Left, composed 
 partly of Russian exiles, hated Russia. After 
 Russia mobilised, the Vorwdrts wrote against 
 Tsarism. On Tuesday morning the Socialist 
 deputy, Dr. Siidekum, told me that the party 
 was united; an hour later the spokesman, Dr. 
 Haase, pronounced for the War Credit. He 
 said that the party was not responsible for pol- 
 icy; it worked with French comrades for peace; 
 the defence of the Fatherland was now the only 
 question; Social-Democratic Internationalism 
 upheld state independence; and the Socialists 
 would not leave the Fatherland in the lurch. 
 The party was against a war of conquest; it 
 required peace whenever the enemy was ready. 
 This, the only speech, was cheered by all parties. 
 In the Socialist party outside the Reichstag 
 there was a patriotic reaction. Some members 
 who had served in the army asked for admis- 
 sion into the monarchical, anti-Socialist Veter- 
 ans' Unions, called by the Kaiser his army in 
 mufti. This caused no surprise to students of 
 politics and human nature, who knew how thin 
 
18 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 lies the new soil of Internationalism over the 
 stone of race. 
 
 This evening I went to the office of the Tele- 
 graph Agencies in Zimmerstrasse to see the 
 statement on British policy made to the House 
 of Commons on Monday night. All the after- 
 noon the speech came in in sections; the mid- 
 day papers had none of it; and the short extract 
 in a morning paper did not give the sense. On 
 leaving the agencies' building, I found bulletins 
 of the Berliner Tageblatt with the news that our 
 Ambassador had asked for his passports. I 
 went by Wilhelmstrasse to the Embassy. The 
 house was under siege. The crowd, mostly 
 well-dressed citizens of the doubtful Friedrich- 
 stadt class, stretched far south in Wilhelm- 
 strasse, and on the north overflowed into Unter 
 den Linden. Demonstrators hunted a cab 
 which had left the Embassy. Three policemen, 
 too few to disperse the crowd, rode up and 
 down. A dozen men were at work. They 
 hoisted one another to the window-ledges. The 
 windows were broken with sticks or stones. I 
 did not risk entering the Embassy. A Spanish 
 diplomatist who left later was mistaken for our 
 Ambassador, threatened, and forced to take 
 refuge in a hotel. 
 
 While this siege was under way the police 
 
GERMANY 19 
 
 raided English dwellings. They arrested Eng- 
 lishmen, often with the ceremony which in peace 
 time is enjoyed by native Germans. English- 
 men while under arrest were threatened by a 
 crowd; the police drew revolvers on the crowd. 
 Policemen entered the Hotel Adlon; called out 
 the names of English newspaper correspondents 
 and of an American who represented English 
 newspapers, and carried the correspondents off. 
 The charge against one was that he knew me. 
 The police lost their heads. They arrested a 
 German lady, wife of an officer at the front, 
 whose daughter is married to an Englishman. 
 At night a hundred British subjects were at the 
 Police Presidency. They were given licences; 
 and told to report themselves every three days. 
 Later, the report system became stricter. Some 
 Britons were sent to Spandau Citadel, the home 
 of the War Treasure. I believe they were re- 
 leased. On returning to my apartment after I 
 had closed it, I found a detective outside the 
 door. He did not recognise me; and told me 
 politely that I had left Berlin. 
 
 In society discourtesy was not shown. Friend- 
 ships and business relations withstood the po- 
 litical storm. Germans known to me offered 
 to take into their house an English lady who 
 feared she could not get away in time. A serv- 
 
20 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 ant who had taken an affection to this lady's 
 child was willing to face any misfortune sooner 
 than be parted from it; and went with the 
 family in conditions of discomfort and danger 
 over half of Europe. The hall porter of my 
 house, who knew that foreigners had trouble to 
 get money, refused to take payment for work 
 done. There were cases of less agreeable kind; 
 but the mob law and newspaper law which gov- 
 ern the fate of enemy subjects in some countries 
 were not supreme. 
 
 In these days there was not much bitterness 
 against England. France was ignored or painted 
 as Russia's dupe. Enmity was against Russia; 
 politicians, newspapers, and citizens held that 
 Russia by mobilising had provoked war. When 
 England declared war many newspapers ex- 
 pressed relief. Weeks passed before there was 
 any understanding of England's part. Ger- 
 mans knew that with Austria-Hungary's help 
 they could defeat the Dual Alliance. They 
 foresaw the influence on trade and overseas 
 supplies of England's intervention. They cared 
 little for the naval threat against their colonies, 
 because success in Europe would bring all the 
 colonies they needed. The relief was due to the 
 conviction that some day England and Germany 
 would fight. A fight against England only 
 
GERMANY 21 
 
 meant the loss of colonies, and no gains. It 
 meant defeat. A fight against England and the 
 Dual Alliance would be determined by armies; 
 and no doubt was felt that the German army 
 would win. Most Germans believed, with the 
 Chancellor, that England would send at most a 
 few divisions. They had a clearer knowledge of 
 the politics of war, of its material and moral 
 dimensions, than any of their enemies; but they 
 under-measured us here. The blunder would 
 have caused their defeat had we not under- 
 measured them and over-measured our allies. 
 
 In so far as it concerns their duty to their 
 own country the conduct of Germans was credit- 
 able. Their bearing showed the merits of drill, 
 of authority, of class, professional, and academic 
 codes of honour. In the sovereign, ministers, 
 and generals confidence was felt. The nation, 
 not only the army, was ready. From many 
 statements to the Reichstag, and to the Reich- 
 stag Budget Committee, the nation knew the 
 measure of its personal and financial respon- 
 sibilities in armaments and policy. The obliga- 
 tions of the alliance with Austria were known; 
 and in 1913 and 1914 the Legislature was told 
 with precision of the military and diplomatic 
 combinations which Germany expected to face. 
 Appeals to the electorate before the expiry of 
 
22 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Reichstag terms were all on the question whether 
 the people would pay for the armaments which 
 the empire's policy made necessary; the policy 
 was plainly put to the nation, and the policy 
 was approved. These gave the Germans a 
 moral preparation for war which could not be 
 expected in countries where armaments and 
 policy are independent: the first, as an easy 
 thing, public; the second secret, in the hands of 
 infallible men. 
 
 In the great danger which Germany faced, 
 indifference could not be conceived. For shirk- 
 ers and cowards was the vicious military system 
 which requires all men equally to defend their 
 country. Dissension did not hinder military 
 concentration. Before the war there were dif- 
 ferences of economical and political kind; Social- 
 ism was strong; some were discontented with 
 the Constitution because they wanted an in- 
 crease of the state's power; others wanted par- 
 liamentary administration. These differences, 
 except that they inspired less violence, were 
 similar to the political differences of other 
 countries. The effectiveness of the state in 
 battle was not impaired by them; no foreign 
 condition pleased any party better; the friends 
 of a strong state did not want Russia's way; 
 and the friends of parliamentarism did not want 
 
GERMANY 23 
 
 freedom corrupted into anarchy. Fortunate 
 in not having to improvise armaments, the 
 empire was fortunate again in not having to 
 improvise unity. Englishmen who knew Ger- 
 many agreed with me that we had a foe as for- 
 midable as our alarmist school preached, though 
 not always formidable in the way it preached. 
 They considered that Germany could be beaten 
 only by well-prepared states with all material 
 and moral resources under control of com- 
 petent chiefs. It is unlucky that on this mat- 
 ter England was misled; that she was told of a 
 Germany rent by Socialism and Particularism, 
 undermined by corruption, and ruled by luna- 
 tics. It was natural that our ministers should 
 know nothing; and excusable that ambitious 
 men who have never been in Germany should 
 make public their knowledge of German dis- 
 sension, corruption, and lunacy. It was pain- 
 ful that men who knew the truth, and might 
 usefully have warned, joined in the deception. 
 Their excuse that the public wanted falsehood 
 may have been true; they took their cue from 
 above. I told the facts to a minister whom I 
 found convinced that Germans were panting to 
 help England to defeat their generals. He said 
 that the Government knew its business; and 
 that we were not fighting the German nation. 
 
24 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 This was a Christian plan, but not pregnant 
 with victory, as there was no shadow of doubt 
 that the German nation was fighting us. 
 
 Relations with the police were so bad that 
 newspaper correspondents, and others, due to 
 leave with the Embassy spent Wednesday night 
 at the Embassy house. Next morning soon 
 after eight, the British Ambassador, the Min- 
 ister of Belgium, the staffs of both missions, 
 and a dozen correspondents of newspapers left 
 from the Lehrter station. Measures were taken 
 against demonstrations. Near the Embassy 
 house passes were required, and policemen 
 lined the road. The members of the Embassy 
 drove by by-streets. A colonel of guards was 
 in charge of the train; there were many of- 
 ficials and agents; and no undue delicacy 
 was shown in foiling diplomatic designs feared 
 against bridges. At the Elbe, windows were 
 closed; once, the blinds were drawn. Armed 
 men in civilian dress guarded the stations, 
 bridges, and culverts. On the roads, trains of 
 motor-cars carried military loads. At Doeberitz 
 station, in heaps, lay aeroplane frames without 
 motors or wings. They looked like rocs' skele- 
 tons. Trains with reservists passed, mostly 
 going east. 
 
 The journey was slow. In the sunshine and 
 
GERMANY 25 
 
 in the country the mood of Berlin passed; and 
 only the war-songs brought thoughts of the 
 darkness of war. The reservists smiled and 
 cheered. The trains themselves seemed re- 
 lieved. In Prussia, in peace time, only the 
 bravest profane a railway; but war fostered 
 liberty: the trains were flying forests, flying 
 picture-galleries and treasuries of wit. Linden 
 branches stuck from the windows; on the doors 
 were drawn caricatures of Germany's foes; and 
 "To Paris," "To Moscow," "To London," ex- 
 pressed the soldiers' faith. A scholar of Schon- 
 hausen had written in Cyrillic letters on a 
 derelict engine, "Father Nicholas," meaning 
 the Tsar; and on a water-tower — as if they 
 needed remembrance — were the martial notes 
 which open the "Watch on the Rhine." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 LOST RUSSIANS 
 
 IN August, Russia began in London, stretched 
 across the North Sea, Norway, Sweden, 
 and Finland. Countless Russians — per- 
 haps half a million — were in Central and West 
 Europe; many were lost, and rewards were 
 paid for rinding them. Some were Jews, sick 
 or corpulent, forbidden to profane home spas. 
 Such Jews haunt Karlsbad, Vichy, Kissingen. 
 Land communications ceased. The path home 
 was to Stockholm, thence by alternative ways, 
 painful to Russians and terrible to Jews. 
 Steamers went to a Finnish port, and trains 
 nearly to the Arctic Circle, round the Gulf of 
 Bothnia, and south to Russia. The journey 
 was long; and travellers new to Russia and 
 Jewry learned both. This was so until Christ- 
 mas, when all lost Russians were found. 
 
 In peace it took two days to reach St. Peters- 
 burg. It took nine days in war. Stockholm 
 was four days from London. Abo, the peace 
 
 port of Finland, was closed; Hango was blown 
 
 26 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 27 
 
 up. Steamers, Swedish and Finnish, went to 
 Raumo. Before the war, no one knew of Raumo. 
 It is a little town, with small wharfage, joined 
 by a private railway to the railways of the 
 Finnish State. From Raumo to St. Petersburg 
 took a day, sometimes more; it depended on 
 troop movements. Refugees who feared mines, 
 cruisers, or seasickness chose the Arctic Circle. 
 Sweden and Finland are not joined by rail. A 
 train went along the Gulf of Bothnia to Lapp- 
 trask; later it ran to Karungi on a frontier 
 river, the Tornea Elf. There was motor-car 
 communication to Haparanda, still in Sweden; 
 from Haparanda ferries, later sledges, crossed 
 to Finnish Tornea. The journey from Stock- 
 holm through Tornea to Russia took five days. 
 Things got worse in September, when Germans 
 sank a Finnish steamer and took enemy subjects 
 off Swedish ships; still worse a month later, 
 after Swedish steamers, three on one day, sank 
 on mines at Mantyluoto. Sea traffic ceased. 
 By Christmas the Arctic Circle route was 
 shortened to three days. A railway was built 
 from Tornea along the Tornea Elf to Finnish 
 Karungi, opposite the Swedish terminus Ka- 
 rungi; and two miles of marsh and water di- 
 vided the lines. Swedish fear of Russia delayed 
 the linking up. Later, Sweden relented. A 
 
28 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 branch line was built to Haparanda; and a 
 bridge will be built after the war. 
 
 The Bergen Steamship Company's steamer 
 Neptune, which left Newcastle, carried Rus- 
 sians. A Home Office official was hurt by their 
 names; when he heard Kyril Maximiliano- 
 vitsch Koliubakin, he hesitated; a policeman 
 said, "Call you back again": and laughed. 
 War jokes are lean. These were true Russians, 
 soft, with soft faces, soft sibilant speech, soft 
 hats, soft fruit bags, who feared mines and sea. 
 The steamers were — and still are — small and 
 bad. For safety they went along the coast of 
 Scotland, taking half a day longer than in peace. 
 No mines burst. At night off the coast of Nor- 
 way, warships loomed, turned search-lights on 
 the Neptune, and steamed alongside. There 
 were no signals. The search-lights went out. 
 On a sky and sea that seemed all one, spiked 
 shadows stuck; whether they were Dread- 
 nought shadows or gunboat shadows the Rus- 
 sians argued long. 
 
 The Russians represented their empire in 
 races and ways. There were the painter and 
 professor Alexander Makovski, a Judo-Polish 
 jurist, a Jew from Bonn, a rich man of Moscow, 
 a Siberian, many students, one from Warsaw, 
 and student girls. There were one-year vol- 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 29 
 
 unteers due to join the army. The students 
 came from France or Germany; they had 
 money enough to leave England, but not to 
 reach Russia; so half the world exploited their 
 poverty while the other half helped. Nobody 
 knew the way. In the old days political refugees 
 reached England through Finland and Scan- 
 dinavia; for want of money they stopped in 
 Stockholm or Christiania; and now refugees of 
 war were in the same plight. The Jews fore- 
 told the course of the war, and of the rouble. 
 They expected to meet Germans at Warsaw. 
 The Siberian's cousin had a brewery at Tomsk 
 — if German prisoners came to Tomsk they 
 might start competitive breweries. The rich 
 man had walked five hundred yards on the Bel- 
 gian frontier and lost his hat-box; he had no 
 money, and offered a student girl an IOU for 
 her berth. At Bergen we heard Brussels had 
 fallen. "That is why the Wagons-Lits has not 
 answered about the hat-box." In those days 
 the worst sufferers were not soldiers with bul- 
 let-holes, but men whose hat-boxes were lost. 
 With the Russians were a few children; and 
 there was an Englishman, as there is on every 
 ship that sails on every sea. 
 
 The Russians had many secrets, and they re- 
 vealed them. A short-haired man whose busi- 
 
30 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 ness I guessed washed his hands beside me. He 
 said he was Lieutenant-Colonel , an en- 
 gineer; nobody must know he was a soldier; 
 of course no Englishman would give him away. 
 He knew about food supply in war; was in- 
 ventor of a grain-sifter and refrigerator for sav- 
 ing Russian wheat; and told me that Russia 
 had a new department to organise war finance 
 and feeding. The Germans, I remembered, had 
 a plan, not executed, for an Economical General 
 Staff. The Russian warned us that if people 
 got hold of the fact that he was an officer . . . 
 Five minutes later, he stood in the smoking- 
 room, declaiming on war, policy, and grain- 
 sifting; and began every proposition with, 
 "Gentlemen, when I was a raw lieutenant . . ." 
 
 The Russians gave me views of the war which 
 agreed, except in that they were put coldly, 
 with views I later heard in Russia. They 
 talked of the war without passion as if it were 
 a chess game played at the Equator by men 
 they did not know. No one opposed the war; 
 and no one wanted to exploit the Government's 
 troubles for revolutionary aims. That showed 
 a change: the war with Japan was treated by 
 society as a Court adventure, welcome because 
 it gave political malcontents a chance. 
 
 The officer who concealed his business by 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 31 
 
 telling it said that Russia promises a higher 
 civilisation than Germany. The Russians are 
 rude and unfit; they are neglected and op- 
 pressed. But they have ideas. The Germans 
 are all that materialistic civilisation can pro- 
 duce. They have done their best for Europe 
 and for themselves; their success means stag- 
 nation. New things would come from the 
 mystical ideology and anti-materialistic leanings 
 of Russia. Russia has seeds for growth; Ger- 
 mans have grown all their seeds. These notions 
 are old: they are in Dostoyevsky, in Tolstoy, 
 in the Slavophiles. The Russians on board ac- 
 cepted them, and denied them. Some held that 
 Russia's success means the strengthening of the 
 autocracy, which all along professed to be rooted 
 in humanity and democracy; others held that 
 success means a real constitution. The Poles 
 would not agree whether the Grand Duke's 
 proclamation to Poland was meant or not. A 
 student from Cracow knew that Austrian Poles 
 are solid with Austria. "Stronger measures 
 against Jews," the Warsaw student said, "would 
 please me more than Home Rule." The Jews 
 with good humour assured him he would get his 
 way. 
 
 The Englishman, as might be expected, 
 talked sense. He was a young, intelligent man. 
 
32 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 He said that I might enter Berlin with the Rus- 
 sian army and dine the Cossacks at my own 
 house. From Berlin to Berlin might be the 
 name of a book on the round tour. He envied 
 men who saw war. "Enlist ! " said the Russians. 
 They learned things which, as they had been 
 few days in London, were new. The English- 
 man had thought of enlisting; that was on the 
 first day when things looked serious. On the 
 fifth day he saw that before he could be drilled 
 the war would end. The war, the Russians 
 said, will be long; the enemy is strong. The 
 Englishman said that he had once thought so, 
 but that he was wrong. He read, before the 
 war, the warnings of our experts on efficiency 
 about the fitness of German methods and the 
 terrors of the War Machine. The alarmist 
 Teutonologues had now recanted. The disasters 
 at Liege had shown the Germans up. The ex- 
 perts said that the War Machine was a fraud; 
 that the Emperor William was mad; that a 
 small boy at Dison had waved a flag and put a 
 squadron of Uhlans to flight. With cuttings 
 from the best newspapers, the Englishman 
 proved that the Germans did not know they 
 were in Belgium; they thought they were in 
 Bulgaria; and that the Germans had no shells. 
 He said that our Government and Press were 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 33 
 
 happy in this knowledge; they had promised 
 universal felicity and low taxes; there were 
 plans of retribution; monuments to aggression 
 would be razed; one clever writer had arranged 
 to tear off the Kaiser's epaulettes; some men 
 went farther: they proposed to leave the 
 Sieges-Allee alone. The Jew from Bonn doubted. 
 The Englishman said there was a censorship to 
 prevent circulation of untruths, even of truths, 
 which might harm England; the newspaper 
 story that the Germans had no shells must be 
 both true and harmless. The Jew from Bonn 
 still doubted. He said that the Germans were 
 well prepared; true, the comprehensiveness of 
 British Government programmes indicated thor- 
 ough preparation; but there were differences in 
 methods. This remark was obscure; the Jew's 
 meaning, I think, was that the British Govern- 
 ment had adequately prepared for victory, and 
 that the German Government had only pre- 
 pared for war. 
 
 Once Bergen was a fishing and trading port; 
 war made it the Atlantic Brindisi. There is a 
 streak of water between rocks; at the end of 
 the chasm, shadowed by hills, is the town. I 
 met Mr. Wollert Konow, a former minister. 
 Norwegian sympathies, I learned, were on our 
 side. The Norwegians were not friendly to 
 
34 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Russia. They believed that Russia would seize 
 a Norwegian port; and threaten Norway's in- 
 dependence. I told Mr. Konow that this, at 
 least at present, is unlikely. He said that Nor- 
 way and Sweden were thinking of the future. 
 The Scandinavian states would sympathise with 
 an English attempt to prevent the undue ag- 
 grandisement of any Power. I talked with Mr. 
 Mitchelet, editor of the Annoncentidende, with a 
 Danish merchant, and others. All were friendly 
 to us; and not friendly to Russia. The Dane 
 wished for Germany's defeat. 
 
 Norway, in part, was mobilised. In August 
 the Storthing held a special session, and voted 
 money. Bergen, Christiania, Narvik, and Trond- 
 hjem were in a state of defence. Nobody hin- 
 dered me climbing a pine-covered hill, and ex- 
 amining the port through a field-glass. Sweden 
 and Norway had signed an agreement to defend 
 neutrality, and not to use against one another 
 the new armaments. Civil life was deranged. 
 No through trains ran; I changed at Charlot- 
 tenberg on the Swedish frontier, and at Laxa. 
 In the Swedish trains were officers; and at the 
 stations reservists, and Landsturm men in civil 
 dress and the three-cornered hat with a badge 
 of three crowns which brings back the eighteenth 
 century — it has been worn by the Swedish 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 35 
 
 army only in the last years. The Landsturm 
 men are strong; but they lack the military stamp 
 of soldiers of Great Powers. 
 
 On the 2nd of August Sweden mobilised her 
 reserve and territorial army on the coast, in 
 Gotland, and in garrison towns. The conscripts 
 of 1915 were called up. A soldier became Min- 
 ister of War; the Liberals ceased opposition to 
 the defence project; and fifty million kronen 
 were voted for "protective neutrality." All 
 parties stood for neutrality. Elections to the 
 Second Chamber in October made the Socialists 
 the strongest party. In December, the Kings of 
 Sweden, Norway, and Denmark met at Malmo 
 to consider measures for meeting economic diffi- 
 culties caused by the war. This meant measures 
 for defence of neutrality: economic measures, 
 in the shape of contraband quarrels, were the 
 only likely causes of breach of neutrality. In 
 January, it was announced that Swedish busi- 
 ness was suffering losses. 
 
 Stockholm reaps profits. The town is a clear- 
 ing-house of the belligerents. There were specu- 
 lators in German and Russian papers; and Rus- 
 sians and Germans traded in spite of the official 
 boycott, sometimes with official authority. Jews 
 from Warsaw, who like Germans, and Orthodox 
 Moscow merchants who hate them, bought 
 
36 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 German goods, stamped them "Made in Eng- 
 land," and sent them home. Russians tried to 
 buy German field-glasses and Germans to buy- 
 Russian grain. It was as reasonable to buy an 
 enemy's field-glasses and grain as it is to use 
 field-glasses and grain taken in battle; and the 
 tolerance of the enemies pleased the unimpas- 
 sioned Swedes. 
 
 The Swedes, some Left men excepted, wished 
 for our defeat. With politeness they said why. 
 Against Latins and Slavs they desired the soli- 
 darity of the Germanic peoples. Themselves 
 the most attractive Germanic race, they be- 
 lieved that all Germanic races are attractive. 
 They had swallowed our antique catchwords: 
 "Down with Russian Autocracy!" "the Great 
 Protestant nations," "the countrymen of 
 Shakespeare ought to love the countrymen of 
 Goethe." Such bad reasons for siding against 
 us could not compete with German sophistry. 
 The Swedes speak German. German news- 
 papers reach Stockholm the day after issue. 
 Science, plays, and clothes come from Germany. 
 The chief British influence is "Tipperary": in 
 Hasselbacken's restaurant dancers sang it; and 
 editors, as heading for the wild talk of our 
 ministers, printed "Lang, lang vag till Berlin." 
 In Germany, Swedish war correspondents were 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 37 
 
 welcomed, and given useful truths and un- 
 truths. Our Government received correspond- 
 ents coldly; it knew that they divulge military 
 secrets, and preferred itself to do the divulging 
 in speeches. When the ships sank off Manty- 
 luoto, there was an Anglophile reaction; it 
 passed on Herr Ballin sending the sufferers ten 
 thousand pounds. In the spring there was a 
 second Anglophile reaction which our states- 
 men, with the quickness always shown in blun- 
 dering, spoiled. They sent trade spies to make 
 black-lists of Swedes who sold Germany coffee; 
 the spying caused public scandals; some spies 
 were expelled. Sealed mail-bags from America 
 were opened in England; the contents were 
 pilfered. This policy had success; coffee was 
 dearer in Stockholm than in Berlin; and 
 Sweden, being unable to hit England, stopped 
 half the goods transport to Russia, and ham- 
 pered Russia's prosecution of the war. There 
 developed, and increased in measure with the 
 Entente's military misfortunes, an agitation 
 known as Activism, which demands Sweden's 
 accession to the Central Powers independently 
 of any special cause of war given by the En- 
 tente. This agitation is officially condemned, 
 and it is opposed by the neutralist majority; 
 but the official policy of neutrality is not un- 
 
38 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 conditional, and if the assumptions on which 
 it is based were shaken through a quarrel with 
 any Entente Power, Activism might easily tip 
 the scale in favour of war. 
 
 Among influences which made the Swedes 
 pro-German counts the zeal of Englishmen to 
 make them pro-English. The Swedes are an 
 honest, penetrating race. They liked our free- 
 dom from inspired journalism, Government press 
 agencies, pamphleteering, semiofficial profess- 
 ors. They might have been bored towards the 
 Entente by the Wolff Agency, the inversions of 
 Herr Delbruck, and the eight hundred pages in 
 which Dr. Hedin says that the Kaiser talked 
 only to him. But England became Continental. 
 Editors were offered from London a free news 
 service. Letters from England promised pay- 
 ment if abuse of Germany was printed in edi- 
 torial columns; and the censor let pass the 
 writers' claim to be our Government's agents. 
 Public men and hotels were shelled with mis- 
 sionary writings, full of patriotism, but empty 
 of grammar and sense, the work of men incom- 
 petent in politics, credulous, ignorant of lan- 
 guages and life. Professors of Oxford made 
 such a mess of their pamphlets that a Hessian 
 patriot offered to pay for reprints. The Swedes 
 did not want teaching from men who believe 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 39 
 
 that the Kaiser promised a thousand pounds 
 to every soldier if Warsaw were taken. The 
 newspaper head-line, when not "A Long Way 
 to Berlin!" was "What Englishmen Believe!" 
 The Press Bureau sent boasts that England 
 was not in a panic, and mistranslations so gross 
 that they caused scandal. The explanation 
 was given me. "The Press Bureau has men 
 who know German; but no one who really 
 knows it." 
 
 The greatest influence in Sweden's thinking 
 was dislike of Russia. The Russia of Peter 
 dealt the first blow to Sweden, the Great Power; 
 and Swedes fear that at Russia's hands may 
 perish the small Power. They believe, with the 
 Norwegians, that Russia wants an Atlantic 
 port; that she will annex Northern Sweden, and 
 seize the deposits of iron ore. They resented 
 the espionage of M. Savinsky, the former Min- 
 ister; they suspect Russian railway policy in 
 Finland; and they hear Dr. Sven Hedin's 
 tocsin. The Russians might take Konigsberg 
 and Danzig, and threaten Sweden from there. 
 It is no use telling Swedes that Russia never 
 has plans; that she can develop her own ice- 
 free ports; that she will no more get Konigs- 
 berg than Cadiz. Finland colours Swedish feel- 
 ing. The need for liberating the Grand Duchy, 
 
40 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 as an end in itself and as protection for Scan- 
 dinavia's independence, is the main motive in 
 the Activist war agitation. The relations of 
 Finns, Swedes, and Russians may be understood 
 by assuming the Germans to be in Ireland, sup- 
 pressing our language, persecuting, and exiling 
 to Togoland the Irish Protestants, half of whom 
 have cousins or friends in England. Finland's 
 culture is Swedish; Finns and Swedes read the 
 same books; Finns come to Stockholm as to 
 their metropolis. Swedish families intermarry 
 with Swedish Finns; in Stockholm are Finnish 
 exiles of distinction; some have become Swedish 
 citizens. The Swedes say that Finland got 
 back her liberties for a few months after Rus- 
 sia's defeat by Japan; and they proclaim that 
 from a similar cause there would be the same 
 effect. All these reasons were put without pas- 
 sion; with praiseworthy zeal to get the best of 
 both worlds. At first the Swedes sold Russia 
 shells; and with the profits bought books which 
 expressed the hope that the shells would not 
 burst. As a result of our policy, the sale ceased, 
 and the purchase increased. 
 
 To Finland I travelled on the Swithiod, with 
 lost Russians and Jews, the Neptune's and 
 others. The terrors of war were in all heads. 
 Near Stockholm, said Russians, you must not 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 41 
 
 bathe — you might dive on a mine. The Swedes 
 had mined, at two places, the channel through 
 the skerries. Passengers were sent below so 
 that they might not see the sailors working, and 
 the port-holes bristled with cameras. On the 
 steamer were Professor Hjelt, Vice-Chancellor of 
 Helsingfors University, head of the Finnish 
 Cabinet when Finland had a cabinet, and Dr. 
 Cajanus, an inspector of forestry. M. Hjelt 
 was in South Germany at the outbreak of war; 
 he was not treated as an enemy subject. There 
 was a handsome, fair-haired girl who might 
 have been a picture by Heinemann of Lustige 
 Blatter. Fru Y came to Stockholm as Fraulein 
 X of Dresden. Her brother built pumps at 
 Moscow; he was sent as prisoner of war to 
 Vologda; and his business would go to the dogs. 
 Fraulein X engaged a Swede at twenty crowns 
 to marry her; and with a Swedish passport 
 made for Moscow. This war wedding recalled 
 last days in Berlin. The Russians said that 
 Fru Y was a spy, and that they would marry 
 her for nothing; the Jews said that twenty 
 crowns was enough. 
 
 Raumo is on deep water, behind skerries in a 
 maze, each like a sea-king's graveyard. Every 
 mariner has set up a cross on every rock. 
 There are piles of wood; many gendarmes, 
 
42 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 sleepy and dissipated; and Finnish policemen 
 in Prussian helmets and coats. The policemen 
 have not the Prussian stiffness and breadth. 
 From Raumo, with Dr. Cajanus, I drove on a 
 good road, fenced with weathered fir-sticks 
 stuck aslant, to Abo, Finland's oldest town. I 
 saw Abo eight years back, clean, with the same 
 bright sun and sky, the same newly painted 
 barques and barquentines matching the sky 
 and spoiling the old Swedish burg. This time 
 were washerwomen with brick faces and ver- 
 milion rags, models for Zorn, bent over water 
 opaque and bright as if the washerwomen had 
 poured in all their blue. On the steamer to 
 Pargas a Finn, to show the ways of Finland's 
 middle class, retold a story by Pylkkanen. The 
 steamer wound between skerries in channels 
 sown with mines. I spent a day with Dr. 
 Reuter, Professor of Sanscrit at Helsingfors, a 
 scholar and patriot whom Englishmen know. I 
 saw him in Helsingfors eight years back, when 
 Russian guns shelled Russian Sveaborg, when 
 the mutineers, having won the forts, went home 
 in Russian way to tea, and let their foes es- 
 cape. 
 
 Helsingfors was quiet. At night on the sea- 
 front no lights were shown. In Raumo I heard 
 that Helsingfors was evacuated; the Germans 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 43 
 
 had come; a German consul had been shot for 
 hiring Finnish pilots; many professors had been 
 executed; and Hango was destroyed. The 
 truth was that the consul at Abo, Herr Gaedecke, 
 was put in gaol; and that the lighthouse and 
 storage sheds at Hango were destroyed. The 
 Commandant of Hango, said Finns, was asked 
 how long it would take to blow up the port; 
 he did not know, and promised to find out; 
 having battered the lighthouse lenses and blown 
 up the sheds, he answered with a precision which 
 drew praise. Outside Sveaborg at anchor, 
 under command of Admiral v. Essen, a good 
 officer now dead, was the Baltic Fleet. There 
 were four battleships. At sunrise the fleet left 
 Sveaborg; officers thought they were going to 
 battle; they said farewell to wives and sis- 
 ters who, in Russian way, had followed them; 
 when the sun set, the ships returned, and wives 
 and sisters rejoiced. This happened daily. The 
 Ariadne stood at the quay, a white Finnish 
 steamer, marked with a Red Cross. This hos- 
 pital ship had not been used. In the town was 
 the Twenty-Second Corps, under command of 
 General v. Brincken. Soldiers and, at night, 
 sailors were in every street. Citizens got on 
 well with them; there was no drunkenness; and 
 the kindly manner which is natural to Russians 
 
44 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 won the soldiers more respect than bureaucrats 
 ever see. 
 
 I talked to Senator Hjelt, to Dr. Ignatius, a 
 displaced judge of the Court of Appeal, to Dr. 
 Toerngren, the author of clever books on Rus- 
 sia, who formerly looked after Finland's inter- 
 ests in St. Petersburg, to Mrs. Tekla Hultin, 
 a member of the Young Finnish party in the 
 Diet. The Finns are politically the maturest 
 people in Russia; and it was not surprising that, 
 unlike belligerents and some neutrals, they kept 
 their heads. There were no disorders and no 
 threats. It was not likely that Germany would 
 disperse her strength by sending troops to Fin- 
 land. If troops did come, Finland would not 
 help. No Finnish party, and no known indi- 
 vidual, stood for that. The Finns knew that 
 the Germans, whether winners or losers, would 
 make peace without considering their helpers, 
 leaving Finland to pay the penalty. 
 
 The resentment of the Finns at the loss of 
 their liberties was not changed by the war. But 
 some hoped. These felt to the Russian crown 
 the old loyalty, deep and sincere when the Con- 
 stitution was respected; and, thinking loyalty 
 might bring alleviation, they wanted to show it. 
 Some Finns volunteered to serve with Russia; 
 and some talked of raising a Finnish legion. The 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 45 
 
 Finnish army, dissolved in 1902, had not been 
 restored; but at Sveaborg there were Finnish 
 officers of reserve; and in the field were other 
 Finns, among them the cavalry general Count 
 Mannerheim, who did good work in Poland and 
 Galicia. The Finns received well the Dowager 
 Empress when she returned through their coun- 
 try; they looked after the lost Russians; and 
 they prepared to help the wounded. Their con- 
 duct made a good impression; and from St. 
 Petersburg came stories of a manifesto of recon- 
 ciliation. 
 
 The cliques which are enemies of Russia as 
 much as enemies of Finland were against recon- 
 ciliation. St. Petersburg Nationalists, profess- 
 ing a new friendship for Poles, and tolerance 
 for Jews, held that the Finns, far from the 
 war, might be ignored. The Governor-General 
 agreed. Not content with enforcing the illegal- 
 ities of others for which he was not responsible, 
 he showed personal zeal in doing harm, in par- 
 ticular for traducing the Finns to his superiors. 
 The war was his chance. His misrepresentations 
 kept in Finland the well-trained Twenty-Second 
 Corps at a time when it was badly wanted in 
 Poland. After the battle of Tannenberg, St. 
 Petersburg saw through General Seyn: the 
 corps was withdrawn. The general commanding 
 
46 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 wrote his thanks to Helsingfors. The Governor- 
 General forbade the publication of the letter; 
 publication would have spoiled the plot to con- 
 vince Russia that Finns are disloyal and to 
 convince Finland that Russians are unjust. 
 While all belligerent states were seeking moral 
 support, the persecution of Finland continued. 
 Some of the country's best citizens were thrown 
 into prison for no offence under Finland's laws, 
 and the former President of the Diet, M. 
 Svinhuvud, was sent to Siberia, where he re- 
 mains. I agreed with the reasoning of the Finns 
 that the restoration of the Constitution is a 
 Russian, as well as a Finnish interest, the in- 
 terest of the international group which Russia 
 belongs to. But Finland is not a British prov- 
 ince; and meddling in other countries' oppres- 
 sions is thankless. When Finns who read Eng- 
 lish newspapers heard of this obstacle, they 
 stared. They said we had promised Europe 
 freedom on lines of nationality when the Ger- 
 mans were beaten; and that the Germans 
 would soon be beaten as they had no shells. 
 
 In Finland was seen the easy way of Russia's 
 war preparations. I spent a night at Abo and 
 two nights at Helsingfors without showing a 
 passport. I was told that to drive a motor-car 
 past the town limits of Raumo, I must have the 
 
LOST RUSSIANS 47 
 
 Commandant's permit. The Commandant was 
 on a warship; his assistant was dining at the 
 speed of one course an hour. After the time 
 needed for two courses, all authorities agreeing 
 that only the Commandant or his assistant 
 could sign a permit, a plain policeman wrote on 
 unheaded foolscap a permit. At the town limits, 
 no one asked for the permit. The Customs 
 had orders to search baggage for more danger- 
 ous things than cigars; but most luggage went 
 through without search. Later, zeal was shown 
 in preventing letters getting out, and more 
 zeal in preventing them getting in. Neither 
 aim was attained, nor any except the delaying 
 of trains. At Vyborg station, guards pulled 
 down the blinds, and passengers pulled them 
 up. At Bieloostrov, the frontier station of Rus- 
 sia, there was a half-hearted search through 
 half the luggage. Months later came a new 
 system; travellers had to state their business, 
 and to give addresses of persons who knew 
 them. There were not the minute regulation 
 and strict observance which I saw in Germany; 
 and the indolent domestic spirit which is Rus- 
 sia's charm was not perturbed. At the Finnish 
 railway station in Petrograd, it seemed that 
 the lost Russians caused more emotion than 
 the war. One sentry stood guard. There were 
 
48 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 some martial-law notices; and many notices 
 begging for news of men and women stranded 
 in Europe. Excited men seized the newly 
 arrived: "Have you seen Nina Petrovna Zhil- 
 kin, who was at Schandau near Dresden?" was 
 the first thing I heard. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 WORK 
 
 IN Petrograd lives a general whom I shall 
 call Kozhin, a good soldier, a patriot, who 
 loved comfort. In June, he was trans- 
 ferred to the dull town Gluchov, where there is 
 no pavement, though there is electric light; 
 where champagne is drunk because there is no 
 clean water. The spoiled man, attacked by- 
 gout, resigned. In a month came war, and all 
 wanted to fight. Kozhin asked for the command 
 of an army. The Minister said no; we have 
 healthy generals. "I have recovered," said the 
 invalid, "I would take a corps." The Min- 
 ister said no. The general asked for a division; 
 for a brigade; then he offered to serve in any 
 rank, anywhere. Nobody wanted him. He 
 tried Red Cross work, and other things; all 
 posts were filled. 
 
 Kozhin vowed that he would serve Russia. 
 He kept his word. An adjutant, who came with 
 news that the Minister had relented, first found 
 how. The general's wife, daughters, servants 
 sat at a table, and sewed herringbone edges to 
 
 49 
 
50 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 soldiers' foot-clouts — the portianki worn in- 
 stead of socks, as German soldiers wear Fuss- 
 lappen. At the top of the table, with pride and 
 resignation on his face, sat the general. He was 
 herringboning foot-clouts, too. 
 
 In listless St. Petersburg, a town which pro- 
 duces little, all were at work. The soldiers, pro- 
 fessional men, merchants, women. They knew 
 that victory means labour, or worked for the 
 charity which is in Russian hearts. Women 
 sewed shirts, mufflers, foot-clouts, bags for to- 
 bacco; they managed hospitals, or took the 
 three weeks' nursing course. When they were 
 not working or nursing they collected. On the 
 pillars were appeals: "Warm our Warriors!" 
 "St. Petersburg to the Defenders of the Father- 
 land!" Collectors swarmed in restaurants, six 
 at once, all begging from all diners for one char- 
 ity, each giving a badge to protect you from the 
 next, each begging with special zeal where he 
 saw badges; till all badges, and money, were 
 gone. Men in the streets wore badges in 
 sheaves; drosky drivers wore single badges; 
 and poor people put credit notes into the col- 
 lecting boxes, and gave the badges back. 
 
 Collecting was done by students from the 
 University and by girls from the Women's 
 Higher Courses. Since Revolution days, the 
 
WORK 51 
 
 students have changed. Students cut their 
 hair; they are cleaner, less intense; student 
 girls grow their hair, their dress is neater, and 
 they seldom smoke. They collected tobacco. 
 In the Nevsky, in the Mariya Square, were 
 many hundred collectors, with cardboard boxes 
 half full of cigarettes, a few cigars, rarely a pipe. 
 The soldier likes mild tobacco rolled in a thin, 
 feminine cigarette; or he smokes in a funnel of 
 newspaper makhorka, & plant akin to tobacco, 
 nearer akin to Prussian chlorium shells. A col- 
 lector of tobacco, and sewer of shirts, was my 
 old friend Marianna Tcherkasskaya-Paletchek 
 of the Imperial Opera. To every shirt she sewed 
 a silver cross engraved "Save and Preserve!" 
 and a note which began "Dear Soldier!" The 
 note asked how the soldier was; what a battle 
 is like; and how about the children? After 
 weeks, the soldier answered that he was well; 
 that battles were tiring; that he had four chil- 
 dren, Matvei, Sidor, Avdotya, and Stepanida; 
 and that he hoped soon to get home. I read 
 many answers. There was one, addressed but 
 unposted, with a bullet-hole and life-blood. The 
 soldier said that he had not been in battle; 
 that he had two children, Karp and Akulina, 
 and that he hoped soon to get home. 
 
 Outwardly, St. Petersburg was much as it is 
 
52 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 in peace. Street demonstrations had ceased. 
 There were a few processions with icons. The 
 monument to war violence was the German 
 Embassy building in the Morskaya Street. 
 This is a big, unpleasing house of Finnish red 
 granite, like the mass emporiums of Berlin. 
 Authors of rejected plans — Germans — called 
 it barbarous; and foretold that angry Russians 
 would pull it down. The omen was fulfilled. 
 On the night of the 4th of August, the mob 
 sacked the house, and did to death an Embassy 
 official, Herr Kattner. The statues on the roof 
 were thrown into the Moika canal. The police 
 looked on. Later the windows were boarded 
 up. The walls remain spattered with mud. 
 After that, for a long time there was no ill- 
 treatment of enemy subjects by private citizens. 
 In June, during the defeats in Galicia, mobs in 
 Moscow sacked German houses and shops, and 
 massacred Germans. Later, they burned Rus- 
 sian houses, shops, factories, and army equip- 
 ment workshops. For bloodshed and destruc- 
 tion this event excelled the Jewish pogroms. 
 The chief cause was rage at the military posi- 
 tion, which could no longer be concealed from 
 any public but the British. The official tele- 
 graph agency praised the affair to foreign coun- 
 tries as proof of national resolution and pledge 
 
WORK 53 
 
 of success. In the Duma the Government was 
 charged with having organised the outbreak. 
 
 Measured by population, Russia's field army- 
 is small. Public services were not curtailed; 
 the passenger trains, trams, and droskies were 
 as in peace. Strong hall-porters, dvorniks, and 
 commissionaires lounged in the yards. The 
 town was orderly; there were no restaurant 
 scandals; and no fights between soldiers and 
 civilians. Soldiers were treated with respect. 
 The soldiers, and reservists on the way to de- 
 pots, behaved well. The war brought a moral 
 unity of which there was no sign ten years be- 
 fore. Drinking, the one thing apart from police 
 incitements that upsets the mild people, was 
 forbidden. 
 
 In the days of mobilisation the state vodka 
 shops were closed; later they were closed till 
 October; and at last, till the end of the war. 
 As no private interest except the interest of dis- 
 tiller landowners was hurt, nearly all approved. 
 The sale of wine and beer was suspended; later 
 it was allowed under restriction. Vodka, as 
 sold retail by the state, has 40 per cent, of al- 
 cohol, in Poland 50 per cent. Twenty years 
 ago publicans sold vodka in their own drink- 
 shops; the vodka was bad; gambling and 
 usury went with drinking on the premises. In 
 
54 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 1895 and the years following, M. Witte estab- 
 lished the state monopoly. Poles only were 
 compensated, they having a vested interest. 
 Witte's motives were temperance, finance, and 
 the centralising of economic resources in the 
 state's hands. The state manufactured vodka; 
 and sold it in sealed bottles. From vodka came 
 a third of the revenue, and the state was in- 
 terested in pushing the sale. Conscience was 
 calmed by payment of subsidies to Curacies of 
 National Temperance, official institutions which 
 helped to found People's Theatres, and other 
 enlightening works, but were distrusted, being 
 bureaucratic, by independent social workers. 
 Some temperance men thought they did more 
 harm than good. In law there was a qualified 
 Local Option; the village communes could peti- 
 tion for closing of the state vodka shops : in prac- 
 tice, the petitions were ignored. The system, 
 though no worse than the old system, was bad. 
 Vodka is not a beverage; it is drunk to excess 
 on Sundays and holidays. Under the monopoly 
 there was no drinking on the premises. Street 
 drinking became the Russian form of intemper- 
 ance; the street of the state drink shop had its 
 trail of reeling men; the shop was shown by 
 red patches on the lintels from the seals of the 
 "little scoundrels" — so the small bottles were 
 
WORK 55 
 
 called. Communal funds continued to be spent 
 on drink; labour hirings, festivals, and family 
 events were celebrated by drinking. On Sun- 
 days ten thousand drunkards were picked up in 
 Petrograd streets. They spent Mondays sleep- 
 ing off the effects. An anti-alcohol congress of 
 1898 condemned the monopoly; since then, 
 condemnations have been many; and when M. 
 Kokovtseff left office, the Tsar declared that 
 the Budget must no longer be based on national 
 misery. There is now no public drunkenness. 
 There is illicit drinking of vodka, ether, eau de 
 cologne, and furniture polish. The towns are 
 quiet. The economy of health and labour will 
 pay something towards the cost of the war. 
 
 Economic conditions were not bad. The low 
 proportion of men taken as soldiers made it 
 possible to continue industrial undertakings. 
 Mining labour was short. Before the war be- 
 gan, the heaviest field work was done; women 
 and children work in harvest; and the food 
 production was normal. In the towns prices 
 were high. Prices of manufactured goods rose 
 owing to the cessation of import. Food prices 
 rose because mobilisation stopped the freight 
 traffic. The peasants did not gain from the 
 rise; they could not sell their food in the towns 
 or to foreign countries. It was hoped that when 
 
56 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 mobilisation was complete prices would fall, 
 and would remain until export was resumed 
 lower than in peace. After mobilisation, prices 
 fell a little; but they remain very high; meat 
 prices have doubled. The railroad freight traffic 
 never became normal. There were not enough 
 engines and cars. The Germans seized the 
 Polish coal-mines; wood was moved with diffi- 
 culty, and there was scarcity of fuel. Employ- 
 ment was good. The stoppage of import and 
 the special war needs forced Russia to manu- 
 facture many things formerly bought abroad. 
 The chief were medical stores, optical and 
 scientific instruments, electrical machinery, 
 dyes, and printing inks. Zemstvos opened fac- 
 tories; and University scholars gave scientific 
 help. This movement progressed; the new 
 products are not much inferior to the foreign; 
 but the cost of production is high. The finan- 
 cial situation was not promising. With the 
 suspension of the vodka monopoly and the loss 
 of import duties, the chief wells of revenue dried 
 up. Direct taxes are few; and to increase them 
 is hard. Taxes were imposed on telephones, 
 postage became dearer, and there were new 
 lotteries. The economic gain from the new 
 abstinence from spirits cannot be turned into 
 taxes at once. 
 
WORK 57 
 
 In the streets the signs of war were wounded, 
 many women in black, funerals, and masses for 
 the dead. The shops sold pictures of the Tsar 
 speaking from the Winter Palace and from the 
 Kremlin; portraits of the Grand Duke Nich- 
 olas; postcards with the Grand Duke's procla- 
 mations to the Poles; and photographs of 
 generals: Rennenkampf, Ivanoff, and Zhilinsky. 
 Every month the generals changed; Rennen- 
 kampf and Zhilinsky were replaced by Ruzski, 
 Brusiloff, Alexeyeff . These in turn disappeared. 
 
 The windows blazed with "wretched pic- 
 tures." The wretched pictures (liubotchniya 
 hartini) are bright lithographs. In peace they 
 hang in every cabin and make parks for cock- 
 roaches: they show "The Emancipation of the 
 Serfs, February, 1861," and "The Siege of the 
 Trinity Monastery by the Poles"; and they 
 are sold in small shops. In war, the subjects 
 are livelier. Ten years ago, the wretched pic- 
 tures showed good-humoured Cossacks spitting 
 Japanese; the flight of Admiral Togo; and 
 other events of history. This time the demand 
 for pictures was great. The hero of most was 
 the Cossack Krutckkoff, who spitted eleven 
 foes, and got the St. George's Cross. Krutch- 
 koff appeared as a true Cossack, with curls, a 
 cap worn with coquetry on one side, and the 
 
58 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 smile of a man who has slain eleven. He had 
 three Germans on his lance; the eight, in Noah's 
 Ark style, wriggled on discarded lances. The 
 peasant Liakhoff, who wrote a commentary on 
 Krutchkoff, says that as each lance took two 
 Germans, an angel brought a new lance. "The 
 Germans have no anti-airship guns," said Liak- 
 hoff. "A good thing for the angels." The 
 other pictures make the Germans odious, and 
 the Russians good-humoured and bloodthirsty. 
 A Russian cuts the Kaiser in two, or His Maj- 
 esty is slapped (in rearguard action) by a snub- 
 nosed Ismailoff guardsman while the Austrian 
 ally sprawls. The guardsman is a poet: 
 
 " Because you have provoked a storm 
 You'll get a smack on your platform; 
 You'll get a slap 
 With a strap. 
 
 Meantime I'll tread upon the toe 
 Of your absurd ally, our foe; 
 And soon I'll make the rascal wiser, 
 And eager to forswear the Kaiser." 
 
 The only angry cartoon was The Kaiser Anti- 
 christ, with His Sulphurity, under winged fiends, 
 astride a swine. A monastery of Novgorod prov- 
 ince had drawings for a fresco, The Slav Peoples 
 Foiling Teuton Barbarism. Russia, with Servia 
 much in earnest beside her, stretched out her 
 hand — the arrangement recalled Nations of 
 
WORK 59 
 
 Europe Defend Your Holiest Goods! The Su- 
 perior told me that the first sketch was burnt. 
 The monks unrolled paper for new sketches; 
 and went to bed. Next morning they found 
 Russia and Servia outlined by heavenly hand. 
 To the question whether the monks were locked 
 in their cells at night, the Superior said, "In 
 war time we must have faith." 
 
 There was at first no war literature or art. 
 Pictures in the spring exhibition of the advanced 
 society, The Peripatetics, dealt with the war. 
 Cheap editions of the Orange Book were sold. 
 At the Little Theatre, I saw a play by MM. 
 Dalsky and Korsakoff, The Shame of Germany. 
 There was a good parody of Max and Moritz as 
 the two German Emperors; later a play by M. 
 Burenin on the capture of Berlin by the Tsaritsa 
 Elizabeth's soldiers. In Esthonia, peasants 
 played The New Poltava. The Kaiser was the 
 new Charles the Twelfth; there was a New 
 Mazeppa (not the Imperial Chancellor). Dum- 
 mies in uniforms of green paper played Ger- 
 mans. Villagers refused these roles. "Why? 
 Because you hate the Germans?" "We hate 
 nobody; we don't like running away." "The 
 dummies don't run away; you could stand still 
 as they do." "We should have to run." Cos- 
 sacks came on the stage with lances, whips, 
 
60 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 and red cloths used as blood; and made the 
 peasant's meaning plain. 
 
 The newspaper censorship, exercised in the 
 Commander-in-Chief's name, was severe. Lib- 
 eral papers were suppressed; fines as high as 
 £1000 were imposed. Newspapers of enemy 
 countries were excluded; the enemies' official 
 reports were suppressed. Good news was is- 
 sued; drawn engagements appeared as victories; 
 and defeats did not appear. Of the battle of 
 Tannenberg the public learned only that three 
 generals were killed, and that the losses were 
 heavy. After the battle of Gorlice-Tarnow, 
 which cost Russia Galicia, Poland, Courland, 
 and Lithuania, a statement was made to neutral 
 countries that the enemy had had no success of 
 any kind. Losses of territory were ascribed to 
 strategical considerations, they were pledges of 
 coming success. The Government did not in- 
 vent the weekly marches on Berlin and de- 
 structions of Field-Marshal Hindenburg which 
 rejoiced England; this higher class of work was 
 left to the ally. Editors complained that truth 
 was suppressed; to remedy the grievance they 
 filled their unofficial columns with inventions 
 far beyond a government's power. As with 
 us, novelists whose books ceased to sell, turned 
 to statecraft. After boring readers for years 
 
WORK 61 
 
 by the admirable Russian restraint, they pro- 
 duced explanations why Bavarians massacre 
 Prussians, and Kaiser's Prayers with the exor- 
 dium, "I, God, am thy pig!" The transforma- 
 tion was surprising, for no example was set 
 from above; ministers kept silent, not under- 
 standing with ours that jeers from the gallery 
 are the nobler half of war. 
 
 As in Berlin in the last days, there was a new 
 nationalism, a turning from foreign, in partic- 
 ular from enemy ways. From aping foreigners 
 Russia, like Germany, suffered. St. Peters- 
 burg became Petrograd. The change was made 
 by Imperial decree; in the newspapers beside 
 the decree was news of the battle of Tannen- 
 berg. The agitation for Petrograd, which 
 means Peter's-town, was begun by Moscow 
 Czechs, who took Russian citizenship, and be- 
 came more Russian than the Russians. Some 
 Russians found that the change to Petrograd 
 was childish; some that Petrograd sounds like 
 a small Balkan town; some condemned a 
 breach with history; the city is the European, 
 Germanic creation of Peter; and Sanct-Peters- 
 burg, scholars said, was a form not German but 
 Dutch. Schliisselburg became Oriekhoff. Those 
 who approved asked for the change of Kron- 
 stadt, Oranienbaum, and the Tsar's summer 
 
62 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 home, Peterhof; and cynics said that the Ger- 
 mans would change Petrograd to Wilhelmstadt. 
 The German language was no longer heard; 
 speaking German in public was punished by 
 fine; and the German newspapers were sup- 
 pressed. Shops concealed that they were Ger- 
 man; the restaurant Leiner became "Restau- 
 rant of the Association of Russian Waiters," 
 and the dish Vienna Schnitzel became Kharkoff 
 Slab. Later, German businesses were closed. 
 Measures were taken against Germanism in 
 the Baltic Provinces; and in the south against 
 the German farmers. The Minister of In- 
 struction, M. Casso, since dead, planned to 
 replace the German language with English and 
 Swedish. Subjects of the enemy states were 
 sent to Viatka, Vologda, and Orenburg: wo- 
 men and men without military obligations left 
 Russia. The trains through Finland were full 
 of expelled Germans. Many had been born in 
 Russia; they had no connections with Germany, 
 and could not speak German. They were allowed 
 to take fifty roubles in money and valuables. 
 Fifty thousand enemy subjects left Petrograd. 
 Some, long settled, became subjects of the 
 Tsar. 
 
 The places of expelled enemies were taken by 
 wounded. These were brought from the rail- 
 
WORK 63 
 
 way stations in Red Cross motor-cars, or in 
 coupled trams; one tram converted for badly 
 wounded who could not sit, the other with seats 
 as in peace. In Moscow, where streets are 
 paved with cobbles, all wounded were moved 
 in trams. The transport was well done. Every 
 street had a Red Cross on a shield; and an in- 
 scription sometimes in Russian, sometimes in 
 gnarled Slavonic: 
 
 "Lazaret of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Mavrikievna." 
 "Lazaret of the Commune of St. George the Victory- 
 
 Bringer." 
 "Lazaret of Piotr Michailovitch Ossetinsky." 
 "Lazaret of the Bank of Commerce." 
 
 Men of different classes, religious orders, and 
 trading corporations founded hospitals or main- 
 tained them. There were hospitals without 
 these signs. At houses of friends called on 
 after long absence, I found nursing homes. 
 The families crowded into back rooms. I 
 visited the hospital at Tsarskoe Selo Palace, 
 the Empress Mariya Hospital in the Michael 
 Palace, the Obukhoff Municipal Hospital, and 
 the smaller hospitals of private persons. The 
 hospitals were clean and quiet. Officers had 
 no complaints; the soldiers were better off than 
 at home. The nurses were clever, devoted, and, 
 after short practice, fit for their work. Surgeons 
 
64 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 had not enough instruments and medicaments; 
 help was expected from allied and neutral states. 
 In private houses, women sat round tables pre- 
 paring bandages, lint, compresses: there were 
 many deaths; and as soldiers should be decently 
 buried, different authorities were preparing cof- 
 fins, crosses, and wreaths. 
 
 In these days most wounds were caused by 
 shell splinters and shrapnel bullets. There 
 were many contusions and burns. There were 
 abnormal or serious wounds from bullets that 
 changed position during flight and struck 
 obliquely to their axes; from deformed shrapnel 
 bullets that took with them cloth, hooks, or 
 buttons; and from normal rifle-bullets. When 
 travelling at great speed the normal bullet 
 splinters hard bones, and sends the blood flying 
 with explosive effect. In Poland I saw that 
 proved by experiment on animals. There were 
 many cases of lockjaw. Men were blinded by 
 the pressure of gas from bursting shells, branded 
 by shells that passed them by, and stripped of 
 their clothing. Men stripped are often killed; 
 the compressed gas gets into the body cavities 
 or under the clothes, as it expands it rends body 
 and clothes. From shells of the Thick Berthas, 
 of the Austrian Pilseners, and of the Austrian 
 30.5 mortars men disappear. 
 
WORK 65 
 
 For visiting, the apartment hospitals were 
 best. In them were lightly wounded and con- 
 valescent soldiers, who liked to see visitors and 
 to talk. The men were brave. They knew 
 little of battles, and could seldom describe what 
 they had seen and felt. There were exceptions; 
 and I got rough notions of soldier minds. Con- 
 fidence was great. Whatever the end of a 
 battle, the soldiers recalled only the successful 
 parts. They criticised the Germans, praising 
 the German artillery, and laughing, without 
 reason, at the infantry. The infantry was "no 
 good." "Little, pale men who couldn't drive 
 a horse or grow fruit." The man who said this 
 fought at Hohenstein against Hamburg Land- 
 sturm men, probably middle-aged clerks. Men 
 had vivid but confused memories. A soldier 
 of the Army of the Narew said that at a rear- 
 guard fight at Soldau, fought before the battle 
 of Tannenberg, seven German companies lost 
 450 men. He told of the self-sacrifice of a com- 
 rade, heard of from prisoners. The comrade, 
 when standing sentry on Mlava bridge, found 
 Germans on the girders beneath. He fired in 
 the air to summon help, next at the enemy. 
 The Germans shouted advice to the Russian 
 to leave his post and surrender. The bridge 
 was mined. The sentry continued to fire. The 
 
66 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Germans fled. Bridge and sentry were blown 
 up. 
 
 Soldiers tell stories hard to believe. With- 
 out intention they elaborate; plain tales in 
 going the round of a regiment gather im- 
 probable complications. A clear-headed Baltic 
 Province soldier told me that his comrades 
 acted as executioners for the enemy. They 
 surprised an outpost; and got, undisturbed, to 
 the camp behind. German discipline is severe; 
 and small offences are punished with death. 
 The Russians, drawing near to the camp, crept. 
 Peering over a hillock, they saw a blindfolded 
 soldier standing before a firing-party. They 
 were startled; and they watched. From an- 
 other side came more Russians. These fired a 
 volley : the first man to fall was the condemned. 
 The Germans made off, leaving their wounded. 
 The condemned man lay senseless with a bullet 
 in the thigh. He was carried off by bearers who 
 had not seen the execution. A surgeon, stop- 
 ping the blood, assumed that the German had 
 an old wound on the face; and remarked that 
 it was strangely tied up. He pulled the hand- 
 kerchief away. I found a Cossack from Ren- 
 nenkampfs Army of Vilna, who rode nearly to 
 Insterburg, and at Tapiau was wounded in the 
 ankle and head. His hair was cropped; his 
 
WORK 67 
 
 face was gaunt and scarred; a tchuprina (the 
 thin, long lock formerly worn on the crown) 
 would have made him a Cossack of Gogol. 
 With a vain grin, he showed me a photograph 
 taken months before the war, showing a dif- 
 ferent Cossack with smooth face, long, care- 
 fully curled hair, and a forage-cap, worn as 
 always coquettishly awry. He boasted that 
 Cossacks stand above moujiks in civilisation; 
 their land is better tilled; their houses have 
 good roofs; education is higher; they have 
 poetry and art. He pronounced the word 
 "art" with reverence. But the Cossacks have 
 the freebooter tradition: their spirit is liberty, 
 boldness: they despise the moujik's Christianity, 
 the abject will and fear of worldly success. 
 
 Petrograd talked of death. Hospitals in 
 Petrograd and Moscow had room for a million; 
 it followed that in each period equal to the 
 average duration of cure, a million men would 
 be wounded. In early September, after Kras- 
 nik, Lemberg, and Tannenberg there were sto- 
 ries of heavy losses: extinctions of guards' 
 regiments; families that lost three sons; old 
 races ended. Little was known. In the Palace 
 Square, the Special Department for Collecting 
 and Registering the Names of Persons in the 
 Active Army Put out of Action drew crowds as 
 
68 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 long as the department's name. The Palace 
 Square is a cobble-paved, neglected space be- 
 tween the neglected crescent building of the 
 Ministries of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs 
 and the neglected Winter Palace. Up-stairs 
 went ladies from automobiles, wrinkled work- 
 women in shawls, ancient, untidy generals; 
 they crushed patiently with Russian fraternity. 
 Lists of the killed hung on the walls, and no 
 one could get near them. There was confusion. 
 The surnames Ivanoff, Kuznetsoff, Smirnoff, 
 with them the Christian names Ivan, Piotr, 
 Matvei got mixed up. Newspapers told of a 
 dead Smirnoff claimed by twenty widows. A 
 Moscow girl learned from the newspapers of 
 the death of the officer she was to marry. Later, 
 he was listed as a prisoner. Last he was said to 
 be wounded at Tsarskoe Selo. The girl went 
 to the hospital, and found, at the point of death, 
 a man she did not know. The betrothed officer, 
 mortally wounded, had given papers to a com- 
 rade; the comrade was badly wounded; and 
 the papers were supposed to be his own. Men 
 stripped naked by shells lost their identity 
 marks; they were reported missing; and their 
 kith and kin wait for the day of peace when the 
 Germans will send them home. 
 The terrors around, the endless death-lists, 
 
WORK 69 
 
 and certain omens which shocked the universal 
 confidence worked on Petrograd in a special 
 way. The exaltation of revolutionary days 
 came back. People were strange; they behaved 
 in ways their own. They spoke to one another 
 in the streets. Emotion, like drink it may be, 
 sharpens character and brings idiosyncrasies 
 out. The fraternal people became more frater- 
 nal; and the barriers, always weak, which sep- 
 arate men from men fell. Strange proposals 
 were made; and cold-minded men who in peace 
 times laugh at eccentricities found the proposals 
 commonplace and right. An actress known to 
 me, a clever, cultivated woman, went daily to 
 cry with the wounded; went in old clothes as 
 if she really suffered, and brought no photog- 
 rapher. She did many things which are not 
 done in peace. A concert, to bring in money 
 for chocolate for soldiers, was planned. In 
 Russia humane impulses are curbed; singing 
 without authority is sinful; and authority 
 dines at the rate of one course a day. The 
 actress went to a lady in waiting, who would 
 speak to the Tsar. This was an old, old lady, 
 a princess, sharp and erect, impiously proud, 
 so high over honours other than being herself 
 that she dropped the title and was known as 
 mademoiselle. All day long, high-nosed and 
 
70 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 rouged, she sat in a stiff chair, counting stitches 
 and muttering of dead friends: and few dared 
 approach. She gave the promise. The actress 
 had never seen any sight so wonderful; and 
 she showed her pleasure. It was time to go. 
 The lady in waiting took up the mittens, and 
 said "Good day!" The actress said "Good 
 day!" and waited. She reddened and said, 
 "May I look at you for a moment? You have 
 no idea how happy I am. I never saw such 
 bright eyes, and your face looks as if it were 
 stained with rose petals. Even on the stage 
 we never have anything like you; you are more 
 like a Dresden-china marquise than a woman 
 on earth. I have a favour to ask you. May I 
 give you a kiss ?" The old lady was astonished; 
 she began to cry. Palace life is dull; maybe 
 this was the first scene of grace and pathos since 
 the maker of Russia poured soup into cour- 
 tiers' hair. 
 
 The soldiers who were to get the chocolates, 
 tobacco, and coffins drilled in public. The drill 
 yard was the Champ de Mars, a dusty space 
 near the red building of our Embassy. Some 
 companies drilled in uniform, some in civilian 
 dress. The soldiers were Petrograd artisans, 
 carters, and bargees; there were educated 
 men — I saw two in the uniform of the College 
 
WORK 71 
 
 of Technology. Reservists of the active army 
 drilled over again; and there were new men 
 learning the opening of rifle locks, and the 
 meaning of raz, dva! All was in Russian way. 
 The drill is easier than the German; there is 
 no parade step; discipline is rougher, but there 
 are human relations between sergeant and con- 
 script. Men grin at their blunders, munch 
 bread, and joke. Civilians and officers not on 
 duty crowd in. An officer speaks to an ugly 
 soldier who looks like Tolstoy in youth. The 
 soldier grins; and his comrades laugh loud. 
 The soldier told me the joke: it was about a 
 collegiate secretary's horse, and had no point. 
 In the field the human relation continues; it 
 is a moral bond which repairs many failings. 
 Soldiers at Lodz found their wounded captain 
 under the ruins of a gun; sooner than forsake 
 him they stood and were bayoneted: a captain 
 of the 73rd Regiment crept from the trenches 
 to save a wounded servant, and a bullet ended 
 his brotherly work. 
 
 Studying soldiers, I went with a volunteer to 
 Krasnoe Selo, the camp and manoeuvre field to 
 the south. It was still summer. Soldiers were 
 playing football, twenty men a side, "because 
 forty wanted to play." The spirit is elastic — 
 if a hundred wanted to play, why not play fifty 
 
72 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 a side? Forswearing ideality, aestheticism, and 
 revolutionary exaltation, the nation took to 
 sport. Zeal cooled when the Tsar instituted a 
 Regulation Committee. The Chairman, the 
 Palace Commandant General Voyeikoff, was a 
 sportsman; but social initiatives get best on 
 alone. When night fell we set out to a soldiers' 
 soiree; plunged through Ingermannland mud, 
 and lost our way. There were soldiers all round. 
 A soldier told us his rank was "buyer of food"; 
 his comrade, a handsome man in blouse and 
 apron, was battalion "porridge-boiler." The 
 porridge-boiler pointed across mud to a strip 
 of light. This was a chink in a barn near pines. 
 The light came from oil-lamps. There was a 
 stage — planks on pine-trunk trestles — above 
 were an oleograph, a true wretched picture, of 
 a smooth-faced autocrat, and the new flag. 
 The flag is the old red, white, and blue, with 
 the Romanoff eagle in a corner, to express, said 
 the Tsar's decree, the unity of Tsar and nation. 
 The patroness, stout and handsome, was a gen- 
 eral's wife. Soldiers and boys from a military 
 school played the balalaika; there was a play 
 Bald but Not Bad-Tempered; afterwards supper, 
 which was dinner postponed, cabbage soup, 
 buckwheat porridge, and boiled beef. The 
 general's wife sent round apples, looked at me 
 
WORK 73 
 
 angrily, and said in French: "When these men 
 join they don't want supper; the villages op- 
 pose supper." She told me with irritation that 
 a box of apples was lost. The man who said 
 he was porridge-boiler thrust his head through 
 the doorway, asking, "Will the foreign gentle- 
 man have honey ?" He went to fetch the 
 honey, but never returned. At the railway- 
 station I met him in a uniform with red cuffs. 
 On his arm was a black handkerchief with 
 printed rosebuds, covering a girl's head. Prob- 
 ably he remembered the honey, for he blushed 
 as red as his cuffs. 
 
 The soldiers, drilled and tramping to the 
 Warsaw station, embodied the national spirit. 
 They looked domestic and unsoldierly. They 
 wore fawn overcoats, pleated behind, with long 
 sleeves serving as gloves — in cold weather you 
 join them in front; high boots wrinkled at the 
 instep; soft caps, in winter busbies of sheep- 
 skin; and fawn hoods. The coats and boots 
 were good. The haversacks were like tourists' 
 knapsacks; men in the new formations and 
 men sent to refill the ranks had plain sacks kept 
 in place by straps round the chest. Some units 
 had haversacks of both kinds. The men were 
 hung round with axes, spades, coils of rope, 
 small bags of tobacco, kettles, saucepans; and 
 
74 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 they embraced chunks of bread. I heard them 
 called "marching households." They were very 
 heavily, very clumsily laden; but they walked 
 well, apparently not to look martial, but to get 
 ahead. 
 
 The soldiers were ugly. In Petrograd you see 
 thin, bearded men; in the forests of Vologda 
 and Olonetz are good-looking, spiritual men; 
 and there are droschky drivers who look like 
 Nesteroff's saints. If these types are among 
 the soldiers, they are crushed by the busbies, 
 rifles, sacks, pots, kettles. The complexion was 
 sallow. There were no rosy men like English- 
 men, no flabby beer-pink faces of Prussia. 
 Coats, hoods, and faces were nearly the same 
 brown; everything but rifles and the shining 
 pots looked made of baked mud. Many men 
 had red noses, smallpox marks, skin eruptions, 
 scars. Soldiers from the north had Teutonic 
 fair hair; sometimes a weak Finnish fairness 
 going with broad faces, thin beards, and eye- 
 lids slightly oblique. Tartar faces were com- 
 mon, and there were smooth faces which might 
 be Greek. Isolation makes impossible a national 
 blend. The figures were hidden. The loose 
 overcoat, the shapeless hood, the knapsack, 
 pots, kettles, bread covered everything up. 
 You saw bundles, broad and not very high; the 
 
WORK 75 
 
 contents, probably, were strong, gnarled, and a 
 little bent. Some of the faces were sharp, more 
 were empty; there were many immobile faces, 
 the faces of men who are dead, but in health, 
 The sharper faces had a self-centred look, as if 
 the brains behind were thinking of fences and 
 lawsuits, and not of war. I watched these men 
 getting clumsily into the train for Warsaw; and 
 could not think their thoughts were of Warsaw, 
 much less of Berlin. This impression was not 
 true of all. A Russian army has plain soldiers, 
 who have their own views, groping but useful 
 and sometimes exalted, of life; it has volun- 
 teers who are inspired to fight for their country; 
 and conscripts, who feel twice inspired, and 
 have resolved not to fight at all. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 MESSIAH 
 
 THE Russians, laughing at their inter- 
 preters to Europe, tell of an English- 
 man, settled ten years in Tver, who gave 
 as reason for not writing a book that he did not 
 want to be praised as "the well-known author- 
 ity on the Tsar's Empire." He could not be 
 praised and self-respecting. English dualism 
 and the mutations of policy required, not art- 
 ists with the many colours of life, but authori- 
 tative monochrome painters of hero-mystics, or 
 of savages fed on candles who snare wolves in 
 the Kremlin. The fashion changed but remained 
 extreme. The Russians distrust this dualism, 
 dislike our new literature, which is full of it; 
 and, were it not improved by translators, we 
 should dislike theirs. 
 
 Being timid compared with the interpreters, 
 Russians will not express their country in a 
 phrase. They admit that there are national 
 moral traits, not to be found in all: there are 
 kindliness, indolence, instability, ardour for 
 
 brief heroism, more honesty in thought than 
 
 76 
 
MESSIAH 77 
 
 in action, and plenty of the virtue which most 
 makes hope: 
 
 "Russian life is an unbroken chain of faiths 
 and infatuations. Unbelief, negation — these it 
 has not even smelt. . . . Half of my life I have 
 been Atheist or Nihilist; yet never was there an 
 instant when I did not believe. . . . Mother 
 made us children eat a lot; and, giving us din- 
 ner, she said, 'Eat, children! There's nothing 
 on earth like soup!' I believed. I ate soup 
 ten times a day; I swallowed it, sharkwise, to 
 the extreme of vomiting and repulsion. . . . 
 As soon as I could read and understand, my 
 beliefs went beyond description ... I joined 
 robbers; I hired boys to torture me for Christ's 
 sake. . . . When I learned that white light, 
 which I thought was white, was composed of 
 seven primary colours, my head went round. 
 . . . Like a madman, I rushed about the house; 
 I preached my truth to the stable boys; I 
 flamed with hatred against men who saw in 
 white light only white. ... I was infatuated 
 without cease ... by ideas, by men, by events, 
 by places. . . . And I did not believe like a 
 German Doctor of Philosophy or live as a her- 
 mit. My every faith bent me as a bow and 
 tore my body to bits." 
 
 In Petrograd lived an Englishman as long as 
 
78 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 the compatriot in Tver; and wrote a book. He 
 was more Russian than Russia, therefore twice 
 faithful to our cause; and he knew that every- 
 thing conceivable that could make victory swift 
 would happen beyond question and at once. He 
 seized in the street men he had not seen for 
 years, and whispered with passion, "Roumania 
 is joining us this week ! " " How do you know ? " 
 "By induction." When he changed induction 
 for inspiration, he said that Providence sup- 
 ported the right; he condemned as pro-Germans 
 men who said that the Entente would have 
 trouble because, though Providence supported 
 the right, it sometimes gave victory to the side 
 it did not support. This Englishman was the 
 prophet of the war gospel of Russia. The men 
 he lived among believed not as German doctors 
 of philosophy, but in a way that tore them to 
 bits. This resembled the confidence of England. 
 But in Russia belief was free from make-belief, 
 and it was coloured by emotions alien to our 
 plain minds. 
 
 On the surface Russia was like the other 
 belligerent states. Quarrels of politics and of 
 economy ceased; there were zeal for victory 
 and ardour for self-sacrifice. The suspension 
 of home quarrels meant much, because these 
 were as embittered as with us, the cause being 
 
MESSIAH 79 
 
 the same: the caprices of individuals were set 
 above the law. A week before the crisis, Petro- 
 grad saw strikes which recalled the first strikes 
 of the Revolution. The Government killed 
 fewer men and the strikers killed more. The 
 omen of 1905 was not fulfilled. Revolution 
 did not seize the war as a lever. Unity was 
 nearly achieved. Outside unity were the Social 
 Democrats and the Labour men. The Social 
 Democrats threatened that the army would 
 turn against the autocracy. Had they been 
 sharper tacticians, they would have done as the 
 German Socialists did: pronounced for the war, 
 shared the credit of success, saying in case of 
 defeat, "We told you so." Socialist agitation 
 failed; the workmen ceased their strikes. In 
 the Duma, except from the extreme Left, no 
 opposition was raised. The masters of policy 
 and rhetoric, the liberalising Intelligence, wel- 
 comed the war more warmly than the Bureau- 
 cracy, more warmly than the reactionaries, 
 whose steadfastness has been doubted. The 
 Black Hundreds and the Intelligents whom 
 they used to murder forswore their feud; the 
 Black Hundreds and Nationalists ceased to 
 hate Poles and suspended hate of the Jews. 
 The nation generally ceased quarrelling with 
 the Bureaucracy and the Tsar. There were 
 
80 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 outbreaks of sincere good feeling, which in ar- 
 dour and character resembled the fraternising 
 of Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews six 
 years before. Faith was the cement in the new 
 fraternity; when faith was shaken by defeat, 
 dissensions returned. Reactionaries and pro- 
 gressives accused one another of being respon- 
 sible; the Government was violently attacked 
 and threatened with revolution; the dormant 
 Black Hundred and Anti-Semitic movements 
 awoke alarmingly; and the old hatred between 
 autocracy and working class led to a massacre 
 in Kostroma. 
 
 The causes of unity were several. One was 
 Slav sentiment. Enthusiasts of Slav brother- 
 hood upheld the Tsar's decision to champion 
 Servia against Austria-Hungary. They desired 
 annexation to the empire of Slav lands outside, 
 thinking most of Polish and Ruthenian Austria 
 and Polish Prussia. This was a small cause, or 
 a great cause which counted with few. Foreign 
 affairs are no great thing to Russians. For a 
 century society has been absorbed in internal 
 struggles. As the salient international interest, 
 Pan-Slavism drew foreign notice. Being linked 
 with reactionary Slavophilism, its power was 
 limited at home. 
 
 Dislike of Germany was another cause. Be- 
 
MESSIAH 81 
 
 fore the war, Germans were not hated. Pro- 
 gressives believed in the superiority of Europe 
 without discrimination; seekers of health and 
 pleasure crowded Germany; the Press, as in 
 England, praised German science, the small 
 extremes of wealth, the talent for living evenly 
 and meanly which is foreign to the unthrifty 
 Englishman and the expansive Slav. Slavo- 
 philes of the traditional doctrine disliked Ger- 
 many. They cherished the expansive spirit — 
 the "wide nature," they said; and they ascribed 
 to Germanic shackles Russia's ills. Disliked 
 were the Germanised Court, the Germanised 
 Bureaucracy, the Germanised University and 
 Gymnasium. Russia could produce other, 
 better things. The Westerners (the anti- 
 Slavophile Zapadniki) admitted the ills; but 
 said that Russia had taken only the bad sides 
 of Europe. In the last years this dispute has 
 been still. Dislike was caused by Germany's 
 predominance in industry. Great values in 
 German goods were imported. Though helped 
 by high duties, Russians could not compete. 
 German agents and travellers swarmed; their 
 industry and knowledge gave them success. 
 Competitors felt this as a grievance, as the 
 Prussian agrarians felt a grievance in the im- 
 port of Russian wheat. In both countries, the 
 
82 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 consumers profited. After the war began, the 
 notion of the pushing, laborious German played 
 a part in agitation. 
 
 The chief cause of unity for war-making was 
 that the war had come. Most believed that 
 Russia would win; doubters had double reason 
 to support the war. This is the way in all bel- 
 ligerent countries. A great war obscures doubts 
 as to its cause. Reasons are marshalled; but 
 the reasons are the fruit of zeal for the war, and 
 not the seed. Germans who did not want to 
 champion Austria-Hungary support the war 
 and find their reasons. The war is a struggle 
 for life; and men will not condemn their coun- 
 try to death because they question the acts of 
 ministers: the penalty is too great; it falls on 
 too many, and on the innocent. This is the 
 nature of wars big enough to threaten national 
 safety. The nation must win; unity in effort 
 is necessary for winning; quarrels about the 
 past impair unity in effort; success comes from 
 unity; and success justifies any war. In Rus- 
 sia as in England, the value of unity in the com- 
 plex of factors making for success was over- 
 measured. In other respects there is little in 
 common between Russian unity in support of 
 the war and British. 
 
 Russia lacks the English homogeneity of 
 
MESSIAH 83 
 
 thinking and feeling. Differences of race and 
 education are great; differences within the same 
 class of the same race are greater. To men 
 from a nation made homogeneous by thick 
 population, communications, and standard read- 
 ing, Russian variety of thinking seems strange. 
 The Russians have no common bond like the 
 newspaper culture and sporting morals of Eng- 
 land. Contrasts of wealth are less marked, 
 though sharper than in Germany. The intel- 
 lectual contrasts are great; there are more 
 educated men with good taste than in England; 
 and there are men who are more ignorant and 
 insensible than the most backward Englishman. 
 Marked differences of temperament impede 
 standardisation. There is no compulsion on 
 every man to think with every other. Though 
 most Russians supported the war, and expected 
 victory, their motives and their hopes differed. 
 A great many had no motives but only hopes. 
 These were the peasants and the backward 
 workmen. The "Intelligence" had no unitary 
 attitude towards the war. The distance be- 
 tween one class of Intelligence and another was 
 greater than the difference between either class 
 and the "dark" moujik. 
 
 A part of the Intelligence, which I shall call 
 the political Intelligence, resembled the edu- 
 
84 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 cated in other belligerent countries. It com- 
 prised men essentially European, who accepted 
 in politics the principles, prejudices, and catch- 
 words of Europe. Such men are officials, land- 
 owners, merchants, lawyers, scholars, and a 
 few workmen who in rising from the apathy 
 and ignorance of their class sought principles, 
 prejudices, and catchwords ready-made. They 
 wanted healthy politics of every-day kind; they 
 did not doubt that these politics were eternal 
 truth; about the war they spoke as English- 
 men, Germans, and Frenchmen speak. They 
 had formulae of peace: the enemy would lose 
 land, pay indemnities, and deliver to stronger 
 legs his militarist jack-boots; Poland would 
 be united and freed in everything but freedom 
 to choose her lot. As to the measure of repara- 
 tion and vengeance there were disputes. In 
 the Novoye Vremya M. Mentschikoff said that 
 all Germany should be annexed; and the Duma 
 learned from a member that peace would be 
 signed over Berlin's ashes and the Kaiser's 
 bones. 
 
 In other countries men who reason that way 
 are not informed on the nature of war and 
 policy; they are men without ideals. But 
 Russia has few dull men; and as faith con- 
 ditions idealism she has ideals without end. 
 
MESSIAH 85 
 
 Visitors new to Russia saw with surprise in 
 men whose thoughts revolved round embassies, 
 cessions, indemnities, and prohibitions a pas- 
 sion for betterment. Most political Intelligents 
 were honest pacifists, who believed that blood- 
 shed would cease with victory; armies would 
 be maintained peacefully to keep workmen at 
 peace; if only the worthiest victor nation had 
 an army, the rest of mankind would be spared 
 what rhetoric calls the crushing burden. These 
 men believed in an absolute, providential equi- 
 librium of land and race distribution, to be at- 
 tained by victory and never more upset. They 
 had hope of Europe's salvation, for all that 
 Europe needs for salvation is the realisation of 
 such plans as are realisable by the side that 
 wins. 
 
 In August, in September, indeed long after, 
 the political Intelligents were absorbed in the 
 policies of speedy victory. The war gave an 
 impulse to thinking and writing as great as the 
 impulse given by the revolution of 1905. The 
 theme was: the fruits of victory. It was plain, 
 in view of the greatness of both, that the ques- 
 tion what will happen after victory, and the 
 question of the means of victory, could not be 
 settled at once. The customary order of the 
 discussions was changed by faith. The measures 
 
86 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 after victory were settled well before Christmas ; 
 a discussion of the means of victory began in 
 June. Believers that war is decided by arms, 
 not by programmes, saw defects in this in- 
 version: there must have been hidden merits, 
 as Russia's allies went the same way. 
 
 All the measures proper after success, and 
 many measures of doubtful propriety, were 
 promulgated in the Press. In every street, in 
 private houses, committees of citizens debated. 
 At the house of my friend, M. Briantchaninoff, 
 editor of a journal which refines Pan-Slav 
 ambitions with true humanitarianism, meet- 
 ings were held every week. I talked to many 
 politicians, writers, professors. Had this been 
 a first visit, surprise would have been caused 
 by the high qualifications which Russians bring 
 to the solution of problems far off. There were 
 honesty, enthusiasm, sharp thinking, knowledge 
 of history and constitutions; and an indus- 
 try which let no point escape. The territorial 
 gains were defined; extravagant men were re- 
 buked by men with a sense of measure; under 
 review passed the administration of the new 
 provinces; the treatment of the new fellow 
 subjects; the measure of tolerance of their 
 languages, religions, and customs; and many 
 points of economy. Russians are more critical 
 
MESSIAH 87 
 
 than we; and there was none of the English 
 unanimity. Only after real clashes of reason 
 was it settled whether Poland should have 
 homogeneous local government; whether the 
 constitution of Poland should be octroye or 
 agreed on by a Constituent Assembly and the 
 Tsar in an irrevocable pact; whether Konigs- 
 berg should be called Novo-Nikolaieff or be 
 left as it is. 
 
 The backing given by enlightened men to 
 programmes in the race of programmes against 
 circumstances was nothing new. It is a na- 
 tional tenet that faith is absolute truth, and 
 that facts are unreal and transitory. When 
 the Premier Solypin was asked to cure the 
 abuses by which he maintained his remarkable 
 system, he consoled the importunate with a 
 hearty: "What you say is dreadful! But 
 Russia is all right! Whatever happens Russia 
 will pull through! Believe in Russia!" He 
 said, "Believe in Russia!" to men who com- 
 plained of murders by police agents; and a 
 week later a police agent murdered him. With 
 successors this event no more shook faith that 
 Russia would pull through than a cracked 
 prism shakes faith in the structure of light. 
 This steadfastness endured. A debating club 
 of professors, calling itself "a group of friends," 
 
88 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 which I always attended with pleasure, was 
 planning policy towards the Prussian Masurians 
 when the news came that Hindenburg had de- 
 stroyed a second army in Masuria. The plans 
 went on. This transcendental attitude in- 
 vested debates on concrete problems with the 
 high qualities which, as a rule, only abstract 
 thought has; and the men whom I have called 
 political Intelligents were far more interesting 
 than the intelligent politicians of England, Ger- 
 many, and France. 
 
 The other Intelligents had the same Russian 
 faith; and they were Russian in the objects of 
 hope. They were men of education who stood 
 above the principles, prejudices, and catch- 
 words which pass for policy in Europe, and 
 men of less favoured classes who in struggling 
 up from darkness had found ways of thought 
 and feeling of their own. They were the un- 
 political Intelligents. For the War they stood, 
 but not for conventional policy. They had 
 no respect for cessions, transfers of power, in- 
 demnities. These things, they held, would not 
 bring happiness and betterment; Russia has 
 land enough; all their lives they had suffered 
 from power: and money they chiefly know as 
 the corruption of power. They were scholars, 
 professional men, probably some bureaucrats, 
 
MESSIAH 89 
 
 peasants, and workmen. They were men dis- 
 contented with Russia, and in general with 
 humanity, who thought that the gap between 
 Russia and Europe is narrow compared with 
 the gulf which divides Europe from ordered 
 civilisation and happiness. 
 
 These men wanted something better, to be 
 quickly attained. They knew that this would 
 not come from the old sources of betterment. 
 Politics had been tried. For a century, the 
 Intelligents watched Europe; and seeing that 
 Europe was ahead and was political, reasoned 
 that political inaction was the cause of Russia's 
 ills. Neglecting other things, they made them- 
 selves politicians; and made their programme 
 the quickening in the people of political life. 
 That meant fighting for political freedom, for 
 constitutional guarantees. Ten years back, 
 after defeat in war, the goal was reached; there 
 were a few months of political freedom and 
 action. But political action brought no salva- 
 tion; it could not even save itself. Armed to 
 the teeth with politics, the Intelligents wanted 
 the other weapons, moral and intellectual, of 
 power. They were mentally a sharp, but a 
 gaseous, morally instable breed. From intel- 
 lectual and moral starvation politics died, and 
 freedom with it. (The book Marks — Viekhi 
 
90 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 — the work of a group of Intelligents, put 
 bitterly the truth.) There was a reaction from 
 politics. Some tried healthy living, some sport, 
 debauchery, even thinking, and work — some 
 tried all in succession; probably some tried all 
 at once. No short cut was found to happiness. 
 The Intelligents would not forswear the faith 
 in short cuts. There was a feeling of expectancy, 
 a feeling that all expedients had not been tried. 
 Hypochondriacs like strong medicines: the 
 war though not sought was welcomed. The 
 war meant new suffering, and uncertainty; 
 victory, indeed, was sure, but the fruits were 
 not. The merit of the war was not what it 
 would do but what it would undo. It was a 
 break with the past; and nothing could be 
 worse than the past. After scourging and 
 thorns the pains of death are small; and death 
 has prospects. In this despair and hope the 
 war took a character which it lacks elsewhere. 
 It is not a struggle for power; it is not a war, 
 but the war, Armageddon, a judgment upon 
 and renunciation of the past; a clearer of soil 
 on which life worth living may grow. This 
 Messianic hope of sudden transformation, 
 
 " The world's great age begins anew," 
 beckons to men who have lost faith in orderly 
 
MESSIAH 91 
 
 progress. It is a Russian hope and old; it 
 occurred to Slavophiles for whom the Russian 
 spirit was the world's regenerating elixir; it 
 relieves the quietist writings of Tchekhoff, 
 where through strata of resignation and levity 
 rise wells of prophecy of a good time which is 
 to come, in some way left to the imagination 
 at some undated day. 
 
 These hopes were in a sphere which has no 
 explorers and no terminology. Most unpolitical 
 Intelligents could not say what great things 
 could come from the war; some told what they 
 expected, but did not say exactly what they 
 meant. For want of a better, they took the 
 language of the political Intelligents; and used 
 it, refined but still too gross for their hope. 
 They said the good time would be brought by 
 Slav union, on the basis of pacifism, of con- 
 stitutionalism, even of autocracy, a transfigured 
 autocracy with bureaucrats expelled and direct 
 relations established between people and Tsar. 
 Ten years back, this transfigured autocracy 
 was the reactionaries' one spiritual weapon; 
 not being sincere, they argued it with bombs 
 and knives: now a man who had been in gaol 
 for preaching mild constitutionalism proclaimed 
 that war would give autocracy the fructifying 
 warmth for want of which it lay sterile. Some 
 
92 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 talked of the greatness of Russia — an absolute 
 notion, self-realisation not dominance. Enemies 
 were impersonal barriers to be pulled down. 
 Self-realisation might be reached without vic- 
 tory, by suffering, by renunciation, by mystical 
 reactions. These hopes made possible the sup- 
 port of the war as an event, an experience, 
 apart from the faith in victory. No acquisi- 
 tions, no indemnity would repay Russia; but 
 if Russia knew herself, the war would be won. 
 By this some men who, doubting programmes, 
 doubted in victory were brought to support 
 the war. The burden of the complaint, the 
 justification of the war as Armageddon, was 
 that nothing had changed for the better since 
 the war with Japan; if nothing had changed, 
 why be surer of victory now than then? 
 
 The emancipated peasants and workmen, 
 whom I class with the unpolitical Intelligence, 
 thought in their own way. Their way is easier 
 to follow, but not easy. Physical work makes 
 physical thinking. Symbols and generalities 
 mean things to the worker; presentiments 
 ►seek sensible shapes. The "emblem of union 
 of Tsar and people," the new flag, was taken 
 as a reality; word went round about a mirac- 
 ulous "Tsar's paper," which would make union; 
 peasants, reasoned some, would have freedom, 
 
MESSIAH 93 
 
 food, and clothing as the Tsar has. Believers 
 that the war would change the world watched 
 out for change. They projected new things, 
 new men, and they set to work to find them. 
 In the forests and marshes, the old homes 
 of Messianic expectation, there was ferment. 
 Prophets came out; signs burned in the sky; 
 strange finds were made in queer spots; old 
 men, from prayers in the cells of forgotten 
 monasteries, came back with mysterious faces, 
 to proclaim that things were going to happen 
 at last. 
 
 In this, as it sprang up in many places, there 
 was confusion; what was the gospel, who the 
 prophets were, no one knew. There was the 
 salient legend of Antichrist, who must be beaten 
 that Christ might reign. For ages Christ had 
 tarried. As Pole, as Turk, as Swede, as Frank, 
 as Briton, Antichrist had come; now he had 
 come as German — as Swabian; this was the 
 last time of Antichrist; and man would be 
 free. Some told of earthly prophets, reviled 
 when Europe was fat, whose day would come 
 when beaten Europe sought new consolation. 
 In the forests round Ilmen, the prophet Kol- 
 basa (his name means sausage) taught that 
 humility and poverty would be the new law — 
 plausibly in a war that will leave little wealth 
 
94 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 and pride. Russia, whose people, not having 
 either, despise both, would guard the law. 
 Every man would get a kitchen-garden. No 
 one knew Kolbasa; he became invisible, like 
 the legendary city Kitezh in Rimsky-Korsa- 
 koff's opera; his forerunner, a Minsk shepherd, 
 found in milk-shops on Basil Island, rebuked 
 doubt with the image, "You can see through 
 water, but it's there." He promised that 
 greater things would happen soon than ever 
 have happened before, and counselled, "Wait !" 
 Of sensible profits from the war the shepherd 
 had no notion except that "the vodka prohibi- 
 tion is a good thing, though the holiest men 
 are drunkards." The war was "the end of 
 Europe." He would go no further. His looks 
 implied that the end of Europe is nothing so 
 mean as political regeneration; it is something 
 harder to grasp, not to be talked of lightly, of 
 real importance to men. 
 
 These hopes, with some national colouring, I 
 found in Poland, where a history sadder than 
 even Russia's has kept Messiah in the mind. 
 They are not peasant hopes; they are the 
 hopes of the elect in the small peasant Intel- 
 ligence. The "dark" people had no ordered 
 reasoning. They had faith, like the Intel- 
 ligence, in success and in gains; like the In- 
 
MESSIAH 95 
 
 telligence, they had no notion of the mecha- 
 nism of success; and the gains expected were 
 grosser than humility, grosser even than kitchen- 
 gardens. Their war philosophy was a tangle 
 of facts, prejudices, and superstitions; inquiry 
 was like visiting a museum of everything in 
 which no order is kept. Men were at work to 
 make the people "conscious"; but the fruits 
 — as I saw in the provinces of Petrograd and 
 Pskoff — were not ripe. The tour was made 
 in Serftember; the flimsy villas where Petro- 
 grad spends summer were closed; the sky was 
 grey; weedy birches shivered near unmade 
 roads; the land was soaked by the autumn 
 rains which wash the nightless summers quickly 
 into winters without day; the Tannenberg ca- 
 tastrophe had damped the first hope of vic- 
 tory. I had been here before, and found little 
 change. There were the same delays; the same 
 carts with wabbling wheels — this time the 
 driver thought he heard guns; and the same 
 stucco manor-house with mezzanine — this time 
 the owner's sons had perished. The stories 
 were the old : the Zemstvo had sold Michailovka 
 iron roofs; Michailovka paid fire premiums; 
 the police had carried off Emelyan. Faith, 
 too, was the same: things are best left alone; 
 thatches are cheaper than iron ; though Emelyan 
 
96 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 killed his wife he was unlucky; he had a good 
 heart; wheels will not come off carts because 
 God put them on. The cabins were still untidy, 
 clean, and overrun by the old cockroaches or 
 their children; there were still samovars, wooden 
 spoons, varnished and plain, a stove which is 
 the elders' bed. A rich peasant had a German 
 sewing-machine; there were "wretched pic- 
 tures" dealing with war; some pages with 
 photographs from English journals; a litho- 
 graph of a branching tree with Arabic text 
 which gave Mahomet's descent. The com- 
 mune council still met in the open. Ten years 
 ago the peasants had sons in Port Arthur; 
 now they had sons in Kovno. Two sons had 
 returned, each less an arm; and the commune 
 questioned them. One hero told vaingloriously 
 how he had fought after losing his arm; the 
 other said with more truth and art, "The 
 Prussians shot it off — that's all." The man 
 came with me along the muddy road, and told 
 me of his eight brothers. The council forgot 
 him: it turned to the problem: will foreign 
 nails be excluded by the Tsar? 
 
 Making the peasants "conscious" was the 
 work of the landowner whose sons had perished. 
 A dining-cabin, got ready for reservists on the 
 way to depot, was also library. A peasant 
 
MESSIAH 97 
 
 woman dealt soup with a spoon, and porridge 
 with the hand, and a schoolmistress dealt out 
 books and papers; peasants studied a draw- 
 ing of Germans carousing while a priest was 
 being shot; there were Orange Books, and 
 two pamphlets, one written for peasants. The 
 pamphlets were graded for the readers' brains; 
 the stupid peasants learned that the army 
 supply suffers from bad roads and they were 
 advised to make roads; the clever Intelligence 
 was told that the Prussians once were Slavs 
 and must be made Slavs again. The darkest 
 peasants had heard of Germans and Turks; 
 some had heard of Frenchmen; the number of 
 very dark was small. Every one knew that 
 Russia would win. There was a lantern slide, 
 "Russians Defending 302 Metre Hill" at Port 
 Arthur; it was shown during lectures on the 
 Polish campaign. A good-looking peasant took 
 me round, telling me of a German who had 
 left three weeks before. He had a grain store. 
 The peasants long debated whether to pay him 
 their debts; they paid. He was not a real 
 German, only a German subject; Russian was 
 his language. "What happened to him?" 
 "He was arrested at Glashevo, and sent to 
 Petrograd. He could go as prisoner of war to 
 Vologda, Viatka, or Orenburg. He was warned 
 
98 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 against Viatka, but he went there. He was a 
 kind man, obstinate, who drank and had hun- 
 dreds of cushions." 
 
 We drove past his house, two-storied, clean, 
 and empty. The driver still heard the guns. 
 Over Petrograd province, he said, airships flew, 
 they were painted to resemble clouds, so they 
 were invisible like the prophet Kolbasa and the 
 city Kitezh. Near the railway-station a woman 
 lay in the road. "She sleeps in the first place 
 God pointed out." "How do women take the 
 war?" "They hate Germans. The Germans 
 sell cheap goods and spoil village industries, 
 and they extort high prices. The village wo- 
 men help. Rich women in the towns sew muf- 
 flers and make up boxes of chocolate. They 
 forget that these may be taken by the Germans, 
 who want food and clothes. The village women 
 pray." "Pray for the defeat of the Germans?" 
 "They pray for what they want." The driver 
 knew that Russia was big and that she must 
 win. That is the peasant's gleam of consequent 
 thought. He expected gains. After peace the 
 peasants would not return to drink. They 
 drink because nails are dear. "When a man 
 has cheap nails he does all sorts of work, and 
 doesn't think of vodka." Wheels come off 
 carts because iron is scarce. If the Germans 
 
MESSIAH 99 
 
 were beaten there would be no foreign iron; 
 Russians would make nails in plenty, and sell 
 them cheap. Messiah as a vendor of nails did 
 not surprise me. It came from the dark; what 
 had come from the enlightened exhausted sur- 
 prise. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 WARSAW 
 
 IN the train to Warsaw were brothers, 
 Poles, whose villa at Prushkow, the limit 
 of Hindenburg's autumn advance, was 
 burned. They came from the Oka River two 
 thousand miles east, with the news that the 
 Oka was more intent on the war than the Vis- 
 tula. Absorption in people far off, and indif- 
 ference in people near, I found elsewhere. We 
 travelled in the slow, unclean, dark train called 
 "passenger" to distinguish it from the "courter" 
 train with carriages of the Wagons Lits, which 
 gets to Warsaw in eighteen hours. The pas- 
 senger train takes thirty hours; mine, as troops 
 were being moved to meet a surprise, took 
 fifty. The other passengers were officers. They 
 wore short sheepskin coats, with the skin and 
 a rim of wool outside, sheepskin busbies, and, 
 underneath the coats, unmartial blouses of 
 khaki. The blouses matched the pince-nez, 
 the pillows, mufflers, Thermos flasks, the soft 
 features, the soft incessant voices, the endless 
 
 tea-drinking — things which in spite of autoc- 
 
 100 
 
WARSAW 101 
 
 racy, corruption, and fifty other ills, blow a 
 homely domestic wind over the Russian land. 
 
 The Poles, sharp-faced men, unlike Russians 
 and proud of it, said that Warsaw was panic 
 tempered by dance. The panic declined as 
 time passed since the autumn raid: there was 
 dance because people could not suspend dance 
 for the endless days that the war will last, be- 
 cause Warsaw is frivolous, because the Vistula, 
 neither hoping nor fearing much, is mentally 
 farther off than the Oka. Citizens with real 
 talents for anxiety had fled. The citizens who 
 stayed were amusing themselves; having seen 
 how harmlessly Hindenburg faded after his 
 first visit, they did not mind if he came again. 
 Alarmist rumours were thinning; the city now 
 heard not more than once a week that the Civil 
 Government had fled, and that the bridges were 
 blown up at dawn. 
 
 On October the 11th, the advance guard of 
 a German army got within two hours' walk of 
 Sobieski's palace. For a week, guns rever- 
 berated; the windows rattled, and some broke. 
 The civil authorities, not knowing whether the 
 town would be held or abandoned, prepared 
 to flee, and some fled. Money was taken from 
 the Bank of State; schools, the chief theatres, 
 and many shops closed; and there were days 
 
102 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 without bread. From stations on the right bank, 
 citizens made for Moscow, Kieff, and Petro- 
 grad. They crowded on the roofs of carriages 
 and fell off. The left bank railway stations 
 were closed. With battle so near, reinforcements 
 and supplies do not go by rail. On the ninth 
 day, when the enemy might have entered the 
 town, the gun-thunder ceased, and Hinden- 
 burg's legions went. 
 
 Warsaw is entered through the ill-paven, 
 dirty, but European not Russian, suburb Praga. 
 The streets of Praga were camps of troops and 
 waggons, all of Russian, leisurely and domestic, 
 kind. The station at midnight was guarded 
 by one sleepy sentry: otherwise, there was 
 nothing like war. I contrasted Berlin, far from 
 the front, where, ten minutes after martial 
 law was proclaimed, the meanest stations were 
 guarded by sentries, posted with numberless 
 notices, and closed to all but travellers. The 
 Vistula river first showed the precautions of 
 war. Troops and transport crossed the Alex- 
 ander Bridge; peaceful traffic went by the 
 southern bridge which joins Praga with the 
 Jerusalem Alley and the Vienna station. On 
 the embanked approaches and at the porches 
 policemen and sentries watched; on the bridge, 
 a quarter of a mile long, there were sentries 
 
WARSAW 103 
 
 every dozen yards. Traffic was controlled. 
 Walkers who held their hands in their pockets 
 got the order " Hands up!" and a rifle was 
 levelled. Hands in the pockets meant bombs. 
 Parcels drew suspicion. Horses were walked. 
 If they walked too quickly, policemen and 
 sentries bawled; if the horses were not slowed 
 down, down came the rifles. Sometimes, to 
 cross the bridge and embankments took half 
 an hour. Half way across, the aim of the 
 precautions was shown. In the roadway was 
 a hole; into it, from a tripod crane, a taut 
 chain went. Vibration from traffic was dan- 
 gerous, because the bridge was mined. The 
 central Alexander Bridge was also mined, but 
 there was no hole; the northern bridge, crossed 
 by the railway, was mined too. Early in Au- 
 gust, when a coup de main was expected, the 
 mines were laid. 
 
 On the left bank, Warsaw was all war. The 
 streets were so full of battalions, guns, trans- 
 port, wounded, nurses, that civilian Warsaw 
 was crushed. The clean town, kept quiet by 
 real pavement, became the dirtiest, the noisiest. 
 As months passed things got worse. The first 
 concentration, behind the Vistula, was on a 
 broad front; parts of the army crossed the river 
 above and below the town; and there was no 
 
104 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 congestion. Later, the city became the central 
 ganglion of communications. Everything, ma- 
 terial and men, that went to battle entered 
 Praga, crossed a bridge, and left the west of 
 the town by the double-tracked railways which 
 go to Lowitsch and Skierniewice. All day long, 
 sometimes at night, down the Cracow suburb 
 and the Nowy Swiat tramped regiments of 
 shaggy, broad-faced men, many bringing to 
 Europe's martial domesticity the pots, kettles, 
 cans, ropes of Asia. Dirt came from the un- 
 ending trains of carts; guns and limbers, hung 
 in as homely a way as the men were with pots 
 and kettles, made the noise. How many men, 
 how many shells, loaves, coats, pots and kettles, 
 passed through, no one knew. There were 
 enough to disorder more orderly men than 
 Russians. But order was kept. Traffic was 
 stopped, but never mixed; the men entrained 
 comfortably without much meddling by officers; 
 and nobody made haste or lost breath. Even 
 the regrouping, the movement of troops to meet 
 new crises, was done with calm. This is the 
 advantage, sometimes the great disadvantage, 
 of Russia's conduct of war. 
 
 Civilian life, judged by streets and hotels, 
 was unchanged, except that it was pushed aside. 
 Citizens seemed to live their own lives, and the 
 
WARSAW 105 
 
 war to live its life. Those who had work to do 
 found that this was not really so. The town had 
 a makeshift administration. Officials who fled 
 in October did not all return; they took away 
 money, papers, and seals; and some who came 
 back came without them. One post office and 
 one telegraph office were open, working badly. 
 Letters to Petrograd took a week; they went, 
 some said, to an internal censor at Vilna. 
 Citizens made their own posts and telegraphs. 
 Pan this or Pan that, newspapers announced, 
 would leave to-morrow for Moscow; he would 
 execute commissions at reasonable rates. 
 Couriers came from Russia with satchels of 
 letters; loungers at the Hotel Bristol took 
 telegrams to train conductors, who took them 
 farther; such telegrams arrived before the 
 telegrams which had to compete with army 
 correspondence on the wires. 
 
 Money, except in hotels and visitor quarters, 
 was scarce. When the war began gold dis- 
 appeared. Paper followed. In the northwest 
 quarter and in Praga even brown-backed one 
 rouble notes and silver half roubles were rare. 
 The owners hid them in yards, in chimneys, 
 and under floors; those who intended to run 
 if the Germans came back sewed money in 
 their boots. On an inlet near the Cuirassier 
 
106 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 barracks, I saw men fishing from a boat; on 
 the bank a woman gesticulated, threatening to 
 jump in. The crowd said that an air bomb, 
 aimed at the barracks, had fallen into the river. 
 It would be fished up for examination. The 
 police said that the woman, to save her bag of 
 silver, had thrown it into the water; and now 
 she wanted it out. 
 
 For a town besieged on one side, and prac- 
 tically besieged on the other, railway freight 
 traffic having ceased, living conditions were 
 good. Hotels charged the old prices for rooms, 
 and raised slightly the price of food. Neces- 
 saries were a fourth dearer than in peace time; 
 some necessaries were no dearer than in Moscow; 
 and some things not necessaries were cheap. 
 Coffee cost twelve shillings a pound, and tea 
 eight shillings. Even in March, when railways 
 were more congested, and stores had diminished, 
 there was food for all who could pay prices 
 moderately high. Some manufactured things 
 were not to be had. From want of fuel manu- 
 facturing industry had ceased; but credit was 
 plentiful; and in objects of luxury trade went 
 well. In the Jewish quarter trade was carried 
 on with I.O.U.'s; later, the Jews printed notes 
 of one rouble and fifty kopecks, and these were 
 accepted at face value. 
 
WARSAW 107 
 
 Martial law, as elsewhere, was in force; but 
 it was no more obtrusive than in Petrograd. 
 At first, lights were extinguished at eleven; 
 later the town was lighted all night; this con- 
 trasted, though the danger from the sky was 
 great, with London. There was no rule against 
 going out at night. Bars, cabarets, and dance- 
 halls were closed, not by army order, but be- 
 cause no drink might be sold. The prohibition 
 covered beer; allowing for human nature and 
 spirituous furniture polish, of which others than 
 joiners died, it was well observed. Hotels were 
 occupied by staff officers; regimental officers 
 on relief, with wives, mothers, and sisters; 
 Sisters of Mercy; civilian hangers on of the 
 army; and good-looking, refined country gentle- 
 men whpse houses were ashes. The theatres 
 and biograph halls were open. The theatres 
 avoided war plays. The biographs presented 
 The Hound of the Baskervilles, making English- 
 men proud. The sweet shops showed shrapnel 
 shells of chocolate. In the streets and cafes 
 were many well-dressed women. The war 
 ladies, called with humour Cousins of Mercy, 
 who flocked to Kharbin and Port Arthur in 
 the last war, stayed away. The army was 
 serious. Officers and soldiers behaved well. 
 All that happened at the greatest base town 
 
108 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 indicated that the gravity of the crisis was 
 felt. 
 
 In the months after Hindenburg's raid, pris- 
 oners and aeroplanes were all that was seen of 
 the enemy. The cafe experts said that no 
 enemy aircraft had come, that no bombs were 
 thrown: Germans hid on roofs, and dropped 
 bombs which the simple believed to come from 
 heaven. This was untrue. In the first four 
 months three hundred bombs fell in town, on 
 the railways around, or in the forts. Forty fell 
 in August. When the Germans were near, 
 many more fell; the Hotel Polonia was wrecked; 
 at midnight it rained fire in the Marzalkowska 
 Street; the Vienna station, the Brest station, 
 and the embankment of the loop line were 
 hit. In these months seventy civilians suf- 
 fered. The airmen dropped notes appointing 
 the next meeting, and warning citizens to stay 
 indoors. At first, the morning was chosen: 
 later, from twelve to two; in the fortnight after 
 Christmas, the evening. On an airman, shot 
 down, were found instructions. Bombs were 
 not to be dropped in forts quickly in succes- 
 sion, but with intervals, so that more than 
 one panic might be caused; the airmen should 
 bomb all forts in order, and return to the first. 
 Aviators attacking bridges should fly along the 
 
WARSAW 109 
 
 bridges; when attacking unroofed railway sta- 
 tions, they should aim at water-towers, signal- 
 boxes, and turntables. 
 
 A week after arrival, I saw the damage and 
 panic which air attacks caused. A vessel 
 lighter than air which may have been a Zep- 
 pelin crossed the Powarsky suburb, and aimed 
 bombs at railway stations and military maga- 
 zines. Around it, apparently as guards, were 
 aeroplanes. A Taube detached itself, flew 
 across the Nowy Swiat Street, and made every 
 one, except some Siberian artillerists, run into 
 shops. There was an explosion. The same 
 Taube dropped a bomb and broke windows at 
 the Kowel station. Later, the forts were at- 
 tacked, and, under volleys of shrapnel — our 
 reply to air attacks — photographs were taken. 
 Russian aeroplanes rose from the flats east of 
 Praga, and attacked. The airship went west. 
 On this day seven bombs were thrown, and nine 
 civilians were hurt. A single aeroplane bombed 
 the railway at Novo-Minsk. It was struck by 
 bullets, and forced to descend, and was sur- 
 rounded by peasants. The cargo of bombs 
 exploded, and put an end to airmen and peas- 
 ants. From near the Alexander Bridge I saw 
 an attack by Taubes. The Taubes appeared 
 as specks, flew east, and under fire from Fort 
 
110 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Sliwnicki aimed bombs at the railway bridge. 
 The bridge was a target once a week. The air- 
 men, made nervous by rifle fire and shrapnel 
 from the bridge-head fort, always missed. In 
 November fell bombs, proclamations, and books. 
 The books were works of art. The best was 
 The Resurrection of Poland. On the cover a 
 blue-robed Virgin with Child looked mildly; 
 beside the Virgin in medallions were the Kaiser 
 and Pope Leo XIII; beneath, peasants and a 
 German soldier prayed; inside were coloured 
 drawings of Poland's sorrows at Russia's hands; 
 and on the first page was a Hymn to the Virgin : 
 
 SALVE, REGINA! 
 
 "Witaj Krolowa, Matko litosci! 
 Nasza nadziejo, zycia slodkosci. 
 Witaj Maryo, Matko jedyna, 
 Matko nas ludzi — Salve, Regina !" 
 
 There was less art in the leaflet Soldatshoe 
 Dielo (The Soldier's Business). It was printed 
 on pink paper rimmed with thick cardboard to 
 make it fall; it proved that it is not a soldier's 
 business to fight. The pamphlets in Polish 
 were well written; Russian works, not so well. 
 Russian airmen scattered pamphlets in German, 
 Magyar, and the Slav languages of Austria. 
 
 Bombs, and stories of bombs, caused some 
 
WARSAW 111 
 
 panics. When bombs threatened, working men 
 made for the stations of the eastern railways. 
 Crowds gathered in the Saxon Garden, to avoid 
 bombs supposed to be aimed at the building 
 of the Warsaw Military District. The airmen 
 strewed leaflets. Next morning, traffic in the 
 Jerusalem Alley ceased; women dropped par- 
 cels; and carters abandoned carts. The cause 
 was a friendly biplane. Workmen who lived 
 near the threatened railway stations of Praga 
 fled to Warsaw. On the bridge, they met a 
 stream of men and women bound for Praga. 
 An airman had bombed the Vienna station. 
 Imagination caused many panics. At Bura- 
 kow, north of the town, I found furniture in 
 the road. An invalid woman lay on a cottage 
 piano, turned on its side. Children screamed, 
 looking up at nothing. Mounted policemen 
 dispersed the crowd. The fright was caused 
 by the rattle of transport over cobbles. Fright- 
 ened men telephoned to the centre that the 
 Germans had come, and the panic spread. The 
 well-to-do and educated seldom showed fear; 
 when aeroplanes appeared, they took shelter in 
 leisurely, dignified way. 
 
 Citizens who escaped rending by bombs had 
 a chance to hang as spies. Many spies were 
 executed, some said five a day. Of all towns in 
 
112 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 the Eastern theatre Warsaw is best for spies. 
 It is half German. The stamp taken when it 
 was Prussian, when it was dynastically tied 
 with Saxony, remains. There is a Briihl Hotel, 
 also a Saxon Garden; in architecture German 
 influence is marked: a little cleansing would 
 reproduce the old part of Berlin. The three 
 hundred thousand Jews speak German or 
 Yiddish-German. Many enemy subjects re- 
 mained; the system of registration and expul- 
 sion was loose. In February there was still 
 talk of expelling Germans. There were Swiss 
 Germans, and other neutral Teutons. The 
 administration was German. The Governor 
 (captured at Kutno) was a Korff, his successor 
 a Grosser, the Vice-Governor an Essen, the 
 police-master a Meyer, the senior police as- 
 sessor an Utthoff, the mayor a Mtiller; high 
 positions were held by Behrlands, Tittens, 
 Scheppings, Schillers, Burmanns, Reiters, Petzes, 
 and Kriihls. The name Schmidt no more drew 
 suspicion than the name Mickiewicz. As the 
 funnel through which the armies passed, the 
 town was attractive for spies. Spies seek first 
 to learn the dispositions of troops; they had 
 only to see the shoulder-straps of the columns 
 which crossed the bridges. The small towns 
 west and southwest of Warsaw are largely Jew- 
 
WARSAW 113 
 
 ish and German speaking. This made it easy 
 for spies to reach the enemy's lines. 
 
 Before retreating in October the German Staff 
 prepared for espionage. Officers dressed as Jew 
 peddlers stayed behind; trustworthy Germans 
 and Russian subjects were given carrier pigeons 
 and signalling apparatus; and telephones were 
 laid underground. During our occupation, 
 Skierniewice was a centre of spies whose names 
 are known. They are now out of reach. Spies 
 infested Brest-Litovsk, Rovno, and Bielostock. 
 They telephoned to their employers in the west. 
 Bottles with plans floated down the Warthe to 
 the enemy's positions. From tree-tops signals 
 were made; helioscopes and mirrors flashed 
 news from rooms; and peasants, driving their 
 cattle or hanging their washing in ways prear- 
 ranged, gave facts to airmen. Jews were able 
 spies; their motive was not always money; 
 sometimes it was hatred of Russia, and hope 
 to come under Germany or Austria. Many 
 Jews were hanged; and from some towns as a 
 precaution all Jews were driven. I saw two 
 good-looking young Germans, probably officers, 
 marched past the Bristol Hotel. Soldiers be- 
 hind guarded a box of signalling apparatus, 
 which had been used on a hillock. The spies 
 were hanged in the Citadel. They carried 
 
114 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 forged Russian passports, with imitations of 
 police registration stamps. Some spies were 
 women, German, Jewish, and Polish. A gov- 
 erness, half Polish, was executed. She went 
 with a Committee to Petrokow to help sick 
 refugees. In December, when the Austrians 
 advanced, the Committee left. Pleading illness, 
 the girl remained. She was seen in hiding. 
 Papers with military facts were found. The spy 
 had joined the Committee in order to get to 
 the Austrians. She had men accomplices in 
 Radom, and refused to give their names. 
 
 For three weeks of the Lodz operations, dur- 
 ing the highest tension of battle, a hundred 
 thousand wounded were in the town. Before 
 Lodz, and after, there were fewer; but the 
 stream never ceased. During the lull of Feb- 
 ruary and March, five hundred came daily. 
 The badly wounded were taken in trams or 
 Red Cross carts; the lightly wounded, under 
 care of nurses, walked through the streets in 
 groups of six or eight. The wounded were got 
 away in order, and great care was taken; but 
 there were not enough instruments and stores; 
 improvised nurses learned by experience. As 
 at Petrograd hospitals, I found that most 
 wounds, and the worst, were from shells: after 
 battles in the open, there were many shrapnel 
 
WARSAW 115 
 
 wounds. The badly wounded were comforted, 
 and those bound for death died decently. 
 They merited less compassion than the lightly 
 wounded, than the long, un-Christian proces- 
 sions of men in pain, maimed for life, and con- 
 scious of their misery. 
 
 In hospital were wounded women, Russian, 
 Austrian, and German. Some were victims of 
 air-bombs; romancers turned them all into sol- 
 diers. Of enemy women-soldiers I saw nothing; 
 I heard stories, mostly hard to believe. Russia 
 had many Amazons — a Moscow lady said four 
 hundred; they had the devotion of NekrasofTs 
 Russian Women, and the nerves of men. Some 
 personated reservists, giving the names of dead 
 men and shirkers — I heard of wives rebuking 
 shirker husbands by shouldering guns. Men who 
 had not to serve were induced to submit to the 
 army examination; when they were passed, 
 women took their places. Hoping to become 
 soldiers, young women ran from home. Some 
 were found out and sent home; some still serve. 
 A masculine brunette, Uglicki, entered East 
 Prussia with the Vilna army, and survived the 
 battle of Masuria and the retreat. She said 
 that she felt no fear; the first reaction against 
 war was in a bayonet charge, when she saw that 
 she might have to kill. On the Nida fought a 
 
116 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Lithuanian woman, a scarred veteran, who had 
 killed Hunghuses. There were women Cossacks. 
 The soldiers treated women comrades with con- 
 tempt, not deserved. The women equalled the 
 men in marching, fighting, and morale. 
 
 Prisoners passed through the town every day. 
 There were no surrenders in units; the groups 
 that came from the trains were stragglers, 
 shirkers, and odd men caught in outpost fights, 
 mostly well-dressed, healthy men. The en- 
 emies were on good terms. There were Poles 
 from Prussia, who made themselves understood 
 with fragments of Slav, woda (water), piwo 
 (beer), chleb (bread). Russians learned Polish 
 quickly. Each side regarded the other with 
 condescension. The Germans watched the 
 shaggy Russians with awe, with the feeling 
 that here was something inferior, barbarous, 
 and incomprehensible; the Russians looked 
 at the prisoners ironically, reasoning that they 
 were not much worth if they had to be eked 
 out with ladylike haversacks, finicky drinking- 
 glasses, and ostentatiously tailored clothes. 
 Contempt inspires kindness : the Germans 
 grinned at the Russians; and the makhorka 
 (tobacco), brought by Polish ladies, was shared 
 with the unfortunate. The Germans tried the 
 tobacco, and looked as if they now first knew 
 
WARSAW 117 
 
 the woes of captivity. The Russians gave them 
 cigarettes. The thin cigarettes were better. 
 The prisoners broke them, stuffed the thready 
 tobacco in their pipes, and smoked it away in 
 two draws. The enemies said good-bye. The 
 Germans saluted; the Russians saluted; some 
 Russians lifted their caps, as if they were not sol- 
 diers but peasants at home, and bowed very low. 
 With soldiers, wounded, and prisoners mak- 
 ing a floating population were many refugees. 
 Some came in summer before the first invasion; 
 Some came when Hindenburg was near Prush- 
 kow; some in December after the battle of 
 Lodz. The first refugees were from Kalisch; 
 the second from all parts of left- Vistula Poland; 
 the last from the province of Petrokow, and 
 from the villages on the Bsura and Rawka. In 
 Russia there were refugees from Warsaw. Fifty 
 thousand fled in October; some returned when 
 the enemy retreated; some fled again when 
 guns on the Bsura were heard in the suburbs. 
 Many fled without cause, or because of the 
 favourite legend: "The Civil Government has 
 left." Stories were told of free tickets to Mos- 
 cow; and the poor rushed to the Brest station 
 and returned in tears. Refugees from the west 
 were hungry, in rags, cold, exhausted, some- 
 times wounded. Some were suspect Jews, sent 
 
118 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 from the front. The Jews, mostly traders, 
 crowded the quarter near the Krasinski Garden. 
 The Christians — peasants and country gentle- 
 men — were everywhere. A priest who led 
 from Petrokow his hungry flock took me to a 
 camp near the Governor's summer residence. 
 The refugees had brought carts with rugs and 
 utensils; they dug holes, turned the carts on 
 their sides to windward, and stretched the rugs 
 overhead. Life for davs was between an earthen 
 
 ■ 
 
 floor and a rug. Compared with the most un- 
 fortunate, thev lived well. 
 
 Country gentlemen arrived, hungry but calm. 
 Southwest of the town, an old-fashioned car- 
 riage passed me. It was drawn by good horses, 
 with postilions, and moved east with eighteenth- 
 centurv state. Gentlemen remembered thev 
 were gentlemen. I met one from Kalisch who 
 brought a domestic priest and twelve servants, 
 who were paid their wages in German requisition 
 notes. His chief estate was in East Prussia; 
 about it he told me a droll, a Prussian story. 
 When war began he was in Kalisch; his German 
 affairs were let slide; and with pain he remem- 
 bered that he owed income tax, and that his 
 marquetry tables would be seized. He sent his 
 children to Warsaw, but stayed on the land, 
 hoping the German connection would help him 
 
WARSAW 119 
 
 to save the house. The German Commandant 
 asked who he was, made notes, gave him pro- 
 tection, and all went well. A month later, a 
 field postman brought a demand for payment 
 of income tax, plus forty pfennigs fine for delay. 
 Distraint, said a memorandum, has been tried 
 on your East Prussia property, but nothing 
 saleable was found. The house had been burnt 
 to the ground. 
 
 The politicians of Warsaw lazily watched 
 events. The relations between Russians and 
 Poles could not be judged; demonstrations may 
 be made only in favour of the side in possession. 
 The Poles were friendly to the soldiers. In the 
 shops were picture postcards showing Russians 
 and Poles locked in embrace. The recognised 
 newspapers were Russophile, with different de- 
 grees of warmth. Moral preparation had not 
 been made for war. When the war began, the 
 Petrograd Nationalists were deep in plans, on 
 the late M. Stolypin's lines, for the humiliation 
 and further dismemberment of Poland; and 
 their repentance, though perhaps sincere, could 
 not bear fruit at once. Fraternity counts with 
 unity as a moral factor of war which may not 
 be improvised. The proclamation of the Grand 
 Duke Nicholas, promising Poland union and 
 Home Rule, was handled tepidly and irreso- 
 
120 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 lutely. The Poles who welcomed it wanted a 
 legally binding pledge. For a year nothing was 
 done to redeem the Grand Duke's promise; 
 after the spring defeats, when Poland was as 
 good as lost, a commission met to decide what 
 form of government should be given not only 
 to Russian Poland, but also to Austrian and 
 Prussian Poland. This policy of belated pro- 
 grammes caused complaints in the Duma. The 
 pro-Russian section of the Poles had hoped 
 that the Tsar would come to Warsaw and pledge 
 his word. The Russian practice is to take with 
 one hand what is given with the other. Bu- 
 reaucrats, grown old in the notion that suspicion 
 and hatred are the normal relation of ruled to 
 rulers, dread more than bombs the exuberance 
 of reconciliation. When Home Rule for re- 
 united Poland was proclaimed, a Petrograd 
 editor, my friend, wrote essays full of honest 
 Slav brotherliness, with no politics. The cen- 
 sor suppressed them as too friendly to the 
 Poles. This was a month after the proclama- 
 tion. A few weeks later the proclamation, sold 
 in Russia and praised in Europe, had disap- 
 peared from Warsaw; wise men feared it might 
 corrupt the Poles into gratitude; and the Poles 
 were reading The Resurrection of Poland, which 
 dropped from the German sky. 
 
WARSAW 121 
 
 Disputes as to the right policy of Poles, im- 
 possible in public, went on under ground. 
 Against lawful Polish publications of Russophile 
 colour and Russian publications, friendly but 
 not too friendly to Poles, agitators secretly 
 printed journals and pamphlets. The Glos 
 Wolny preached that Poland would be better 
 off in disunion than in union under the Tsar. 
 The Polish Socialists and some peasant organi- 
 sations seemed to take this view. The agitators 
 raged against the Russian Polish Legion started 
 by M. Dmowski and M. Gorczynski; Poles 
 called up as reservists, or invited to join the 
 legion, were advised to fly to Cracow and join 
 the rival legion of the Supreme National Com- 
 mittee. The Russian party, after long troubles, 
 got permission to form a Polish National Com- 
 mittee. There was a secret anti-Russian Polish 
 confederation. Many arrests were made. Most 
 Poles, I believe, want reconstruction and inde- 
 pendence; having no hope of these, they cry a 
 plague on both your houses. Some demonstrate 
 for the side for the time being on top ; and when 
 the side on top goes under, they change with 
 good faith and Slav facility. In Galicia a few 
 Poles and Little Russians welcomed the in- 
 vader; after Gorlice-Tarnow all acclaimed the 
 Austrian deliverer. The town of Pabianice, in 
 
lm COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Russian Poland, was fined for welcoming the 
 Germans; it showed such honest joy at the Rus- 
 sian return that the fine was remitted. 
 
 With the richer Poles economic factors 
 counted. Maybe these men would not have 
 set their interest above the race's cause; but 
 they were cynical and incredulous; they awaited 
 no alleviation; and without selfishness they 
 could hope at least to be spared material ruin. 
 The Lodz and Warsaw manufacturers (except 
 the half-Germans, and the Jews whose hatred 
 transcends pocket motives) wished for the re- 
 tention of Poland by Russia. Russian Poland 
 is in great part a country of industry; in ef- 
 ficiency of production, being directed by Ger- 
 mans, it stands above Russia; and it sells, be- 
 hind a tariff wall, to Russia. Cheapness of food 
 keeps down production costs. As a German or 
 Austrian province industrial Poland would have 
 a lower tariff, and it would pay more for food. 
 Until things adjusted themselves, it could not 
 compete with the efficient German or Austrian 
 industry. This is a manufacturer's view. The 
 Social Democrats, though mainly industrial, 
 reject it; they say that the profits from cheap 
 food and high industrial prices go to the manu- 
 facturers; and they covet the influence and 
 legal protection which German Socialism en- 
 
WARSAW 123 
 
 joys. The land interest is the opposite. As 
 producer, the agricultural class suffers from low 
 food prices; as consumer, from high industrial 
 prices. The high German and Austrian food 
 duties would favour the producer, and there 
 would be cheap manufactured goods. These 
 arguments go with motives of race and religion 
 into the neutral, or divided, sum of Polish sym- 
 pathy. After all their country had fallen into 
 the invaders' hands the Poles adapted them- 
 selves to new prospects and promises. They 
 showed zeal to work with the conquerors, hop- 
 ing probably to gain thereby the position of the 
 Austrian Poles, who have not only liberty, but 
 political power. 
 
 The graceful half -Latin spirit — the levity of 
 Slavs blent with old Catholic refinement — 
 helped the Poles to withstand hopelessness, risk 
 to their lives, and material loss. There were 
 few complaints; some, with cause to complain, 
 found distraction in small war discomforts; the 
 distress caused by dirty streets made them for- 
 get that their houses were burnt. The uncul- 
 tured went to Pies Baskerville'ow, testing, as they 
 watched the Hound, the spiritual links be- 
 tween Britons and Slavs; they reasoned eat, 
 drink furniture polish, and be merry; to-mor- 
 row we die. Russian faith without Russian 
 
124 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 ardour gave them hope. The Germans would 
 be beaten and would pay for the damage, or 
 the Germans would win and build new houses; 
 both would lose, and in their exhaustion Poland 
 might gain. The cultured and well-to-do did 
 not worry. On the way east before the armies 
 they danced in battered chateaux; when they 
 arrived with roubles in notes and pale-blue 
 German promises to pay they gambled. North 
 of the Vienna railway were gambling hells. A 
 Kielce noble set the pace. His ten thousand 
 sheep reposed in soldier stomachs; his house 
 was razed; but he had gold and promises to 
 pay. He gambled away the gold, the promises, 
 his jewelry, the ashes of the house, and his 
 trench-rent land. When he had lost all he re- 
 solved to lose his life, and he made for the 
 yellow river. Staff officers pulled him out, and 
 hired him as interpreter, and he soon was seen 
 in a Bsura dug-out gambling away his wage. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 HINDENBURG'S RINK 
 
 A FIRST impression is that Poland in war 
 consists of roads as broad as they are 
 long. Some way from town, where 
 houses are scattered and fences are few, the 
 unpaven ways spread right and left; they have 
 no edges; furrowed by wheels without end, 
 they look like ploughed fields of black earth. 
 In peace the roads ran before houses; now they 
 run behind and before, making the gardens 
 islands in mud-streams. As the old roads wore 
 out; after Hindenburg dug holes in them to 
 impede our march, the cavalry, artillery, am- 
 bulances and transport moved along fringes of 
 field; the fringes were churned up; traffic edged 
 to new fringes, and the mud-stream spread. 
 After autumn rain the shining surface froze; 
 the army called it " Hindenburg's Rink," Katok 
 Gindenburga, 
 
 West and southwest there were many Hin- 
 denburg rinks. The Germans and Austrians 
 passed part of the country twice, part three 
 times. In October they held all left- Vistula 
 
 125 
 
126 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 country, except a triangle southwest, and an 
 oblong of swamp west and northwest, of War- 
 saw. On the 14th of October Hindenburg re- 
 pulsed between Warsaw and Ivangorod the 
 attack of eight corps. Backed by Germans, 
 the Austrians stood before Ivangorod. Rus- 
 sian cavalry crossed the Vistula near Novo- 
 georgievsk. On the 18th of October cavalry 
 fought cavalry at Sokatchew. On the 20th, 
 Russian corps from over the river threatened 
 the invader's left wing; and on the 21st Hin- 
 denburg broke off the battle. The battle of the 
 Vistula yielded neither side booty worth men- 
 tioning; the issue was not pushed to extremes. 
 It was the first meeting of the main German 
 and Russian armies. To Russia it gave the en- 
 couragement of the enemy's retreat; it showed 
 that the Germans did not think themselves 
 strong enough to win on the Vistula; and it 
 caused the offensive, mistaken in England for a 
 march on Berlin, to be begun with confidence. 
 The Germans learned from it Russia's strength. 
 They got new proof of the doctrine that while 
 the opponent is unbeaten, the interior of his 
 country cannot be surely held. The battle 
 forced on them the strategy of destroying 
 separately such parts of the army of Russia as 
 were near the frontier. 
 
HINDENBURG'S RINK 127 
 
 The theatre of the battle of the Vistula is 
 true Poland. It is flat, with hills only at Kielce; 
 there are ravines made by melted snow, mixed 
 forests, and streams running through marsh, or 
 between bluffs. On the land are many isolated 
 factories of red brick; Girardoff, southwest of 
 Warsaw, is a factory town. The villages have 
 one street, the place of sojourn in summer and 
 winter; the street is deep in miscellaneous 
 transport dirt. The streets of the small towns 
 radiate from market-places. The larger towns 
 are dirty; they have stucco ambitions, and are 
 more European, less homelike than the bare 
 white, or bare log, houses of Russia. It is 
 Europe, Slav Europe, not, as Russia is, Slav 
 Asia. The Poles have weak faces and peering 
 eyes; unlike the broad-faced moujiks, they are 
 Europeans. They have the Slav dread of cold; 
 in spring sunshine they wear sheepskin jackets 
 and black lambskin caps. The little boys have 
 top-boots and ragged breeches, and the little 
 girls wear shawls. They are dirty, without being 
 picturesque. The towns are Jewish, not Chris- 
 tian; Jews sell in the market squares, lend 
 money at usurious rates, and throw war false- 
 hoods in. Some are red-haired or fair-haired; 
 and all are oppressed and so meek that they 
 invite oppression. The dress is a long gaber- 
 
128 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 dine and a flat, peaked cap. Over shops in 
 Cyrillic and Latin letters are German-Jewish 
 names. Many Jews are Gordons; this, with 
 the children's ragged breeches, reminds you of 
 home. 
 
 The broadest Hindenburg rinks are around 
 Lodz. Near Warsaw they are broad enough. 
 They begin west of Prushkow, the high-tide 
 invasion mark. I visited villages north and 
 south; later Nadarshin, Groizy, and the small 
 towns. History of the war is written in mud 
 and battered roofs. As written in local brains 
 it is mostly false. Citizens of Nadarshin said 
 that the invaders were Austrians; there were 
 no Germans; they knew the uniform and the 
 Slav speech. I heard many doubtful things, and 
 a few disconnected facts that stood examina- 
 tion. 
 
 West of Nadarshin were the first big trenches, 
 Russian and enemy's, half full of snow water. 
 The enemy's trenches were neatly cut and broad. 
 Planks and balks lay about; the trenches had 
 been covered. The westernmost trench had a 
 square underground room. There were rags, 
 papers, broken water-bottles; arms and shrap- 
 nel-cases had disappeared. The October plan 
 was to rush Warsaw. No serious fighting oc- 
 curred before the river was reached; peasants 
 
HINDENBURG'S RINK 129 
 
 say that the trenches were dug during the 
 march east, for use in a foreseen retreat. At 
 Skierniewice, when advancing, Hindenburg 
 dug trenches, and flanked them with redoubts. 
 These were not used during the advance; dur- 
 ing the retreat a rearguard fought in them, 
 covering the flank of columns which marched 
 west through Lowitsch. 
 
 To the south the country has fewer tracks 
 of battle. The roads have spread less; there 
 are small earthworks and some burnt villages. 
 When the Germans retreated, the villagers, 
 thinking the war was over, began to rebuild. 
 Stoves, chimneys, floors, and brick foundations 
 were intact. Rebuilding means nailing planks 
 aslant round the chimneys, making a shed which 
 from far looks like a tent. When Hindenburg 
 took Lodz, and the roar from the Miazza was 
 heard, the work ceased. In such a village, half 
 restored, there were quarrels with the village 
 exploiter — as Russians say, the "fist." The 
 "fist" sold planks to the homeless at war 
 prices; when the homeless fled from new ter- 
 rors, he tore down their shed homes, and re- 
 moved the planks. 
 
 From Nadarshin I drove to Mlochow, and 
 some hamlets to the south. These had suffered 
 from robbers. One village the Germans shelled, 
 
130 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 setting the cabins on fire. The church escaped. 
 This was a miracle; and when danger again 
 threatened, refugees fled to the church as to a 
 sanctjuary. The church could not be burnt. 
 Behind the refugees came robbers, who agreed 
 that the church could not be burnt, but dis- 
 agreed about food. In a triangular duel — 
 refugees, marauders, and natives — the church 
 blazed. Marauders were strong between here 
 and the Pilitsa. Uncertainty, hunger, and im- 
 punity tempted men who in peace were honest. 
 Having plundered manor-houses, the robbers, 
 to efface clues, burnt them. Warsaw was full 
 of booty. Military justice at first flogged 
 robbers, then shot them. Suspects were made 
 turn out their pockets. Robbers flourished 
 under Austrian martial law in the southwest; 
 the civil population was left to shift for itself. 
 The German courts-martial worked hard. 
 
 In these villages the war was little talked of, 
 and near domestic terrors much. Peasants got 
 used to the artillery roar and the midnight glow 
 in the west; their interests were lawsuits de- 
 layed by the war, weddings that did not come 
 off, and hunts for gold which the Germans hid. 
 Many had seen battles, but few knew what 
 happened. The headman of Mlochow saw a 
 fight which cost five thousand lives. He re- 
 
HINDENBURG'S RINK 131 
 
 membered that the German helmet-spikes could 
 not be seen; this surprised him, as he had often 
 heard of the spikes, and seen pictures of them, 
 and he believed that no German could fight 
 without spikes. He remembered that the first 
 shell aimed at the village would have upset a 
 washing tub if it had fallen to the right. He 
 did not remember whether the shell killed any 
 one. Later shells killed people. The villagers 
 were not depressed. On Sundays, villages 
 which had little food and no workaday clothes 
 sent out gaudy religious processions, trails of 
 singing girls, and country fops who whistled 
 music learned from the foe. There was no 
 dignity or pathos. Warsaw had the city virtue, 
 patriotism. Labourers sang, tediously but with 
 feeling: "Not yet, not yet is Poland lost!" 
 
 North of Grodsisk on the Vienna railway 
 some houses had been destroyed as a reprisal. 
 A commune official told me of the invasion. 
 The Germans sought popularity, but they 
 punished the least unfriendly act. In this 
 part are the biggest German field fortifications. 
 There is a crescent double trench, with sapped 
 approaches running to the southeast, ending at 
 the battered remains of an observation tower. 
 The owners of the farms were filling the trenches 
 m. Smaller German crescent trenches run 
 
132 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 parallel to the Warsaw fortifications. A rear- 
 guard attacked these trenches; on being re- 
 pulsed it retired into its own trenches, which 
 are flanked by enclosed farms, and resisted until 
 told to retreat. As the railway bridge of Grod- 
 sisk was being blown up, German dragoons 
 galloped to save it. They were on the bridge 
 when the explosion came. This country is a 
 vast camp. 
 
 Along the river, above Warsaw, I got some 
 notion of the strategy pursued. The first 
 German advance was to the Vistula, and not 
 only against Warsaw. The Vistula is Poland; 
 it is the best strategical frontier. At the Alex- 
 ander Bridge the river is a quarter of a mile 
 broad; outside it is broader. The banks are low, 
 and are often flooded. Sometimes for a short 
 time there is ice which would bear artillery, 
 sometimes none at all. In the past winter the 
 river at Warsaw froze weakly twice. It is not 
 likely that Hindenburg meant to cross with his 
 whole army, and attack our army on the right 
 bank. The right bank, if taken, could not have 
 been held. The plan was probably to take 
 Warsaw, and the tete de pont at Ivangorod, 
 and to hold left- Vistula Poland. On the right 
 bank might have been held the province of 
 Plock, as far east as the railway to Mlava. 
 
HINDENBURG'S RINK 133 
 
 The Bug-Narev fortresses would have hindered 
 a further advance east. The German attempts 
 in October to gain ground on the right bank 
 were probably feints. Every big operation 
 of Hindenburg has gone with activity in minor 
 theatres. 
 
 With a Russian friend, I visited Willanow, 
 and from there went by motor-car to Gora Kal- 
 warija, the first place on the river reached by 
 the army which assailed Warsaw. Near the 
 road were trenches, half filled in, but there 
 were few signs of war. To Gora Kalwarija, 
 by way of Rawa, came one of three columns 
 in which the Germans marched. The other 
 columns passed through Blone and Prushkow. 
 The Gora Kalwarija column had pontoons. 
 Having tried the river, it marched northwest. 
 Outside, near the light railway, are small earth- 
 works. The Germans passed in great force; 
 they had a hundred field guns, the artillery of 
 a corps. I saw buildings where a patrol with- 
 stood Cossacks for hours. The besiegers, hav- 
 ing no guns, peppered the walls with carbine 
 bullets till no plaster was left. The windows 
 of the village were glazed with greased paper. 
 An old soldier brought me to a brick-kiln where 
 concealed Russians ambushed the enemy's 
 scouts. The Germans were let pass; when they 
 
134 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 found their retreat cut, they fought hard; they 
 lost half their strength, and they galloped north 
 into our lines. 
 
 Among pleasantries of Warsaw, "the pride 
 of Pjassetchno," a town on the light railway 
 twenty miles south, competed with, "The Civil 
 Government has fled." Pjassetchno believed 
 itself to be the point nearest to Warsaw reached 
 by the enemy; it brooded on the distinction 
 till it lost the normal meekness of Judo-Polish 
 townlets; it lost its head, it looked proudly at 
 travellers, it talked as if Pjassetchno, not the 
 yellow river and the Novogeorgievsk Cossacks, 
 sent Hindenburg back. Civic patriots planned 
 a monument; they wrote a modest inscription 
 which proclaimed the townlet's fame, but gave 
 the glory to the God of Christians and Jews. 
 Emissaries, sent to Warsaw to buy a monument, 
 came back with news that Prushkow, four miles 
 nearer, also had German visitors, who had left 
 their own monument in the shape of battered 
 walls. A Pjassetchno bureaucrat whom I ques- 
 tioned changed the subject. The Germans, 
 he said, sent engineers to examine the light 
 railway. They planned to extend it from 
 Groizy, the terminus, to Koljushki, a junction 
 for Czenstochowo. This would give them a 
 new communication from east to west. The 
 
HINDENBURG'S RINK 135 
 
 bureaucrat had his troubles. A staff officer, 
 finding he read German, asked him to correct 
 the Polish version of a notice. He was to be 
 careful. The notice said that any one who dis- 
 obeyed an order would be shot. Citizens were 
 forbidden to approach a park of aeroplanes. 
 The agitated official left out the "not" from 
 "must not approach." Finding that he had 
 disobeyed an order — the order to be careful 
 — he begged for mercy on his knees. 
 
 Pjassetchno's war-history was that "the Ger- 
 mans put gun-cotton down the throats of their 
 dead and blew them to bits. The aim was to 
 conceal losses." The town, and some soldiers, 
 agree that the enemy has his own way of de- 
 stroying guns which must be abandoned. He 
 elevates the muzzle, fills the gun with water, 
 and fires. The resistance makes the gun burst. 
 I heard this from a soldier who had fought in 
 many fights, and had himself, he claimed, cap- 
 tured two guns. He said that in the November 
 retreat many guns were buried: "all Poland is 
 one big gun." Of the destruction of guns near 
 Pjassetchno he told this. The retreating Ger- 
 mans abandoned a battery. A causeway of 
 logs and railway sleepers across soft land had 
 failed, and the guns fell in. At night, a rear- 
 guard, having repulsed the Russians, sent in- 
 
136 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 fantry with machine guns, sappers, and en- 
 gineers, to rescue the guns. The Russians were 
 found dragging the guns from the morass. 
 
 Two had been saved. A German searchlight 
 glared; machine guns poured bullets from front 
 and flanks; and many Russians fell. The 
 survivors lay in a ditch, and tried with rifle fire 
 to keep off the enemy. The saved guns were 
 dragged away by volunteers. The other guns 
 remained in the morass. "When we next ad- 
 vanced, the guns were found, blown to bits 
 with water." From this soldier I got many 
 stories, mostly untrue. He said the Germans 
 had tunnelled under the Vistula. Vermin 
 quickened his fancy. When I bent over him 
 to see his tunnel plan made with matches, he 
 said: " High-Well-Born-Ness, keep off! The 
 Landsturm will get you !" 
 
 In Tartschin, which is twelve miles south- 
 west, German shells struck some houses. Tart- 
 schin is important; it lies at the junction of the 
 main roads to Warsaw, Radom, and Skiernie- 
 wice. On the morning of the 10th of October, 
 the Germans, in small force, appeared. Russians 
 were in strong positions near the town; they 
 held the enemy for hours. The Germans, as 
 always, were in a hurry ; without artillery prep- 
 aration, they rushed at the trenches. Their 
 
HINDENBURG'S RINK 137 
 
 aeroplanes dropped bombs, causing no loss. 
 Later, they threatened the Russian flank, and 
 the trenches were given up. Frightened towns- 
 men rushed between the lines, and were killed. 
 A grain-dealer took me to the ruins of his house, 
 half a mile south. A shell destroyed it. Be- 
 fore marching north, the Germans requisitioned 
 sheepskin coats. Their proclamations said that 
 half the Austro-German army was Catholic. 
 They marched off with songs. There is a 
 brothers' grave, with words in German, and 
 words in Russian afterwards put up, and there 
 is the grave of a child who went to see the 
 battle, and never came back. 
 
 All the Pilitsa valley is grave-strewn. There 
 are soldiers' graves and graves of civilian vic- 
 tims. In battle here, bayonets decided. To 
 the west, with the Tsar's palace Spala, is Inow- 
 lods, the junction of the German and Austrian 
 lines. Houses west of Pribyschew are burnt 
 and razed. A single flame seems to have con- 
 sumed them. On the river the Russians held 
 a slippery bank, the Blue Slope; Germans at- 
 tacked and Russians defended till neither had 
 a company left. Cossacks forded the stream; 
 logs sent adrift swept them away. Near Warka 
 the Siberians who crossed the Vistula at Ivan- 
 gorod fought all day. In Warka there were a 
 
138 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 few wounded, at Nowe Miasto many, and a 
 few graves. A sacristan's house sheltered six 
 wounded Christian soldiers and four Moslem 
 Turkmens, all cured by one surgeon's assistant 
 and a Sister of Mercy. Three of the Turkmens 
 spoke no Russian except " Exactly so, Your 
 High-Well-Born-Ness ! " They lay four weeks 
 in a town to the west, set out for Warsaw in 
 a motor-car, and got stranded. Favourite was 
 the Turkmen Hannibal. The chauffeur, having 
 no other name, called him Hannibal; when 
 asked if he was Hannibal the Turkmen, said: 
 " Exactly so, Your High-Well-Born-Ness ! " The 
 Russians pronounced it ominously Gannibal 
 (they confound h and g). Hannibal was a 
 barbarian, with inquisitive eyes, a yellow skin 
 drum-tight but wrinkled, a burn, a bullet- 
 wound, and one ear — a shell splinter took the 
 other. The Turkmen fought after losing his 
 ear, fought after the burn, but the bullet was 
 too much. He was a holy man, and rebuked a 
 comrade whose wound was made a pretext for 
 neglecting prayer. His devotions caused laugh- 
 ter. The oasis where he was born is east of 
 Mecca, and he had learned to pray to the west, 
 to the setting sun. Poland is west of Mecca, 
 but the Turkmen could not box the compass. 
 At sunset he dragged to the floor his striped 
 
HINDENBURG'S RINK 139 
 
 blanket, looked earnestly towards Berlin, and 
 prayed. The nurse laughed, and the surgeon 
 said: "The Kaiser can't hear you !" Hannibal 
 was obdurate. With his face straight towards 
 the German lines, he gave thanks to the Power 
 that had spared his life and one ear. 
 
 At Nowe Miasto were other men from Asia. 
 There were Turkmens, horsemen from the Cau- 
 casus, and Siberian infantrymen who praised 
 themselves and merited the praise. They have 
 colonial ways, independence, and vigour. Where 
 the moujik of Europe emphasises his helpless- 
 ness with, "I cannot know!" the moujik of 
 Asia knows everything; he argues on war and 
 electricity, and he has a sea-lawyer's skill in 
 growls. I heard Siberians condemning German 
 tactics, and praising to the skies their own. 
 They knew how the Turks, Americans, and 
 Frenchmen do things, and commended the 
 Turks. 'The Turks have no Christian souls. 
 A Christian soul hems a man's freedom of ac- 
 tion. . . ." To European soldiers the Siberians 
 were "The Capless"; as they crossed the Vistula, 
 they put their caps on their bayonets, and the 
 wind carried the caps away. The Siberians 
 liked the Grand Duke Nicholas; they believed 
 that he boxed officers' ears, and that the officers 
 deserved it. From villages past Lake Baikal 
 
140 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 came letters to the Commander offering help, 
 and asking for it. A peasant wrote that he 
 had twelve soldier sons. The Grand Duke 
 sent him fifty roubles. A neighbour wrote 
 that he had thirteen soldier sons. This proved 
 to be untrue. The swindler got the answer: 
 "Thirteen is an unlucky number, and you are 
 an unlucky man as the Grand Duke is not send- 
 ing you fifty roubles." 
 
 At night I saw the Turkmens, ugly men in 
 dressing-gowns striped like blazers, draggled 
 busbies, and high boots. They flourished chased, 
 curved swords; some stood on their saddles, 
 peering at the moon, as if it sheltered Germans. 
 The Turkmens were tribesmen of Hannibal. 
 Skobeleff called them the world's best cavalry. 
 They rode better than Cossacks. To Moscow, 
 sent by the tribal elders, came chaperones — 
 men — to see that the bloods withstood the 
 Christian seduction, drink. The vodka shops 
 were closed, the chaperones, incensed at finding 
 no work — or no drink — returned. The Turk- 
 mens grumbled in their own tongue at the 
 inadequacy of war. It was dull. Kirghiz 
 horsemen forswore water as much as wine, they 
 galloped over a shell-swept plain sooner than 
 cross a ford. 
 
 The Moslems were good soldiers; many were 
 
HINDENBURG'S RINK 141 
 
 promoted, and many for valour wore the St. 
 George's Cross. They got the fourth class, 
 without the ribbon, bringing an increase of 
 pay, and a pension. Christians get a white 
 enamel cross, with a picture of the Saint spearing 
 the Dragon. In respect for their faith, the 
 Turkmens, Tartars, Kirghizes get a cross with 
 the Imperial Eagle instead of the Saint. To 
 Opotschno came General Ivanoff, Commander 
 of the Southern Armies, and pinned the expur- 
 gated Cross on a Tartar's breast. The Tartar 
 frowned at the Eagle, and said with emphasis: 
 'I don't want the hen ! Give me the Cossack 
 who's sticking his lance through the Kaiser!" 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 THE FRONT OF CRACOW 
 
 IN February I visited Galicia. After the 
 battle of Lodz, Galicia became the chief 
 theatre of the Eastern campaign. The 
 battle of Lodz is the chain of engagements 
 which began at Wlozlawsk on the 14th of 
 November and continued without break till 
 the evacuation of Lodz on December the 6th. 
 In these engagements both sides had unitary 
 aims. The Lodz battle made Galicia chief 
 theatre, because it showed that an invasion of 
 Germany was beyond the army's power. The 
 Germans proclaimed that the battle destroyed 
 Russia's offensive capacity. As far as Germany 
 was concerned, this was true; no general of- 
 fensive has since been tried. But, without 
 admitting defeat, Russia could not confine her- 
 self to the defensive. She resolved to try a 
 second time Austria-Hungary, the Power of 
 less resistance. 
 
 Galicia east of the Dunajec was in our hands. 
 The taking of Cracow would have completed 
 the conquest. This was not practicable while 
 
 142 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 143 
 
 the Austrians in South Poland held the Nida, 
 outflanking, though the Vistula divided, an 
 army on the march west. The Nida might 
 have been forced, but that would have meant 
 forcing also the Rawka and Bsura. Had this 
 been done, the invasion of Prussia which failed 
 in November must again have been tried. 
 These were reasons why the new Russian of- 
 fensive against Austria would not be on the 
 front of Cracow. I heard in Petrograd that the 
 offensive would be through the Carpathians. 
 The initiative was with General Brusiloff, Com- 
 mander of the Eighth Army. Our newspapers 
 heard it, and with customary charity gave the 
 enemy the plan. 
 
 The conquest of Galicia, almost complete, 
 was a political and moral gain. The strategical 
 gain was potential, to be realised only by the 
 conquest of Hungary. When Russia took Ga- 
 licia, she did not clear her flanks; she did not 
 tear apart the strategical sack which smothered 
 Poland, the primary sphere of operations. The 
 conquest widened the sack. Hungary remained 
 a place of arms, supplies, communications. 
 With Hungary untouched, and the Carpathian 
 passes in Austrian hands, or not impregna- 
 bly in our hands, Austria could attack the 
 flank of Russian armies moving west in an 
 
144 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 offensive against Germany. The political and 
 moral gains were great. Russia, alone of the 
 Allies, had won battles in Europe, taken many 
 prisoners, and occupied enemy territory. Gali- 
 cia, where not Jewish, was Slav. Enthusiasts, 
 with All-Russian faith, proclaimed the attain- 
 ment of historic aims, reunion with Red Russia, 
 the reconstitution of Poland. Cooler heads 
 valued Galicia as an asset in peace liquidation. 
 In case of victory in the main theatre, Galicia, 
 with other things, would be kept; and it could 
 be exchanged in case of defeat for land lost 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The conquest of Galicia was creditable, and 
 easy. Both sides fought well. The conditions 
 of defence, a good railway system excepted, 
 were bad. Galicia is a salient in enemy territory, 
 as on a larger scale is Poland, and, on a smaller 
 scale, East Prussia. All the salients were in- 
 vaded. Galicia joins the Russian plain. The 
 frontier has no hills, and only in parts rivers. 
 In numbers Russia was much stronger than 
 Austria. This was not foreseen. The Austro- 
 German Alliance assumed that Italy would 
 help, or at least be friendly, that the Balkan 
 States would not oppose, and that Great Brit- 
 ain, if she joined the enemy, would do little. 
 Had this been so, the Austrians and Germans 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 145 
 
 would have won with ease. But Austria fought 
 Servia, watched Italy, and helped Germany 
 against France and England. The numbers 
 in the first crisis of Galicia are not known. The 
 Russians were stronger, perhaps by two, per- 
 haps by three to one. 
 
 Hoping for victories before Russia concen- 
 trated her armies, Austria attacked. A success 
 would have hindered the concentration. The 
 Austrian advance was in a northeasterly di- 
 rection against the front Warsaw-Liublin-Lem- 
 berg. At the end of August, the Austrians 
 under Dankl defeated the Russians at Krasnik, 
 and drove them back on Liublin. A few days 
 later, the Austrian centre was beaten before 
 Lemberg. Lemberg was abandoned. The Aus- 
 trians, holding Przemysl, retreated over the 
 San, then over the Wisloka. Hindenburg in- 
 tervened. The troops set free by the victories 
 of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes were 
 sent south; they marched against the Upper 
 Vistula to threaten the flank of the pursuing 
 Russians. In order to meet Hindenburg, the 
 Russians in Galicia relaxed their pursuit. They 
 transferred troops to South Poland, east of the 
 Vistula. Then developed the situation which 
 led the Germans and Austrians to the front 
 Warsaw-Ivangorod, and the Austrians back to 
 
146 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 the San and Przemysl. The position of the 
 German and Austrian armies was bad. The 
 Russian concentration in superior force was 
 complete; a decisive battle could not be fought 
 so far from home. After heavy fighting, which 
 did not take the character of a decisive battle, 
 both invaders went back. They were followed 
 by the Russians, who regained nearly all of 
 Galicia. On December the 4th the Russian 
 advance-guard was eight miles from Cracow. 
 After the German victory at Lodz, came a 
 new Austrian offensive. On December the 
 12th, the Austrians won the battle of Limanovo; 
 they retook Neu-Sandec, and Bochnia. A week 
 later, the Russians ceased to retreat, and took 
 a front facing Cracow. The enemies built field 
 fortifications, and their lines remained with little 
 change for four months. Galicia, six thousand 
 square miles excepted, remained Russian. 
 
 In the struggle for the Carpathian passes, 
 there were corresponding waves of success and 
 failure. Russia first reached the watersheds 
 in September after the Austrian retreat. When 
 Hindenburg marched against Warsaw and the 
 Upper Vistula, the passes were lost. During 
 the general retreat the Russians took them 
 again. After Limanovo, the Austrians ad- 
 vanced, the threatened Eighth Army was with- 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 147 
 
 drawn, passes were lost. The Austrians reached 
 the southern railway. They fortified the passes 
 and slopes. Fortifications made the Carpathian 
 strategical frontier impregnable to Russian as- 
 saults in March and April, and influenced the 
 campaign. 
 
 In February, little happened in Galicia. 
 The armies defending and facing Cracow held 
 their lines, and cold and snow checked the 
 offensive in the hills. At the beginning of the 
 month, to aid the Carpathian armies, came 
 a German force under General v. Linsingen, 
 commander of the Second Prussian Corps. 
 In Warsaw, officers spoke confidently of the 
 march into Hungary. There were dangers, I 
 saw, other than weather; the plan could be 
 justified only on the ground that other offensive 
 plans were hopeless. An advance into Hun- 
 gary would encourage the enemy to force the 
 Cracow front, and to threaten the invaders' 
 rear. This convinced me that the Cracow front 
 was more interesting than the Carpathian. If 
 the march on Hungary were postponed, there 
 was no use going to the Carpathians; if it were 
 tried with success, a flank attack on the Cracow 
 front would bring the decision. 
 
 The front facing Cracow was held by the 
 Third Army. Radko Dimitriyeff, a hero of 
 
148 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 the last Balkan War, commanded. The army 
 held lines from the Vistula, along the Dunajec, 
 to a point south of Wojnicz, from there across 
 the Biala to Gorlice and the summits, near 
 Konieczna in the East Beskides. This pro- 
 longed the front of Central Poland, which be- 
 gan at the confluence of the Vistula and Bsura, 
 continued along the Rawka and Nida, and 
 ended at the Nida confluence. In places, 
 Radko Dimitriyeff held the left bank of the 
 Dunajec; on the Tarnow section he held the 
 right bank. The strength of the army I did 
 not know. The staff was at Pilzno, the staff 
 of the Ninth Corps at Tarnow. The Austrians 
 had three or four corps, and, on the right, a 
 German division. The Archduke Joseph com- 
 manded. 
 
 I visited the Cracow front with a Russian. 
 We travelled by motor-car from Warsaw, by 
 way of Grojec, Radom, and Opatow, to San- 
 domierz, the frontier town. There is a good 
 road twenty -five to thirty -five miles behind the 
 front, repaired after the German and Austrian 
 retreat. Except for the artillery roar, heard 
 at Grojec, and two red conflagration glares, 
 there was no sign of present war. In October 
 the enemy had held the country; some parts 
 had been twice, some three times, lost and won. 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 149 
 
 The damage along the road and to the east was 
 small. In Radom, Grojec, and the townlets 
 nearer Warsaw, were houses in ruin, as a rule 
 together in blocks, the damage having been 
 done by single shells. Fighting near the Pilitsa 
 was severe. Close together, there were field 
 fortifications, sometimes with breastworks, re- 
 doubts, big dugouts, wolf-pits, and the ragged, 
 snow-filled ravines of exploded mines, always 
 with wire obstacles. Many trenches saw no 
 fighting, many were unfinished or badly dug. 
 The Russians are supposed to be best when 
 underground: that is true during a protracted 
 defence; when attacking, they look on shelter- 
 trenches and cover-taking as shameful; many 
 shallow trenches bear witness to this. West of 
 Bjalobrshegi on the Pilitsa are German trenches 
 of great size; they have underground chambers 
 with planked floors, walls, and ceilings. Ex- 
 cept shell fragments, there were no relics of 
 war on the ground; the peasants had rifles, 
 shrapnel-cases used as vases, water-bottles, 
 bullets, and books and papers taken from the 
 dead. 
 
 Among the settled population, war was not 
 much affecting economic life. There was enough 
 necessary food; foreign and colonial products 
 sold at prices not much higher than at Petro- 
 
150 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 grad; and, except in areas of destruction, busi- 
 ness went on as in peace. A Pole whom I knew 
 well, the late Jean de Bloch, foretold that 
 economic exhaustion would terminate a great 
 war. Three months were his respite. A great 
 war, he said, would be mainly indecisive posi- 
 tion war. He was an economist who under- 
 stood economy, and did not understand war; 
 his predictions about economy have proved 
 wrong, and his predictions about war have 
 proved right. In Radom, the Government 
 capital, I found Jewish traders starting for 
 Paris to buy goods. When I was in Stockholm, 
 I saw these traders buying German goods. 
 War did not divert the paths of economy, much 
 less suppress it. 
 
 I crossed the Vistula at Sandomierz. Sando- 
 mierz lies ten miles from the San confluence, 
 in a toppling, impressive way on a hill, over- 
 looking dirty water, then strewn with dirty 
 floes. It is the town of the Consensus Sando- 
 miriensis. Sandomierz is best seen from the 
 Galician plain on the right bank. There is a 
 cathedral church, also a castle built by Casimir, 
 and you enter under a red brick arch. In the 
 red brick town hall are marks of a projectile. 
 I did not search for damage, and saw little, 
 but I found at the cathedral, on the brink of 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 151 
 
 the hill, the new grave of a doctor of medicine. 
 On the Austrians approaching, the doctor and 
 a fugitive hid in a cellar. When the fugitive 
 was forced to come out, the doctor came with 
 him, and the wrong man was killed. Across 
 the river is Nadbrezie. Part of the temporary 
 bridge was under water; when I came back, 
 all was under. Engineers and sappers were 
 working on a new log bridge with a curved 
 approach through the marsh. The work was 
 well done. A railway runs from Nadbrezie 
 to Debica, and Nadbrezie is mostly made up 
 of terminus sheds. 
 
 From Nadbrezie I made, by way of Mielec 
 and Debica, for Pilzno, beyond the North 
 Galicia Railway. There were few signs of war. 
 In Mielec and Debica are shattered houses; 
 there are some wrecked cabins, and factories 
 in ruins. Factories, standing alone, often suffer; 
 they are targets; sometimes they serve as staff 
 headquarters, sometimes as lookout points, 
 sometimes they are the enemy's workshops. 
 At Tarnobrzeg on a hill of oaks is the chateau 
 of Count Tarnowski, now a hospital. He is 
 one of the many Tarnowskis in Austrian and 
 Russian Poland. The chateau was plundered. 
 Russians say that the Austrians did the plun- 
 dering, the Count being suspected of Russian 
 
152 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 leanings. There are three parallel trenches, 
 with entanglements intact, and beside and be- 
 hind the trenches are cottages, also intact. 
 The trenches do not seem to have been used. 
 Near Debica, I met prisoners, well-dressed, 
 happy men, guarded by two Cossacks. They 
 answered in Ruthenian my inquiry made in 
 German; one gave in bad German as cause of 
 his surrender, "Winter fighting is incredibly 
 hard!" They had come from the flank, high 
 in the hills. A frost-bitten man said that the 
 night temperature was — 17° R.; that on flat 
 surfaces the snow lay three feet deep, twenty 
 feet deep in ravines. The prisoners' bread ra- 
 tion was smaller than our men's. Their treat- 
 ment was good. I met two more parties. The 
 second was under charge of infantry soldiers. 
 The soldiers transferred the prisoners to other 
 guards, and half an hour later overtook our 
 broken-down car. They belonged to Radko 
 Dimitriyeff's army, and praised the general 
 "as good for a Bulgarian." "Why, for a Bul- 
 garian?" The soldiers came from Kherson, 
 where there is a Bulgarian colony; they got on 
 badly with the Bulgarians because the Bulga- 
 rians grow vegetables for sale, and the mou- 
 jiks do not. The Bulgarians were Russian 
 subjects. "Fifteen of them are Ivanoffs, all 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 153 
 
 in the same battalion." The Bulgarians dis- 
 pleased the Russians by their thrift. "Our 
 Russians write post-cards all day if they've 
 money, and if they haven't, they get it from 
 students." When a student gave the Russians 
 a rouble, they rushed to the telegraph, and 
 sent this message to their village: "All alive, 
 Kuznetzoff, Drozdoff, BiriukoflF, Reshetnikoff, 
 Karpoff, Rodni, Polunin." This magniloquence 
 at five copecks a word scandalised the Bul- 
 garians. They sent a telegram, signed in the 
 plural "Ivanoffs": "All alive except Matthew." 
 The soldiers told me many things about pris- 
 oners. I saw them last at Pilzno, near the 
 commander's house. 
 
 Pilzno, become a centre of orthodoxy, was 
 getting ready for the Great Fast. A room of 
 the Field Treasury, hung with pine-needle 
 wreaths and garlands, was the chapel. Steam- 
 ing soldiers crossed themselves, and droned 
 Gospodi pomilui! Pilzno is chiefly market 
 square. Radko Dimitriyeff and his immediate 
 staff lived in a house on the square. A motor- 
 car generator rattled at the corner. Shop- 
 keepers on the edge of the town told me the 
 noise came from machine guns. There were 
 few officers and soldiers, no formalities on 
 entering the town, and, except at the com- 
 
154 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 mander's house, no sentries. The square was 
 clean, the machine-gun generator supplied elec- 
 tric light. 
 
 An army commander keeps no state. He is 
 a great, but a very little man. He may com- 
 mand five corps, and may have under him five 
 generals, each commanding forces larger than 
 the British army of Waterloo, but he is the 
 underling of a subordinate. Over him is the 
 commander of a group of armies, who may 
 command six armies as big as his, numbering 
 a million, and over the commanders of groups 
 is the Commander-in-Chief. The army of 
 General Radko Dimitriyeff, with the Carpa- 
 thian armies and the forces in South Poland, 
 was under Ivanoff, whose headquarters were 
 Cholm, a hundred miles away. The Grand 
 Duke's headquarters were at Baranovitchi, 
 three hundred miles from the nearest front, 
 and four hundred from the farthest. I heard 
 this military hierarchy criticised. It is hard 
 to combine freedom for the army commander 
 with unity of strategy. The Germans, having 
 smaller forces, omitted one instance of com- 
 mand — there was no intermediary between 
 Hindenburg and his army commanders. The 
 Russian command before the Tsar took it over 
 had another feature. The Commander-in-Chief 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 155 
 
 was advised by two officers: the Director of 
 Military Operations and the Chief of Staff. 
 The first was General Daniloff, the second, 
 General Yanushkievitch. The Director sub- 
 mitted plans of operations, and the Chief of 
 Staff discussed them with the Commander-in- 
 Chief. No one could tell what was the special 
 aim of this system, or who decided differences 
 between the Director and the Chief of Staff. 
 
 Radko Dimitriyeff welcomed my Russian 
 companion and me. The general is less im- 
 posing than his portraits; he is less like Na- 
 poleon, and is like no one else. He is a little, 
 broad-shouldered, spare man, with thin hair, 
 coal-black, with black moustaches, a high nose, 
 and dark eyes, beetling and sharp. Russian 
 he talks through his nose without Bulgarian 
 accent. He introduces his wishes and fore- 
 casts with appeals to God. If he has forgotten 
 the "s bozheyu pomoschtchiu" — "with the help 
 of God" — he breaks off, says it with double 
 emphasis as if in apology, and begins again. 
 He is plainly sharp -thinking and pious, zealous 
 that no man shall take him for a worldling. 
 He lives plainly, and to all visitors says, "We 
 make war with fasting and prayer." He wore 
 a rubbed uniform with the white enamel crosses 
 of the Third and Fourth Classes of the Order 
 
156 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 of St. George. At dinner were six officers of 
 the Staff, hospitable, frank, and kindly men of 
 Russian mould. One was Colonel Kozloff, the 
 explorer of Mongolia, who knows many English- 
 men, and has been honoured by our geog- 
 raphers. For some weeks he was Town Com- 
 mandant of Tarnow. 
 
 Radko Dimitriyeff promised that I should 
 find his army and the other armies of Galicia 
 in good health and temper. Success had in- 
 spirited them. The Third Army's sickness 
 rate was lower than in peace time. He put 
 that down to the climate, the bright February 
 sun, the dryness of hill positions. In the past 
 six weeks the Galician armies had taken 45,000 
 prisoners. Of the defeat of General v. Sievers' 
 Tenth Army in East Prussia nothing was said; 
 but it was known that the Russians were out 
 of Germany. The general praised the equip- 
 ment of the Austrians, the skill of their offi- 
 cers, and their good Staff work. He criticised 
 them for bad morale, shown by easy surrenders 
 and unsoldierly willingness of prisoners to talk. 
 The cause was not cowardice, but weakness 
 of interest in the war, absence of the race re- 
 sponsibility and the race solidarity which make 
 Germans formidable. I heard this from other 
 Russians, and believed it; but observation 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 157 
 
 showed me that morale must not be judged from 
 prisoners. The catastrophe which overtook this 
 army in May, partly at the hands of Austrians, 
 confirmed my view. The Austrians are able 
 and active; their defeat and retreat in Galicia 
 can be explained by their weakness in numbers. 
 The May battle and the active defence of the 
 Carpathians in March and April showed the 
 unwisdom of the assumption that the Aus- 
 trians are worn out; since then the Austrians 
 have had unbroken success. 
 
 The enemy, Radko Dimitriyeff told me, was 
 well furnished with artillery, in particular with 
 heavy howitzers and mortars, and he had 
 enough shells. His position was naturally as 
 strong as ours. West of Tarnow, our lines com- 
 manded; in other parts, the Austrians held 
 higher ground. The low-lying Austrian lines 
 on the left Dunajec were naturally weak; they 
 were subject to flooding, and might be fired 
 into from above, but they were defended against 
 infantry attack by wolf-pits, fougasse mines, 
 and entanglements. Later, I heard that there 
 were tread mines. A tread mine is a flat bomb 
 with horizontal, radial metal rods. The bombs 
 are laid close together with the rods touching, 
 and are covered with earth and sods. Pressure 
 on the rods makes the bombs burst. This is 
 
158 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 economical and effective; only such bombs 
 explode as will kill attackers, and when the 
 enemy is repulsed the bombs are easily re- 
 newed. Mining for defence is slow work; it 
 consumes much explosive, and causes little 
 loss. The general believed that his army was 
 stronger than the Austrian army; in the then 
 present relation of strength he could resist any 
 attack; he could force the opposing lines, and 
 march on Cracow. He awaited strategical 
 developments. The Third Army, as the left 
 flank, could not be extended when the centre 
 west of Warsaw was stationary and the right 
 had been driven back to the Niemen. The 
 army was well equipped, well fed, and supplied 
 with enough shells. I did not hear much of 
 big guns. The general was certain that he, 
 and Russia, would win, and, qualifying with 
 "with God's help !" he told me the peace which 
 Russia must make. 
 
 I asked about the conduct of the army, of 
 the enemy, and of the people. In the country 
 held by Radko Dimitriyeff's troops little damage 
 had been done wilfully; damage from battle 
 and accident was not great, odd houses in towns, 
 factories, single peasant cabins, and a few whole 
 villages had suffered. What I saw on the road 
 from Sandomierz was a fair measure of the ruin 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 159 
 
 elsewhere. The troops behaved well; the men 
 had been told to treat the people as friends; 
 there had been very little plundering, but no 
 army is perfect. For goods requisitioned the 
 army paid with notes. Swindlers, or the en- 
 emy, forged Russian credit notes; soldiers re- 
 fused to take them, and the legend spread that 
 the Russians were repudiating their own notes. 
 No one touched the goods of the peasants, 
 workmen, policemen, and minor officials who 
 stayed at home. The higher officials, country 
 gentlemen, and residents who had connections 
 with Vienna left their homes unguarded, and 
 peasants took the opportunity to settle old 
 scores. The peasants wanted the war to end. 
 In politics, the country belongs to Cracow, a 
 centre of Austrophile feeling. The Third Army 
 showed sense in ignoring this, and treating the 
 people as friends. Few attempts were made 
 against communications, and civilian spies were 
 rare. Soldier spies, dressed as peasants, crossed 
 the Dunajec; one was shot the day of my arrival. 
 He died bravely. Sokols — and other francs- 
 tireurs — inspired from Cracow, made trouble. 
 Marianna Prebyla, an educated girl, when not 
 writing verse, in which she had skill, shot 
 Russians. She wore a Hussar uniform. Her 
 friends of the Sokol band wore civilian dress, 
 
160 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 and when caught they were shot. Marianna, 
 too, was captured. Perhaps because she was 
 uniformed, perhaps because she did not cite 
 her verse in defence, no one wanted to shoot 
 her. Orders were sent for. The hierarchical 
 system, needed for the command of millions, 
 delays replies, and, tired of awaiting execution, 
 Marianna rode off on a captured horse. She 
 left verses behind. She fired provocatively at 
 the sentry, who had not seen her, risking her 
 life for the joy of killing a foe. Later, she 
 sniped with vigour on the Tarnow road. 
 
 Radko Dimitriyeff is looked on as a soldiers' 
 general. Pilzno is twenty miles from the Du- 
 najec; but the commander spent much time 
 within rifle-range of the enemy; he knew the 
 earthworks, and the position of every company. 
 Commands based more on memory than on 
 maps went by the field -telephone wires which 
 sagged from yellow sticks along the road. To 
 knowledge of the country was due a small but 
 useful success. The Austrians attacked, and 
 counter-attacked. The commander, in his room, 
 remembered a winding of the hills which gave 
 cover. He sent infantry behind it, and these 
 surprised the Austrians' flank. To his Staff 
 and men the general was a hero and a shield. 
 They believed that shells ceased to burst when 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 161 
 
 he was near. In Petrograd bad men envied 
 him; and good men, meaning a compliment, 
 classed him with Brusiloff, his neighbour. 
 
 In the evening, without the general, the Staff 
 talked of Austrians, Germans, and music. The 
 officers had seen little fighting; one who had 
 not always been on the Staff had seen a great 
 deal. A young officer played Puppchen, dis- 
 cord which enraged me in Berlin, but pleased, 
 as proof of military liberality, here. The officers 
 knew little of the war in Poland; they got be- 
 lated newspapers; of the war in the West they 
 knew nothing; they praised the way our Gov- 
 ernment conducted it. They spoke of the Ger- 
 mans in soldier way; praised their equipment, 
 courage, and leadership; and had great words 
 for Hindenburg. This I ascribed to chivalry. 
 I knew from our experts that the Field-Marshal 
 was a fussy, instable man, not without ideas, 
 who spent his days getting his men into holes, 
 and claiming victories when he got them out. 
 The Germans, the officers said, had a more 
 businesslike way of fighting than the Austrians; 
 they had no desire to be showy; and while 
 they lost many men, few were wasted. The 
 Hungarians were spectacular. The officer who 
 had seen fighting from near told me a story of 
 spectacular death. 
 
162 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 This happened before the battle of Lemberg. 
 Hungarians, entrapped on a farm, were at- 
 tacked by infantry and Cossacks. They re- 
 sisted. The only path of retreat was along a 
 fenced lane, blocked by carts. Some Hun- 
 garians fired; the others cleared the lane. 
 Cossacks were sent to cut the road. The Hun- 
 garians came into the open, attacked, lost 
 heavily, and fled back to cover. Russian bat- 
 talions, having heard the firing, came to help. 
 They brought guns. Shells were poured into 
 the farm; a white flag went up. The Hun- 
 garians offered to surrender on terms. They 
 asked to be allowed, without arms, to rejoin 
 the army. The Russian field statutes do not 
 allow of this; and the hopelessness of resistance 
 made the request absurd. The Russians told 
 the besieged to surrender. They got a refusal. 
 The parlementaires went back, and shelling 
 was resumed. The farmhouse caught fire. 
 Through field-glasses the Russians watched 
 the destruction. Hungarians, their faces red 
 from the glare, crowded into a room. A sol- 
 dier who rushed out was struck by a falling 
 beam. When the flames got near the room, 
 smoke cut off the sight. The Hungarians shot 
 themselves, or burned to death. This story 
 ended in more Puppchen — the Magyars' dirge. 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 163 
 
 I spent a night at Pilzno. Guns boomed. My 
 servant was a reservist from Pennsylvania with 
 a bare chin, sharp eyes, and a Roman nose 
 which spoke pure American. He resembled 
 a senator. At dawn, starting for Tarnow, I 
 asked the Poles if they had heard the guns. 
 They pointed towards the square where the 
 motor-generator rattled, and said, "The ma- 
 chine guns stopped at twelve." 
 
 Tarnow is the best town between Lemberg 
 and Cracow, and it has values for war. The 
 North Galicia railway crosses a line from the 
 Vistula via Neu-Sandec to the hills and Epe- 
 ries. The Austrians left on the 9th of Novem- 
 ber. Next day came Circassian horsemen, who 
 prayed in the street at sunset. I visited Gen- 
 eral Schtcherbatchoff, commander of the Ninth 
 Corps, a scientific soldier, formerly a Staff 
 Academy instructor. Tarnow is a contrast with 
 neglected Russian Poland. It starts in mud 
 as a one-story village which recalls Ireland, 
 and develops into a little metropolis. There is 
 a red brick cathedral; the Schwarzenberg Hus- 
 sars club-house would grace Pall Mall; and 
 there are big administrative buildings. The 
 club and the Government houses were used as 
 hospitals of the Duma, the Red Cross, and the 
 Union of Russian Towns. In baths arranged 
 
164 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 by the Union of Towns, I found sixty soldiers, 
 steamed, dripping trench dirt. Tarnow had 
 daily bombardments. Until May, when Gor- 
 lice was razed by four hours' shelling, no town 
 on the Cracow front heard more shells burst. 
 This morning, there were deafening roars; and 
 afterwards some sharp reports. These came 
 from Russian guns. The Austrians, who rested 
 seldom, were resting. Their big guns were on 
 the hills west of the Dunajec. They had many 
 30.5 mortars, field howitzers, and a 42 cm. gun 
 which was twelve kilometres from the town. 
 Radko Dimitriyeff showed me the photograph 
 of an unexploded 42 cm. shell, inscribed in 
 whitewash with its history and size. He be- 
 lieved that it came from a Krupp mortar, a 
 Thick Bertha, which was served by Germans 
 but belonged to Austria. Later, I learned that 
 the gun was a Skoda howitzer, "the Pilsener." 
 It was built independently of Krupp, resembled 
 the Krupp mortar only in size ; in other respects 
 it was like the Austrian 30.5 mortars. The in- 
 itial speed is greater than the speed of the Thick 
 Bertha; the shell weighs six hundred pounds 
 more: at normal working pressure a shot can 
 be fired every four minutes. This gun appeared 
 on New Year's Day: the first shell burst in a 
 courtyard behind the Rathaus, and dug a hole 
 
THE FRONT OF CRACOW 165 
 
 sixteen feet deep and thirty broad. The last 
 shell before my arrival fell in a suburb; the 
 gas storm blew in the wall of a house far away. 
 After that, the Pilsener aimed at the railway- 
 station. The track and outbuildings were de- 
 stroyed; the turntable lay bottom up; but the 
 station-house was spared. The station-house is 
 Tarnow's pride; it is new, and has a dedicatory 
 plate with effigy of Francis Joseph, frescoed 
 walls, and stained-glass windows. The con- 
 cussions broke the windows, and sent plaster 
 flying; glass and plaster littered the floor; but 
 no shell struck the roof or walls. A sentry who 
 had seen shells burst every day for six weeks 
 had not a scratch. The town, which the Relief 
 Committee of Vevey describes as "ruins and 
 ashes," had twenty or thirty houses destroyed 
 out of several thousands. There were gaps, 
 with flat heaps of brick. The cathedral and 
 the hospital escaped. Afterwards, I heard, the 
 Ursuline Convent suffered. 
 
 From safety standpoint, Tarnow was worse 
 than Warsaw, where air bombs made mere pin- 
 holes. The tedium of interexplosion hours was 
 varied by the same graceful levity. Citizens 
 ran away when Ruzski took Lemberg, well out 
 of shell range, and when battle drew near 
 enough to be dangerous they came back. The 
 
166 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 houses next the railway-station were occupied, 
 and from windows overlooking shell craters 
 children peeped. The shops were busy, there 
 were cheap biographs with the same Hound of 
 the Baskervilles ; and M. Smirnoff, "with the 
 Commandant's permission," and the permis- 
 sion, later withdrawn, of the art-loving Pil- 
 sener, gave pianoforte recitals. A Warsaw actor 
 whom the Russians brought to replace the 
 refugee owner of the Cafe Avenue, said that 
 residents of the safe country to the east came 
 to Tarnow for recreation. The Russians helped 
 them. There were no passports, restrictions, or 
 menaces. The soldier is a better master than 
 the bureaucrat; people spoke well of Radko 
 Dimitriyeff as a just and kindly man, and 
 Tarnow in war was pleasanter than Russia in 
 peace. 
 
 In Galicia the Russians behaved as if they 
 had come to stay. Official utterances and the 
 Press of Petrograd implied that the province 
 had been rejoined to Russia after a few years 
 of Austrian rule. On the eve of the unlucky 
 battle of Gorlice-Tarnow, the Tsar paid a visit, 
 and proclaimed that Galicia was annexed, and 
 a week after the battle the Commander-in- 
 Chief was decorated as Galicia's Liberator. 
 Russian money was the legal exchange; Aus- 
 
THE I T Of CBAC 1*7 
 
 trian circulated at a fixed course. The yell . 
 Austrian letter-boxes with the double eagle, 
 hardly distinguishable from Russian, were in 
 place bo - L , of use. The ans . 
 
 taken th K. Minor officials, policemen, and 
 
 students i :ian kepi. The t 
 
 population was left alon The Jews, as in 
 Poland, suffered much. I was told they suf- 
 fered bei I believe they 
 were spies because they suffered. In Eastern 
 
 !icia, cond. ! different. Lembag 
 
 had three Russian daily papers; the chief, 
 Carpathian Russia. The soldiers treated the 
 people half as Russians and as friends; the 
 bureaucrats, in their zeal to make them R 
 sian, treated them as enemies. Russification 
 went on at high -d; citizens who wanted 
 
 to remain Ruthenian were exiled, school- 
 teachers were sent to Russia to learn Russian, 
 and the assimilators proclaimed that chil- 
 dren must learn Russian. Examinations in the 
 Russian language were held. The Academy 
 at Petrograd admits that Ruthenian is a lan- 
 guage, not a dialect. Violent Nationalists who 
 from th - ademy were followed to 
 
 licia by an intolerant bishop, who dn red 
 that the people had no right to their religion, 
 as their forefathers had been fooled into it by 
 
168 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 evil men. These measures for thoroughness — 
 also, as the enemy had fifteen hundred guns on 
 the Dunajec, for timeliness — recalled the au- 
 tumn programmes of Petrograd amateurs. The 
 Duma strongly protested against these measures. 
 Humane men condemned them; cynical men 
 thought that they might be postponed, and 
 executed with the other plans, formulated 
 when war broke out, for the happiness of man- 
 kind. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 
 
 WEST of Tarnow, I crossed the Biala 
 by a long bridge which Russians built 
 in a week. The airy Polish — or airy 
 human — spirit persisted. All the way to the 
 Dunajec from Rzuchkowo village, then a di- 
 visional staff headquarters, cabins and farms 
 are hidden in little valleys. Some houses were 
 between the reserve positions and the terraced 
 trenches by the river. Some were a thousand 
 yards from the Austrian entanglements. The 
 hill-crests sheltered them from direct fire; but 
 bullets fired at high elevations fell. Houses 
 near the field-artillery positions were in danger 
 from shell and shrapnel. Over the whole coun- 
 try, day and night, went "Pilsener" shells, 
 twelve-inch shells, field-howitzer shells; and 
 shrapnel, turned on our gunners, poured the 
 ugliest kind of bullet down. This had been so 
 since Christmas. At first the people fled, but 
 they returned, and stayed. Men, made home- 
 less by earlier fires, were laying roofs, women 
 and children worked on the slopes, and cattle 
 
 169 
 
170 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 grazed. Visitors new to projectiles are nervous; 
 when told to bend, because heads are seen over 
 the ridge, they bend without shame. There 
 were no ducking peasants, but some who 
 sawed logs were bent into safety. 
 
 On the Lower Dunajec, where Radko Dimi- 
 triyeff 's army held both banks, a thousand shells 
 fell in a day. Eighteen men were killed. For 
 wealth of shelling and meanness in results, it 
 was often so. Divisional staff officers spoke 
 of the small loss from long-range shelling. 
 Ceaseless shelling, they said, has military use 
 if the shellers are well supplied, if eroded guns 
 are quickly replaced. It hampers movement, 
 threatens safety on the etappe roads, and strains 
 nerves. The Austrians knew this, and the Ger- 
 mans knew it. War, even when the visible 
 gain is small, must be waged at high tension. 
 Rifle-bullets aimed at heaven flew all day. 
 There were alarms. When it grew dark, the 
 enemy's "aiming bullets" burst with vicious 
 blue flames. There were more alarms at night; 
 before dawn the front blazed provocatively 
 with star-shells, and, peering over the river 
 breastworks, our men saw faces in the enemy's 
 trench. 
 
 The battle of Gorlice-Tarnow spoiled the 
 doctrine that shells do no harm. During my 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 171 
 
 visit it was so. Sometimes the Russians ignored 
 the shells. They kept their strength for in- 
 fantry fights, short and sharp. These rights 
 ended well. We took prisoners, extended our 
 trenches, and twice drove the enemy from posi- 
 tions naturally strong, and made him intrench 
 on weak ground. In such a battle the Austrians 
 lost the right Dunajec bank. Two brigades 
 fought. The Austrian lines were charged, and 
 a colonel and eight hundred men were made 
 prisoners. It was on this day that the com- 
 mander's memory of front topography led to 
 the enemy being trapped. The unfinished 
 Austrian shelter-trenches, a row of oval holes, 
 twelve inches deep, remained. Farther up the 
 river were tentative night attacks. A Tyro- 
 lean captain, shivering and rheumatic, de- 
 scribed the last attack. The Dunajec, no- 
 where a great obstacle, has fords. At night, 
 taking advantage of a shift of our infantry, 
 Austrians started to cross. The sun shone on 
 the foot-hills since the middle of January; snow 
 was melting, and the water was high. Thirty 
 soldiers were swept down, the Tyrolean reached 
 the Russian bank, and was taken prisoner. 
 Some men, he told me, perished in holes made 
 by our sappers. The Austrians tried to cross 
 by a ford higher up, but the delay gave time 
 
172 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 to strengthen our trenches, and the attack 
 failed. 
 
 Shelling, desultory rifle fire, and far-off, small 
 outpost collisions, were all that happened on 
 the day I reached the front. Aeroplanes were 
 shelled. Early in the morning an Austrian air- 
 man soared over Tarnow Cathedral. The 
 people looked up. As we crossed the slopes 
 west of Rzuchkowo on the way to the field- 
 artillery positions, a biplane flew from beyond 
 the Dunajec, made a loop, and sped east. We 
 were approaching a depression with a new 
 earthen rampart where I expected to find a 
 battery. Protected in this way was a field-gun, 
 mounted on a wooden stage resembling a rail- 
 way turntable. It did duty as anti-airship 
 gun. A battery commander who came down 
 the hill gave orders to shell the biplane with 
 shrapnel. I think it was more from desire to 
 show something than in hope of hitting the 
 biplane. The shell burst; the aeroplane turned, 
 cut through the smoke puff, and dwindled to 
 a line. 
 
 The battery officers spoke of Austrian air- 
 men, who were strong in numbers, bold, and 
 efficient in ruses. A few days back, airmen had 
 dropped bombs on Brzostek, a town on the 
 Wilsoka, probably believing that the com- 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 173 
 
 mander was there. A Zeppelin crossed the 
 Dukla Pass. The wind on the Dunajec scat- 
 tered air-leaflets headed, "How Prisoners Live 
 in Austria; Eetter Than Free Men at Home." 
 At Rozwadow, an airman caused the abandon- 
 ment of a Russian trench. He made a detour 
 round our flank; flew from the direction of 
 the corps command; and appeared over the 
 headquarters of the divisional staff. Down 
 came an order on Russian staff paper that 
 a trench, newly taken, should be evacuated. 
 The telephone to the corps staff was cut; mes- 
 sages had been coming by motor-car; and it 
 was believed that the aeroplane had been cho- 
 sen for its speed. The trench was abandoned. 
 The Austrians had used a captured aeroplane. 
 Next day the same airman rose for some other 
 ruse, but shots brought him down. The aero- 
 plane shot at in my presence, known by its 
 patched wing, was enterprising. It bombed 
 Cossacks at Jaslo, and was seen east over be- 
 sieged Przemysl. 
 
 The soldiers condemned aeronautics. "A 
 man is a man, and a hen is a hen." With Cos- 
 sacks, supplanted by airmen in reconnaissance 
 work, dislike was lost in contempt. They 
 boasted that any man could drive a paper 
 bird (bumazhnaya ptitsa), but that few airmen 
 
174 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 could ride a Cossack steed. This was proven. 
 Wounded German airmen were forced to de- 
 scend within our lines. Cossacks took them 
 prisoners. In the spirit of the boast, a Cossack 
 vowed that he would ride through the skies. 
 The Germans stared; the Cossack climbed into 
 the car. After his experimental fumbling, the 
 aeroplane raced ahead, and rose. The fright- 
 ened Cossack swore, pulled at levers, and bade 
 the paper bird descend. The bird was fright- 
 ened by threats — or it felt the right lever — 
 for it dived and charged a tree. The aeroplane 
 and the Cossack's nose suffered. "The Ger- 
 mans were very angry." "Did they try a 
 Cossack pony?" "No; we don't like airmen. 
 Only God has a right to see down a man's 
 neck." 
 
 The artillery belonged to the Ninth Corps. 
 The men were small, sunburnt, and active; 
 they were bright and inclined, as men seldom 
 are, to take war gaily. They paid small at- 
 tention to the shells, greeting them, "Another 
 grouse dead!" From a safe dugout, artil- 
 lerists could be seen playing "little towns" 
 with shrapnel-cases still hot. In peace, the 
 art of the game is to disperse with big logs 
 geometrical "little towns" of smaller logs. 
 Years ago at Terioki, in Finland, I saw Gorki 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 175 
 
 playing with the novelist and playwright Leo- 
 nid Andreyeff. The throws from Gorki's long 
 arms were like falling shells. 
 
 On hills between this artillery position and 
 Rzuchkowo the last Dunajec battle was fought. 
 The field, pitted with shell craters, resembled 
 a lunar landscape. The Austrians avenged 
 their defeat with shells from twelve-inch mor- 
 tars, from field-howitzers, from field-guns. On 
 the space of a football field were twenty pits 
 of the biggest shells. Between, sometimes 
 overlapping, sometimes in, the big craters, 
 were the craters of smaller shells. A landslide, 
 caused by explosions, blocked a dugout, and 
 nearly finished the tenants. Before my arrival, 
 a twelve-inch shell, fired on low trajectory, 
 sliced from an ammunition cart an angle of 
 steel, and burst in a tempest of flame, smoke, 
 and dust; the masked gun positions were 
 shaken, and sods and sacks flew. The Rus- 
 sians were retaliating. No target was in sight. 
 Judged by the spouts of flame, evenly apart 
 on one hill contour, the aim was good. An 
 eight-inch gun which dropped three shells on 
 the same spot at Tuchow was silenced. Every- 
 body asked, "Where is Thick Bertha?" Thick 
 Bertha, in reality the Pilsener, answered late 
 in the day with a "portmanteau" (the Rus- 
 
176 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 sian analogue of " coal-box") that killed house- 
 breakers in a Tarnow ruin. 
 
 In this campaign the enemy, even when near, 
 is unseen. Soldiers seldom see him in bayonet 
 charges; the charges are stayed by bullets, or 
 they win by the moral threat, before the foes 
 meet. Only on the Dunajec, I saw the enemy 
 free, fighting, and at work, as if I were in his 
 lines. The trenches on the left bank were be- 
 low and very near ours. Three hundred yards 
 lay between. The artillery observation point, 
 and behind, sheltered by a ridge, the nearest 
 battery of field-guns, were on a hill above 
 the trenches. The observation point was half 
 a mile from the Austrians. It was reached 
 through a sapped gallery. I found a straw- 
 lined dugout with sleeping room for four 
 officers; and, past the entrance, with only the 
 eyes over the edge of the sap, a Zeiss periscope. 
 I stared long at the enemy's lines. 
 
 The Austrian artillery positions could not 
 be seen; they were behind the hills, or on the 
 hillsides, masked. Before the hills, flat land 
 lay; and here, ten yards from the river, were 
 the first infantry positions, faced by a ribbon 
 of yellow clay, which may have been strewn 
 with tread mines. There were three trenches, 
 joined by saps, close together, with high, flimsy 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 177 
 
 entanglements. Our entanglements are lower, 
 broader, and better built. There was a mild 
 exchange of rifle fire. The Austrians aimed 
 high over our heads, threatening the peasants 
 and cows. Men in the first trench fired, the 
 men in the back trenches dug, some bent over 
 newspapers or white plates. The trenches were 
 thinly manned, perhaps because in daylight 
 they could not be surprised. The men in 
 the trenches might have been picked off by 
 sharpshooters, but if heads were exposed bul- 
 lets came. The enemy's infantry reserves, I 
 learned, were behind the hill; sometimes, on 
 chance, Russian shrapnel was sent there. Won- 
 dering what the enemy would do to see our 
 lines as we saw theirs, I left the observa- 
 tion point. The enemy, I learned, had seen 
 our lines. Captive balloons had been up. The 
 trenches had been photographed. The obser- 
 vation point escaped. It was an easy target; 
 but except for stray bullets, nothing came its 
 
 way. 
 
 I spent the afternoon with the divisional 
 staff, with engineer officers, and with infantry 
 officers on relief, met on the way to head- 
 quarters. Incredible stories were told of Aus- 
 trian war-making. The Austrians, one man 
 said, used their dead as dummies. On the 
 
178 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Lower Dunajec, trenches were fifty yards apart. 
 Whei attacking at dawn, after night fighting, 
 the Russians saw heads strangely exposed over 
 the enemy's trench. These, they judged, were 
 dummies, and they laughed at the foe's sim- 
 plicity, for infantrymen, when they are not 
 firing, do not show their heads. The dum- 
 mies were corpses. On our left in the hills, 
 where trench and trench were closer, there 
 were truces broken by outbursts of rage. The 
 Austrians broke an agreement concerning food, 
 the Russians dammed a gorge, and let wa- 
 ter loose. As a rule, truces lasted, and as 
 time passed without fighting, friendships were 
 made. 
 
 Thanks to prisoners and to spies, the Staff 
 knew a great deal about Austrian dispositions. 
 Prisoners were taken first to corps headquarters, 
 then to army headquarters, and questioned 
 twice. The first examination is more fruitful. 
 In the emotion of safety prisoners forget the 
 soldier's duty of silence; they feel a need for 
 exchanging confidences; they ingratiate them- 
 selves; or they talk merely for the love of talk- 
 ing. After resting they change. "On the day 
 of capture a prisoner's our spy; watch him, for 
 the next day he's the enemy's." The officers 
 told of a captured German who escaped from 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 179 
 
 Gorlice, leaving behind his helmet. In the 
 helmet were notes of our strength. 
 
 The Staff gave me Austrian rifles, shells, and 
 dumdum and explosive aiming bullets. The 
 aiming bullets — Einschusspatrone — look like 
 normal bullets; when shaken they rattle. The 
 charge is fulminate of mercury. All armies are 
 said to use them at night; the flash given at 
 impact shows that the bullet has struck. The 
 use in large numbers, or for any purpose but 
 aiming, is against the customs of war. I saw a 
 machine-gun belt full of them, all marked with 
 Austria's eagle and the year of manufacture. 
 We took the rifles to a quarry pit, and fired dum- 
 dums and explosives into a beam. The dum- 
 dums made a clean entry and a ragged exit; the 
 explosives made a clean hole, charred through- 
 out. The charge is weak. This is the only 
 breach of the rules of war I have seen. I heard 
 of others; officers made few charges, but they 
 were made in good faith ; the stories of peasants, 
 Jew traders, and Warsaw gossips were lies. 
 Later, I tested new hand-grenades, flattish and 
 glistening, like mustard-tins. These we cast into 
 a pond, and they exploded on the ooze. It 
 was a bright day, and towards the sky rose 
 water-jets, thin and high as a house. 
 
 I visited hospitals at Tarnow, later some 
 
180 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 etappe hospitals, and saw many wounded. The 
 Ursuline nuns of Tarnow did good work, and 
 Russian officers had respect for them. At a 
 village on the Sandomierz road I found an 
 etappe hospital in the hall of a Sokol league. 
 There were thirty soldiers, all newly brought, in 
 rows on sacking and straw, well tended by two 
 young doctors, and very wretched. The girl 
 helpers belonged to a nursing commune, put 
 for the term of war under the Red Cross. As 
 Russian women mostly do, they worked well; 
 better than men. They were careful, practical, 
 and devoted. Many years back I saw girls 
 nursing scurvied Tartars in a breadless Kama- 
 side village, while the men helpers begged that 
 their names might be put in the papers. Here 
 there was a girl, with a swollen hand which 
 threatened blood-poisoning, cleaning from para- 
 sites a very dirty man. 
 
 As I drove to Pilzno, the boom from the Du- 
 najec ceased, and a weaker boom came from the 
 Beskides, forty miles south. In the passes the 
 Austrians had big guns, and they fired without 
 cease, sometimes to hit, sometimes to tease, 
 sometimes to shake down snow. Snow and ice 
 in the mountains retarded war. The Austrians 
 retook Stanislau and Czernowitz, and reached 
 our frontier. The Russians began the attempt 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 181 
 
 to force the passes which lasted through March 
 and April. This was the third general offensive. 
 The first began in November, the second at 
 Christmas. On the eve of the third attempt 
 Russia held the Dukla Pass and part of the 
 canton of Saros. Fighting went on everywhere, 
 hardest on the Dukla, Lupkow, Uszok, and 
 Tuchla fronts. In the centre, on the Lupkow 
 Pass, leading to Homonna, heavy blows were 
 aimed. 
 
 The battle seemed to be the crisis of the cam- 
 paign. It brought great sacrifices. The tactics 
 were to shrink from no loss while there was 
 hope, to attack when attack failed, and to coun- 
 ter-attack when the enemy won. Given the 
 elements of success, these tactics are right and 
 humane. In failure, the existence of the army 
 is threatened; when losses reach a certain height, 
 the army, although the organisation, artillery, 
 and technical equipment remain, loses its com- 
 bative value. After a chain of bloody combats 
 this attack failed. Success would not have prof- 
 ited it. A week after the battle of the Passes 
 ended, an Austrian and German army broke 
 the Cracow front, and ten days later it reached 
 the San. Had the Carpathian armies con- 
 quered and marched on Buda Pest, not a man 
 would have returned. 
 
182 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Officers say that in killed and wounded the 
 battle of the Passes was the costliest of the war. 
 Germans called it "the grave of the Russian 
 Army." Losses were great, but smaller, I be- 
 lieve, than in the battle of Lodz. For duration, 
 steadfastness on both sides, and skill in meeting 
 difficulties, all mountain fights were excelled. 
 Snow lay shoulder-high on plane slopes; the 
 drifts were as deep as wells; the cold was in- 
 tense; and there were mists. Sunshine melted 
 the surface snow, making slides of ice. While 
 the Russians fought Arctic winter, the Aus- 
 trians, ascending the south slopes, had an early 
 spring; they struggled in torrents of snow water 
 and abysms of mud. The Austrians had their 
 backs to the sun; the Russians were dazzled as 
 they stormed the hill fortresses ; the glare across 
 the snow hampered aim. The Eighth Army 
 was in trouble for supplies. Wheeled carts 
 would not move, and the slopes were too steep 
 and the snow too deep for sledges. Supplies 
 came on endless chains of sleds with broad 
 runners, hauled by men at the summits. Trains 
 were swallowed up, and had to be dug out. 
 Guns were floated over the snow on platforms, 
 and dead men on planks were slid down the 
 hills for burial. 
 
 The men marched, shot, and shed their blood 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 183 
 
 in the snow. A hospital worker told me that 
 he passed near Baligrod a winter battle-field. 
 He looked from above on a slope where the 
 snow, trodden only in parts, was white; and 
 red flowers seemed to grow in it. It was pain- 
 ful to see wounded men, on their way to the 
 first-aid points, leaving trails of blood; to see 
 them, bandaged, struggling through snow to 
 the field-hospitals. Bearers who followed the 
 trails found a soldier frozen to death. Hoping 
 to stem the blood, he had pressed through the 
 snow his shattered hand. 
 
 Snow tactics were devised. There was snow- 
 field engineering; both sides faced the problem 
 of attacking with infantry over snow-fields. The 
 end of March saw snow-fortress fighting. This 
 was at the Tartar's Saddle on the Lupkow front. 
 At night, after trouble with supplies had caused 
 a Russian withdrawal, the Austrians advanced. 
 They had infantry on skis, guns on runners, and 
 transport sleds. The snow was breast-high. In 
 the dawn, when our airmen, rising from the 
 plain, soared to reconnoitre, the Austrians were 
 seen, high up, in trenches terraced on the snow 
 slopes. Snow will not stop bullets. Snow water, 
 provided by the sun, had been poured on the 
 snow parapets. At night the soaked snow froze, 
 and made bullet-proof walls. The aerial for- 
 
184 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 tress overlooked our lines. To take it was hard; 
 field-guns higher in the pass poured shrapnel; 
 and machine guns were fired from turrets of 
 frozen snow. Some of the Austrian guns were 
 silenced; the ice parapets split. An infantry 
 attack had to follow. Infantry could not cross 
 the snow. In darkness the snow was sapped. 
 The Austrians saw the sappers, and renewed 
 their fusillade. At dawn our men were fifty 
 yards from the enemy. They began to lose; 
 the soft snow concealed them, but it let bullets 
 through. The Russians cast grenades. The 
 Austrians answered with grenades. From the 
 concussion, snow swept down the mountain, and 
 buried friend and foe. The Austrians came off 
 better. Their frozen parapets held; and when 
 the snow sea ceased to move, they struggled 
 out. A dozen Russians perished. Tunnels were 
 dug through snow. An enemy's observation 
 outpost was housed in a shed on a snow slope. 
 Not far off Russians shivered in trenches and 
 dugouts of snow turned to ice by sun and night 
 frost. Hoping to surprise the enemy, our men 
 tunnelled. The snow was water-soaked; and at 
 first the roof held. When the tunnellers were 
 near the shed, the roof caved in; heads emerged; 
 a rifle went off; there was a collapse with sounds 
 so disturbing that the Austrians fled, flounder- 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 185 
 
 ing through the snow wilderness. Our men were 
 so pleased by their successful failure that they 
 forbore to shoot. 
 
 On the Dukla-Lupkow front the fighting was 
 spread. Isolated units could not keep in touch. 
 Forces had successes or failures hours, some- 
 times days, before the results of actions fought 
 close to them were known. Half a battalion 
 vanished; it attacked and dispersed Austrians 
 on a remote ridge. Snow fell; the path was 
 lost; and the Russians were heard of no more. 
 There was no telephone; clouds prevented sig- 
 nalling; in the roar of a battle forty miles long, 
 shot signals were unheard; ski runners perished 
 in a ravine. The soldiers made snow dugouts, 
 wrapped up their wounded, and waited. Next 
 day the Austrians, as they returned to the at- 
 tack, were seen from below. A force sent to 
 attack them found the lost men, some with 
 frost-bites, all too tired to move. 
 
 Mists, made by melting and evaporation in 
 the March sunshine, hampered work. Aus- 
 trians, marching south on the Uszok front, blun- 
 dered in the mist against a battalion of our men. 
 Russian forces were higher in the hills; the bat- 
 talion, hearing the tramp, feared to shoot lest 
 the invisible men were friends. The Austrians 
 shot. Still believing the shooters were comrades, 
 
186 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 our men lay down and shouted, "Friends!" 
 The Austrians fired again. One of the Russian 
 forces on the hills returned. The mist rose; 
 the Austrians found Russians in front and be- 
 hind. The Russians still feared to shoot, as 
 bullets which passed the Austrian ranks would 
 have hit friends. By firing on both sides the 
 Austrians might have mown down both enemy 
 forces, but, seeing retreat cut, they surrendered. 
 In an engagement on this front a Little Russian 
 signaller lost his life. After the officers were 
 killed, he took charge of an infantry outpost on 
 a hill. The Hungarians threatened from all 
 sides. With the side of a beef -tin the soldier- 
 commander signalled for help. When help came, 
 only three soldiers were left. The signaller died 
 last. 
 
 There were fierce bayonet fights, many bloody 
 repulses of attacks and counter-attacks, and 
 some position war. The position war was made 
 necessary by the fortification of the transverse 
 valleys after the last Austrian advance. Re- 
 doubts were buried in the slopes, masked with 
 snow and pine saplings, so that they were in- 
 visible even from near. There were terraced 
 trenches of Russian kind, well masked, with 
 loopholed breastworks of logs. To destroy these 
 was hard. The attackers' guns moved slowly; 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 187 
 
 the defenders' guns were posted in advance. 
 Shrapnel fire from masked batteries delayed a 
 division two days. Crossing a hillside at night, 
 our men took three works from the side with the 
 bayonet. Later, works were found protected at 
 the side with entanglements. Magyar Honved 
 units, perhaps because they fought for Hun- 
 gary's defence, showed greatest resolution. In 
 April a Honved force, newly come from Ho- 
 monna, assailed Russians who were advancing. 
 Unable to intrench, the Russians sought shel- 
 ter behind a pine-covered ridge. The Magyars 
 three times stormed against our rifles and ma- 
 chine guns. They lost half their number, re- 
 tired to trenches, were attacked and shattered, 
 but held out. Reinforcements came for them 
 and for us. The Magyars stormed again, and 
 failed. A counter-attack cast them out, and 
 few escaped. 
 
 As winter passed, trouble with mud and 
 stones replaced trouble with snow. The mud 
 was deep. In the fights for the Orawa valley 
 stones did the work of projectiles. Sometimes 
 through concussion, sometimes by the impact 
 of shells, boulders in instable equilibrium were 
 sent flying. An avalanche of stones which tore 
 down the Ostry caused the evacuation of 
 trenches. The enemy took the lowest trench, 
 
188 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 and held it, sheltered against fire from above 
 by a salient of rock. The slope over the upper 
 trench was covered with stones. When firing 
 began, the stones bounded down. Later explo- 
 sions brought on a stone bombardment of our 
 trenches, which killed some men and bruised 
 many. The soldiers covered their heads and 
 spines with folded coats, haversacks, and logs, 
 and crouched or lay. When the enemy saw our 
 trouble, he fired shells into the stones. The 
 men crept sidelong from the trench, and ran, 
 under rifle fire. Stones bounded over the salient 
 into the lower trench, now held by Austrians; 
 and the Austrians ran. When the stones tired 
 of falling, the fight, this time with hand-bombs, 
 was resumed. 
 
 Mine war, in the style of Flanders, played a 
 part in the Austrian and German counter-attacks 
 in the Orawa and Opor valleys. The Russians 
 turned the hills into forts. Plane slopes with a 
 clear field of fire and deep gullies in the valleys 
 helped the defence. The Austrians of Hofmann, 
 part of the German Linsingen's command, bored 
 galleries across the valleys, sometimes under the 
 gullies. They blew up our trenches, stormed 
 the Zimin and the Ostry, and at great cost won 
 the Orawa valley a few days before Radko Dimi- 
 triyeff's defeat caused a retreat from all the 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 189 
 
 passes. It is no puzzle why blood was shed in 
 frontal attacks when the plan was ripe to re- 
 cover Galicia by an advance from Cracow. The 
 enemy's way is to disturb all fronts. In strat- 
 egy, as in tactics, the pressure is high. 
 
 The main change from the battle of the 
 Passes was a Russian loss on the Dukla front. 
 The Austrians pushed north from near Sztropko 
 to beyond Krajna Polyana, near the frontier. 
 They failed to reach the watershed. East and 
 west their gains dwindled to points. Failure 
 casts no aspersion on the Russians. The cour- 
 age shown was great; and if blunders were 
 made, they lay in the strategical problem itself. 
 The positions were too strong; the Austrians, 
 backed by Germans under German generals, 
 defended with obstinacy, and counter-attacked 
 with fire. Attacks that fail bring the judg- 
 ment that they ought not to have been made, 
 but that implies foreknowledge. Risks must be 
 taken; and as a march west against Prussia 
 was doomed, the military and political destruc- 
 tion of Austria-Hungary was the only aim. 
 
 My belief after the battle of the Passes was 
 that no new offensive could be tried unless 
 Russia's allies in the West shook the Germans, 
 and compelled them to transfer men. From 
 the little I saw, and from all that I heard, it 
 
190 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 seemed that the defensive in Galicia could be 
 maintained and resumed; the Cracow front 
 would be held as before; and, in spite of Ger- 
 man and Austrian successes in the Beskides, 
 Russia, if she ceased from attacking, could 
 hold the northern slopes. This judgment as- 
 sumed that no more German troops would 
 come. In the passes the Russians were strong, 
 and the Cracow front looked impregnable. It 
 had been held for months, it ran without break 
 from the Vistula to the hills, and it was forti- 
 fied with every device. The Western campaign 
 taught that such a front might be gnawed at<, 
 but that it could not be swallowed at once. 
 This teaching is disproved. A strongly posted 
 army, confident of strength, kept in inaction by 
 strategical exigencies, spared trench fighting, 
 may fall a prey to a foe who has initiative, 
 and the boldness of conception needed for vast 
 operations. The Tenth Army of Baron v. 
 Sievers perished from such causes, and in May 
 perished the army of Radko Dimitriyeff. 
 
 After my visit, the Staff moved from Pilzno 
 to Jaslo, a town to the south. Radko Dimitri- 
 yeff was at Jaslo when the attack began. The 
 attackers were the three or four corps of the 
 Archduke Joseph, the German division which 
 stood in February on the right, and German 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 191 
 
 reinforcements of unknown strength. The plan 
 was conceived by the Austrian Chief of Staff, 
 Baron Conrad v. Hoetzendorff; the command 
 was given to General v. Mackensen, the victor 
 in the flank attack from Thorn, which ended 
 our advance against Posen and Silesia. The 
 Vienna Staff report says that the Third Army 
 comprised the 9th, 10th, 12th, 24th and 3rd 
 Caucasus Corps, with reserve divisions. On a 
 front of seventy miles the enemy concentrated 
 fifteen hundred guns; there were many Austrian 
 30.5 mortars, and at least two 42 cm. Pilsener 
 howitzers. The Pilseners were used to prepare 
 for storm the important height, 419. The 
 Lower Dunajec is dammed against floods. The 
 Austrians, working at night, pierced the dam; 
 at dawn they blocked the hole, and they got 
 ready, greased and on wheels, their pontoons. 
 By a bombardment of four hours on the morn- 
 ing of the 2nd of May, the Russian position 
 was battered. The Austrians and Germans 
 crossed the river; farther north they marched 
 against Gorlice, and they stormed our lines. 
 The lines were pierced at six places, and by the 
 afternoon the front was crushed. The best 
 resistance was made by the centre, west of 
 Tarnow; there, was a good general with a 
 good corps. The penetration of both wings 
 
192 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 and pressure on the centre itself compelled re- 
 treat. History has no more remarkable frontal 
 axxacK* 
 
 The Austrians and Germans advanced rap- 
 idly, crossed the Wisloka, captured Pilzno, Jaslo, 
 Krosno, and Brzowow; eleven days after the 
 battle they crossed the San, and a month after 
 the battle they retook Przemysl. Their ad- 
 vance threatened the communications, one after 
 the other, of the armies in the passes. From 
 Dukla to the Opor valley there were hurried 
 retreats, the enemy pursuing. No Russians 
 were left in Hungary. Some units failed to 
 escape. The Nida positions, strongly fortified, 
 in South Poland were outflanked; they were 
 evacuated, and the Austrians regained Kielce. 
 The Russians were expelled from Bukowina 
 and the Austrians crossed into Bessarabia. 
 The Germans and Austrians advanced rapidly 
 down the Carpathian slopes and crossed the 
 Dnieper. The Russians made some vigorous 
 counter-attacks, but had no general success. 
 The attackers crossed into South Poland, near 
 Tarnogrod. They marched on Lemberg, cap- 
 tured the Grodek and Wereszyca lines, the 
 city's natural defences, strongly fortified, to 
 the west; and on the 22nd of June retook Lem- 
 berg. 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 193 
 
 The Dunajec offensive seemed at first to be 
 merely the beginning of a campaign for the 
 recovery of Galicia. It bore no obvious im- 
 mediate relation to the struggle for Poland, 
 and did not foreshadow the campaigns in the 
 Baltic Provinces and Lithuania, still less the 
 greater campaign for the overthrowal of Rus- 
 sia, which is now under way. Russians held 
 that Austria and Germany, in spite of the new 
 victory, were too weak to attempt a general 
 invasion. Before Lemberg was lost this view 
 was shown to be mistaken. The battle of Gor- 
 lice-Tarnow must be regarded as one link in a 
 chain of offensive operations aimed from the 
 first at the destruction of Russia's armies and 
 the conquest of Poland and West Russia. 
 
 A cause of the Austro-German success was 
 the superior ability of the two Powers to create 
 new forces from their stores of untrained men 
 and of material. During the winter, in which, 
 except for the Masuria battle, they were in- 
 active, Austria and Germany called into being 
 powerful new armies. Here they were competing 
 with the Entente Powers, and they were bound 
 to win. Against Russia they had the advan- 
 tage of great manufacturing resources; against 
 France they had the advantage of larger stocks 
 of untrained men (in the years before the war, 
 
194 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 the German army took little more than half 
 the men who reached service age); and against 
 England they had the advantage of having in- 
 telligent, patriotic Governments, really intent 
 on national defence. A competent Russian 
 tells me that in the seven months before the 
 Dunajec battle, Austria and Germany, in addi- 
 tion to preparing for the field their men of the 
 older classes of reserves, equipped and trained 
 1,500,000 men. 
 
 The first sign of an Austro-German offensive 
 all along the line was the seizure by Germany 
 of Libau, Russia's only ice-free port in the 
 north. After the recapture of Lemberg, the 
 Austro-German armies of Galicia turned north. 
 The invasion armies in Central Poland pressed 
 heavily on our front; and it appeared that 
 large German armies under Hindenburg were 
 operating in North Poland, Lithuania, and 
 Courland. The immediate aim of Austro- 
 German strategy was to envelop and cut off, 
 or force to retreat, the Russian armies defend- 
 ing Warsaw. That was to be effected by an 
 advance north from Galicia between Vistula 
 and Bug, by a break through the Narew-Bobr- 
 Niemen fortress line, and by attacks on the 
 forces west of Warsaw. The Russians were 
 too weak to resist. The retention of the Vis- 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 195 
 
 tula position meant their destruction. Even 
 before the Narew fortress line was broken by 
 the capture of Pultusk and Roshan, Warsaw's 
 fate was sealed, and the city, together with 
 Ivangorod, was abandoned on the 5th of Au- 
 gust. The Staff proclaimed that it would hold 
 the Bug line. This was a front stretching from 
 near Riga to Kovno, from Kovno along the 
 Niemen to Grodno, thence to Brest-Litovsk, 
 and along the Bug to the Galician frontier. 
 From Kovno south the line follows closely the 
 political frontier of Congress Poland. The 
 plan involved the abandonment of Poland, 
 Courland, and the western half of Kovno 
 province. The straightness of the front, the 
 fortresses, the Niemen, the Bieloviezh Forest, 
 the Bug, and the Pripet marshes made the 
 new position strong. The plan failed because 
 even far from their frontiers the military 
 superiority of Austria and Germany remained 
 operative; in the north the invaders threatened 
 fresh envelopment along the lines Kovno- Vilna 
 and Mitau-Dvinsk; and in the south they be- 
 gan an advance east of the Bug against Kovel 
 and the Rovno fortress group. On the 26th of 
 August, after the storming of Kovno and Novo- 
 georgievsk proved that no fortress could with- 
 stand German attack, Brest-Litovsk was aban- 
 
196 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 doned. A rear-guard defence was made. The 
 Austrians stormed Lutsk; Grodno, the last of 
 the new defence line's fortresses, was taken on 
 September the 3rd, and on September the 19th 
 fell Vilna. So Russia lost nearly all barriers, 
 natural and artificial, against invasion of her 
 home provinces. For future defence she must 
 rely on what is left of her field armies, on her 
 great distances, her winter climate, the diffi- 
 culty of offensive warfare in a country with 
 few roads and railways, and the chance of re- 
 lief from the strategy of her Allies. 
 
 If Russia's disasters of last summer are not 
 retrieved, the battle of Gorlice-Tarnow will rank 
 as one of the decisive battles of the world. 
 No battle makes so plain the meaning of strat- 
 egy and the moral penalty of defeat. The force 
 defeated on the Cracow front was not a tenth 
 of the army; its destruction caused the retreat, 
 and in part the dissolution of armies four times 
 as great; it caused the loss of the Carpathian 
 strategical frontier, the loss of the fortress key 
 of Galicia; and the loss of all the fortresses with 
 some thousands of guns, and the loss of pris- 
 oners declared by the captors to have num- 
 bered in the four months, May to August, over 
 1,100,000. The battle showed to most what 
 from the first was plain to a few, the superior- 
 
GALICIAN CATASTROPHES 197 
 
 ity of the Central Powers in all the factors 
 which count in war. 
 
 I left Galicia long before this battle. The 
 visit strengthened an old conviction, confirmed 
 in the present war on other fronts, that the 
 Russian army has brave soldiers and zealous 
 leaders. An inexpert eye found little to criticise. 
 Clothing, feeding, and the supply of ammuni- 
 tion seemed good. Until our Ministers revealed 
 the fact to the enemy, it was not known that 
 there were not enough shells. I saw no soldier 
 without a good overcoat and good boots. The 
 etappe service worked well; and morale and 
 discipline were good. Relations of officers to 
 men were fraternal. In technical sense, the ar- 
 tillerists and engineers stood highest; these were 
 the most important branches. The infantry 
 officers seemed to be up to their work. Of the 
 Staff I could not judge. I saw that, owing to 
 the good order in the organisation and to the 
 tactical stagnation, it had little to do. 
 
 The army's conduct continued to be good. 
 Poles whom I questioned on the way back 
 agreed. The soldiers, true peasants, were rough, 
 idle, and easy-going; the prohibition of drink 
 prevented the excesses they are given to in 
 peace. My last glimpse of the Third Army was 
 at Mielec, a townlet on the railway to Sando- 
 
198 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 mierz, where transport men sang, and a sapper 
 held under his overcoat a child's squeaking 
 doll, and by pressure brought squeaks from his 
 chest. Probably no child ever stared more, and 
 no soldier showed more conceit. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 ARMS AND MEN 
 
 AFTER a small success, an officer asked 
 /-\ me why Russia, the winner in many 
 small affairs, gained no victory over the 
 Germans and held no German soil. Some suc- 
 cesses had been gained by inferior numbers. 
 With superior numbers in the whole theatre, 
 Russia ought to win. The officer asked why 
 resources were not making themselves felt; 
 the Entente combination had untold resources; 
 it had been organising them for a year; but the 
 position of Germany and Austria improved 
 every day. These questions led me to combine 
 some thoughts about the nature of the war 
 with observations and reported facts. 
 
 A war fought in a very large theatre by large 
 numbers, operating in dislocated armies, is 
 certain to be won by the side which has most 
 power — most of the sum of numbers, physique, 
 morale, equipment, leadership. Many past wars 
 were not won by power, they were decided 
 by single battles: and the single battles were 
 won not by power, but by impromptu thoughts 
 
 199 
 
200 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 of leaders, by mistakes, omens, accidents of 
 weather. The better armies with the better 
 generals lost. The present war cannot be de- 
 cided in that way. 
 
 The war consists of several campaigns in de- 
 tached theatres. In each theatre each side has 
 several armies, far apart; and each army has 
 several corps, each holding a longer front than 
 was held by the greatest army of past wars. 
 Mistakes, impromptu thoughts, accidents of 
 weather may decide small affairs: the collisions 
 of brigades or divisions, perhaps a fight between 
 corps. They will not decide a battle. A battle 
 is a string of detached engagements along a 
 great front; if not one-sided, the battle is gained 
 by success in the greater number of the im- 
 portant operations. One mistake or one acci- 
 dent will not outweigh superiority of power; 
 the chance victory of an inferior army would 
 not decide a campaign in which several armies 
 fighting many battles are engaged, much less 
 would it decide the war. 
 
 Great battles, properly fought, resemble tech- 
 nical undertakings. The chance of their normal 
 course being disturbed is not much greater than 
 the chance of a canal project failing. The 
 canal engineer draughts his plan, measures the 
 material and labour needed to overcome re- 
 
ARMS AND MEN 201 
 
 sistance, provides the material and labour, and 
 sets to work. If he has planned according to 
 the rules of canal-building, measured the re- 
 sistance accurately, and provided material and 
 labour, he can hardly fail. He will not begin 
 the work without plans, without calculating re- 
 sistance, without sufficient material and work- 
 men, comforting himself with the knowledge 
 that he is doing his best. The battle of Tannen- 
 berg, the Winter Battle of Masuria, and the 
 battle of Gorlice-Tarnow were executed by the 
 victors as engineers dig canals. The victors 
 measured the power of the armies they pro- 
 posed to destroy; they collected material and 
 men sufficient to overcome the resistance of the 
 enemy's power, and attacked. The operations 
 were too vast and differentiated to be disturbed 
 by chance. The victors did not undertake op- 
 erations beyond their strength. If they were 
 short of material and men, they did not — con- 
 soled by the conviction that they were doing 
 their best — attack according to plan, or resort 
 to a makeshift plan. Where they miscalculated 
 the resistance and doubted a complete success, 
 they abandoned the plan, and made another, 
 a new, not a makeshift, plan commensurate 
 with the material and men they were sure of. 
 An instance is their refusal to fight on the 
 
202 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Vistula in October, 1914. The strategy of the 
 Entente in France and Flanders has been to 
 get what material and men could be got; and 
 to attack, not with the conviction of accom- 
 plishing specific operations of importance, but 
 with the hope of doing the best possible and 
 causing the enemy loss. Battles were victories 
 or defeats according as they gained or lost 
 ground, not according as they accomplished or 
 failed to accomplish strategical aims planned in 
 advance. This strategy was costly ; in the East, 
 the enemy with smaller losses conquered and 
 reconquered provinces, and took guns by the 
 hundred and prisoners by the hundred thou- 
 sand. 
 
 Great wars, decided by numerous victories in 
 battles which are themselves not materially in- 
 fluenced by chance, resemble business under- 
 takings of great size. They differ from the wars 
 of the past as ocean-liner companies differ from 
 groups of merchant adventurers with single 
 ships. In the ocean company the absolute num- 
 ber of accidents is greater, but the influence of 
 accidents on the operations is slight. The war 
 is on such a scale that nothing can prevent 
 the victory of power. Persons who could accu- 
 rately measure the power of the antagonists 
 could tell without fail which would win. 
 
ARMS AND MEN 203 
 
 The side with the greater power is not the 
 side with the greater resources. Wars are fought 
 with men and arms which do certain things; 
 they can no more be fought with resources than 
 canals can be dug with pig iron directed by men 
 who are not engineers. The promise of victory 
 by resources is made by rulers caught unpre- 
 pared for war, because it condones their negli- 
 gence and postpones their punishment. His- 
 tory is a record of the victories of power over 
 resources. Fifty years ago, the power of Prus- 
 sia beat the greater resources of the Austrian 
 league; four years later German power beat 
 French resources; Japan with little resources 
 beat China; Japan beat Russia; the Balkan 
 Confederation beat Turkey. Older history is 
 the same. The disappearance of the old world- 
 empires was caused by the victory of power over 
 resources, by nothing else. 
 
 The belief that resources beat power springs 
 from the belief that resources can be trans- 
 formed into power so as to reverse the first de- 
 cision of arms. This may happen if the initial 
 disparity in power is small. In general, the be- 
 lief is false. Resources take time to turn into 
 power; and war goes on. The intellectual or 
 technical backwardness, which has hindered the 
 accumulation of power before war, persists; a 
 
204 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 government which cannot prepare in the ease of 
 peace is twice unfit to prepare in the confusion 
 of war. Where land is won by the victor, re- 
 sources are lost to him. The Germans gained 
 resources by the capture of Lille, Lodz, Libau, 
 and Warsaw. The superiority in power grows 
 and the inferiority in resources disappears. New 
 power produced by the beaten side is of lower 
 quality : it is less powerful. Soldiers have short 
 training, officers are improvised, commanders 
 have not had practice in handling large forces; 
 the morale may be good from desperation, but 
 the victor's morale is good through success. The 
 new power cannot be applied with advantage. 
 To keep the old power on its legs, the new power, 
 produced in driblets, is sent to war in driblets; 
 the accession of strength replaces losses and 
 makes material for new losses, but it is never 
 adequate to give the superiority of power needed 
 for victory. The will to win with stronger ar- 
 mies led by better generals, which is the essence 
 of victory, is replaced by hope of wearing the 
 enemy out. The true doctrine, attrition, is 
 falsely applied. A log of wood will not rub away 
 a file. The losses of defeat, in men, material, 
 and morale, exceed the losses of victory. The 
 transformation of resources into power cannot 
 keep pace with the loss of power. Fall of 
 
ARMS AND MEN 205 
 
 morale, discontent, finance, the hopelessness of 
 warring on a basis which assumes the enemy's 
 superiority, bring the war to an end. The po- 
 litical and moral condition of Russia is there- 
 fore a vital factor in judging whether Russia 
 can repair her defeats. The war of Russia 
 against Japan shows how little attrition avails. 
 The attrition doctrine affects injuriously the 
 conduct of war. The side with less power and 
 more resources believes that Nature is its ally; 
 it neglects the one chance of retrieving defeat. 
 The chance lies in the creation of the most pos- 
 sible power of the highest possible kind in the 
 shortest possible time. In the present war, this 
 meant that England should cease boasting of 
 resources, money-bags, and silver bullets, and 
 take to conscription, subordinating, as Ger- 
 many and France do, all state and private in- 
 terests to the making of war. 
 
 In nations prepared for war to the limit of 
 their abilities, resources and power are nearly 
 the same thing. The human resources have 
 been turned into soldiers; the material re- 
 sources have so far been turned into weapons 
 and supplies that there are enough for all men. 
 In measure as resources have been turned into 
 power the war is national. To Germany the 
 war is more national than to Russia. In both 
 
206 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 it is nearer a national war than any war of the 
 past. The soldiers are not dominant races or 
 hereditary fighting castes. The armies contain 
 the nation's qualities and quantities. The na- 
 tion's physique is the army's endurance; the 
 nation's contentment and discipline are the 
 army's morale; the nation's technical level is 
 the army's equipment. 
 
 The difference between Russia and Germany 
 is more marked than the difference between 
 other belligerents. Russia could not be as strong 
 a military state as Germany. Russia surpasses 
 Germany in numbers. The standard of health 
 is lower; the absolute number of men fit for 
 military service is greater. The Germans are a 
 better disciplined people, more contented with 
 rulers and institutions. Technically, Germany 
 is superior; her superiority has increased in the 
 past century as result of education and indus- 
 trialisation and of the stagnation of Russia. 
 There is no reason known why Russia should 
 not produce more men with military talent than 
 Germany; but there is smaller chance for mili- 
 tary talent to show itself. The Germans profit 
 from their good school of leadership. The bal- 
 ance of national fitness for war is to Germany's 
 credit. Competent Russian soldiers knew this; 
 they did not expect too much too soon; and 
 
ARMS AND MEN 207 
 
 they ascribed our rhetoric about the march on 
 Berlin and the steam-roller to German agents 
 working for our defeat. A general showed me 
 with anger in an English picture newspaper a 
 portrait of Hindenburg, described, "He is Fly- 
 ing for His Life." A few days before, the Field- 
 Marshal had captured 300 guns and 100,000 
 prisoners. In view of the zeal which these pa- 
 triots showed for our defeat, their disappoint- 
 ment causes surprise. The Russian army did 
 not disappoint. Relatively to Russia's stage of 
 development, Russia's army is good. The share 
 of Russian thought, work, and wealth spent on 
 the army is greater than the share of German 
 thought, work, and wealth spent on the German 
 army. 
 
 In physique the Russian army compares best 
 with the German. Abundance of conscripts pre- 
 vents the enrolment of weak men. Men of the 
 active army are strong. The health of reserv- 
 ists has been affected by bad feeding, drink, 
 and unsanitary housing. The war puts severe 
 strains on muscles and nerves. A prisoner told 
 me that between the battle of Tannenberg and 
 Hindenburg's retreat from Warsaw, he fought 
 in six actions. Soldiers broke down. Near 
 Radom, a company of sleeping Germans was 
 captured. Of fighting near Kovno in June, a 
 
208 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 German report says: "When our indefatigable 
 men pushed forward to the railway-station Kos- 
 lowa Buda they found a sleeping army. Three 
 thousand Russians had thrown themselves down, 
 hoping next day to find an opening for escape. 
 They were made prisoners." The outnum- 
 bered Austrians in the first Lemberg battles 
 expressed joy when rifle ammunition failed; 
 they could sleep; shells killed sleepers; a sol- 
 dier fell asleep on his bayonet and died. Ex- 
 haustion hindered pursuit. After three weeks 
 of fighting round Lodz, the Germans could not 
 follow up their success. German marches in 
 the battle of Tannenberg and the Winter Battle 
 of Masuria are remarkable. I saw at Warsaw 
 Siberians who had walked fifty miles in two 
 days; they looked well. The Russian peasant 
 at home is not a walker or a worker; heavy 
 field labour lasts a few weeks; in winter, if he 
 does not work in a town factory, he idles and 
 sleeps. 
 
 The nerves of soldiers are shaken by battles 
 and privations; but few men go mad. A field 
 surgeon told me that soldier minds stand war 
 strains better than the minds of civilians; the 
 civilian afflictions: bellicose paranoia, halluci- 
 nations, and pathological credulity are rare. 
 Among prisoners the chance of mental derange- 
 
ARMS AND MEN 209 
 
 ment is high. Success in battle fosters mental 
 health. Trench life, affecting physical health, 
 reacts unfavourably. Insanity is seldom traced 
 to war excitement. I heard of a soldier who 
 lost his reason through the tameness of war. 
 He was a nervous, imaginative man, spoiled 
 by reading war histories. A Pole went mad 
 through loving Germans. He began by hating 
 them. He was in charge of prisoners, mostly 
 inoffensive, soft youths; this caused a reaction. 
 He fed the prisoners, gave them tobacco, began 
 to like them, and talked only of them. His com- 
 rades nicknamed him "The Kaiser's groom." 
 He put on a prisoner's helmet, and ran about. 
 In the dusk he was taken for a fugitive, and was 
 shot dead. 
 
 In its morale, which is not homogeneous, Rus- 
 sia's army represents the national life. It dif- 
 fers from the German army, which takes a sin- 
 gle stamp from unity of education, discipline, 
 and patriotism. In Russia between highest 
 and lowest is a gap. At present, patriotic feel- 
 ing is strong. Family and school discipline are 
 weak; oppression has exalted revolt, indepen- 
 dently of causes, into a virtue. Education de- 
 termines conduct in battle. The more back- 
 ward a soldier, the greater is his resistance to 
 influences which depress and elate. Ignorant 
 
210 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 men do not understand military conditions; 
 they are insensitive about their personal safety, 
 do not easily take fright, and show no love for 
 taking risks. The regimental officers have an 
 insensitive spirit. They are not true Intelli- 
 gents; in provincial garrison towns they keep 
 to themselves; they are awkward and shy in 
 Intelligent society. The soldiers and most offi- 
 cers have the quality ascribed to the army as a 
 whole: they are stubborn. Russian life is not 
 all insensibility. The Intelligence is hypersen- 
 sitive. The Intelligents of the army are staff 
 officers, many officers in the guards' and metro- 
 politan line regiments, and some officers of line 
 units in the country. They are well-educated 
 men, socially connected with the highest Intel- 
 ligence; they can show more scholars, poets, 
 and musicians than the German officers' corps; 
 and if they have politics the politics are often 
 Left, that is Intelligent. The distance in think- 
 ing and feeling between the two army elements 
 is great. 
 
 This may explain mysteries in present history. 
 The army is stubborn ; it is tough in defeat, and 
 slow to gain stimulus from success. There are 
 times when the toughness dissolves; the times 
 when the stimulus acts quickly are few. The 
 army resisted Hindenburg before Lodz for three 
 
ARMS AND MEN 211 
 
 weeks, and escaped, leaving few prisoners and 
 guns; in the spring, it fought seven weeks for 
 the Carpathian passes. Beside these are Tan- 
 nenberg and Gorlice-Tarnow, defeats followed 
 by dissolution. Many incidents indicate that 
 the Russians do best in prolonged, hammering 
 operations which exclude surprises. In sur- 
 prise, appears an element which is not stubborn- 
 ness, and may be Intelligent hypersensitiveness. 
 Stubbornness, being inertia, limits victory. The 
 Austrians, after their beating near Lemberg in 
 September, were let escape; no -advantage was 
 taken of both invaders' embarrassment on the 
 Vistula in October, 1914; the two corps of Litz- 
 mann surrounded at Tuschin in November got 
 away. The Germans took risks which they 
 would not have taken against Germans; they 
 exposed their flanks, weakened their centre 
 when dealing flank blows, and succeeded in 
 operations (the raid to Libau), which invited 
 defeat. Sometimes the Russians tried sharp 
 attacks on the weak points; small successes, 
 not pushed home, were gained. Victories like 
 Tannenberg were not won even against the 
 Austrians. The sensitiveness or quickness of 
 part of the army was not enough. Such opera- 
 tions need an army which is all quick, sensitive, 
 accurate, specialised, and homogeneous. 
 
212 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 The morale of Russians under loss is good. 
 In operations where there was no surprise, large 
 units after heavy losses stood fast. The soldier 
 is brave in face of death, and in pain brave and 
 insensitive. The defeats were not caused by 
 soldiers breaking under heavy losses; the heav- 
 iest losses were suffered after defeat, and many 
 more men were lost in prisoners than in casu- 
 alties. In defeat the peasant soldier needs un- 
 ceasing guidance; confusion above has bad 
 results. For other moral qualities, obedience, 
 cheerfulness, and comradeship, the soldiers may 
 be praised. 
 
 German technical superiority is fully opera- 
 tive. Bad communications influenced the cam- 
 paign. The isolation of Russia from Europe, 
 and the dependence of Russia upon Europe for 
 certain supplies, were foreseen; they lay in the 
 nature of a great war. No communication was 
 provided; the ports which are ice-free were 
 neglected; to Archangel ran a single-track light 
 railway, the ice-breakers were inferior and the 
 wharfage and anchorage inadequate. The re- 
 moval of these defects would have cost no more 
 than a few years' maintenance of an army corps, 
 and would have been worth many corps. Bad 
 roads and scarcity of railways in Poland, in par- 
 ticular the want of concentric railways around 
 
ARMS AND MEN 213 
 
 the Prussian-Galician sack, made it hard to meet 
 surprises, and made an offensive campaign, even 
 if the other conditions existed, impossible. Rail- 
 ways were not built, it is said, because Germany 
 could not be resisted west of the Vistula. It is 
 impossible to gain victory on the assumption 
 that the enemy will win, and that the way to 
 foil him is to prepare for defeat. 
 
 In artillery, the technical factor which, after 
 railways, has most influenced the war, Germany 
 started well supplied, with ability to repair and 
 replace. She began with 2832 field-guns against 
 the Russian 4434; 900 field-howitzers against 
 444; and 400 heavy howitzers against 64. Ger- 
 many strengthened her artillery with many cap- 
 tured Russian guns. The German corps has 
 108 field-guns against the Russian 96; the 
 weight of projectiles is as 10 to 7. In middle 
 stages of the campaign, the German heavy ar- 
 tillery has been mostly in North Poland and 
 Galicia. Concentration of guns, and concentra- 
 tion tactics in their use, account for many vic- 
 tories. The fire of 1500 guns destroyed in a 
 few hours defences which the Third Army took 
 months to build. The battle of Lodz was won 
 by shrapnel. The dominance of artillery is re- 
 flected by the campaign. The first German 
 victories were won near the frontier in autumn 
 
214 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 or winter. The heavy artillery could not be 
 quickly moved over roads soft from rain or 
 snow. When the attackers reached the imme- 
 diate aim of destroying a Russian force, they re- 
 coiled, or, having no heavy guns, were stopped. 
 The victory of Gorlice-Tarnow was won in May, 
 when the good Galician roads were dry. In 
 capture of prisoners or guns on the spot, it was 
 less complete than Tannenberg, but the guns 
 kept pace with the pursuit, and the pursuit 
 lasted till Lemberg's fall. 
 
 Russian and German leadership cannot be 
 compared. German strategy bears the impress 
 of the will and of the choice of ways. Russian 
 strategy was imposed. As long as Russia had 
 the initiative, strategy was imposed by the 
 initial conditions of the war; afterwards it 
 was imposed by the enemy. The envelopment 
 of Poland by Prussian and Galician territory, 
 Austria's relative weakness, and the defence- 
 less frontier of Galicia dictated the march on 
 Lemberg. The march into Southwest Poland 
 after Hindenburg's retreat was compelled by 
 the fortress obstacles in North Germany. In 
 the battle of Lodz, Germany took the initiative, 
 and she has kept it. The unsuccessful assault 
 on the Carpathians in March and April gave 
 Austria also the initiative. After April, Russia 
 
ARMS AND MEN 215 
 
 fought a defensive fight; the blows have been 
 aimed where the enemy chose; and strategy 
 has consisted in doing in the least costly way 
 what the enemy required. 
 
 When she had the initiative, Russia executed 
 in her own way the strategy imposed by geo- 
 graphical and defence conditions. In the hope 
 of outweighing with superior numbers the en- 
 emy's quality, she used her army as a single 
 
 weapon of offence on a great front. She planned 
 
 to crush or envelop. Of this kind were the at- 
 tack on Austria in September, the march on 
 Silesia and Posen in November, and the; spring 
 assault on the Carpathians. For such strategy 
 the Germans and Austrians had not men. They 
 did not try to crush the Russians by one; opera- 
 tion. The plan was to ehoose for destruction 
 one Russian army; to concentrate superior 
 
 power; to attack, with the Certainty of victory, 
 
 before tin; attacked could be reinforced. This 
 strategy was first tried at Tannenberg. After- 
 victory a surprise attack was prepared on an- 
 other front. The aim was to keep on weak- 
 ening the Russians, to take their artillery, and 
 
 undermine their morale until the time came for 
 a general attack. The extension of the battle 
 of Gorlice-Tarnow into an asault on the whole 
 Russian front indicates that the enemy last 
 
216 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 spring believed the time had come. The ease 
 in moving heavy guns was not the only factor. 
 The strategy against Russia was costlier and 
 took more time than the strategy of general 
 attack tried in France. It accorded with the 
 nature of the war as a self-insuring enterprise. 
 By multiplying the number of operations, it 
 distributed risk, and yielded the enemy the full 
 fruits of their power, their good school of leader- 
 ship, their good equipment, training, and morale. 
 Russia's position, as result of the Austro- 
 German victories, is beyond expression serious. 
 She is pressed by enemies whose armies are 
 larger, better equipped, and better led than 
 at any stage of the campaign, whose morale 
 has been raised by unexampled victories. She 
 has lost the greater part of her army, much 
 of her artillery and technical equipment, her 
 fortresses, and a system of communications 
 necessary for defence and offence. She has 
 lost her most civilised provinces, with half a 
 dozen manufacturing cities, and a great part of 
 her coal supply. The mechanism for replacing 
 waste of equipment is largely lost. In England 
 these losses are represented to be trivial; they 
 are even painted as latent and potential vic- 
 tories; but the deceiving of the British people, 
 which the Government and part of the Press 
 
ARMS AND MEN 217 
 
 have pursued for a year, is no consolation for 
 Russians, who fully realise the truth. While 
 England has been learning that Russia has not 
 been defeated, that her retreats are triumphs, 
 and that her losses of fortresses, prisoners, and 
 guns are intentional, the Russian nation is 
 hearing from Duma and Press that the war 
 has been a catastrophic failure; and that unless 
 some saving factor — at present invisible — 
 intervenes, the Russian cause and the whole 
 Entente cause are lost. 
 
 The defeats have brought open collision be- 
 tween Government and people, and a state of 
 revolution which has, so far, with one exception, 
 been peaceful. The autocracy has collapsed, 
 as it collapsed temporarily after the defeat in 
 the Far East. Some obnoxious ministers have 
 been dismissed; as successors have been ap- 
 pointed men who, if not programmatic reformers, 
 have good reputations; some freedom to criticise 
 has been extorted; and progressive politicians 
 are fighting for a responsible administration. 
 The blame of defeat is put on the Government. 
 The Duma reminds the Government that years 
 ago it demanded in vain remedy of the army 
 deficiencies which in the past year proved fatal; 
 and it violently reproaches the bureaucracy for 
 pursuing unchanged a system of government 
 
218 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 which led to a debacle ten years ago. In this 
 quarrel between Government and society, all 
 reason is not on one side. The Progressives, 
 who before the war put their fingers on army 
 defects and prophesied disaster as result of mis- 
 government, forgot their warnings when war 
 broke out. They not only shared official con- 
 fidence, they went much further than bureau- 
 crats went in prematurely proclaiming victory, 
 in planning conquests, in the exuberances of 
 faith which I witnessed when I first came out. 
 If blame of the Court, Bureaucracy, and Minis- 
 try of War is justified, the Liberal Intelligence, 
 the Duma, and the Press must share the blame. 
 This fact must be remembered in measuring 
 the chance of restoring Russia's military strength 
 during the war. 
 
 At present parties are divided as to whether 
 the war can be best carried on by the present 
 bureaucratic system, with new men of good 
 character and talents placed to some extent 
 under representative control, or by a par- 
 liamentary administration. A point agreed 
 upon is that any Government must depend 
 not on its own efforts but upon the co- 
 operation of society. It is not clear that par- 
 liamentary administration or closer Duma con- 
 trol would increase military efficiency. The 
 
ARMS AND MEN 219 
 
 circles which demand these reforms showed no 
 more foresight about the war than the bureau- 
 cracy showed. The revolution of ten years ago 
 showed that these circles are no richer than the 
 bureaucracy in men of character and ability. 
 The demand for Parliamentarism, though hon- 
 estly motived by desire to carry on the war 
 more efficiently, is in reality a move in the class 
 struggle for power — an attempt to complete 
 the truncated revolution of 1905. 
 
 In immediate defence measures the co-opera- 
 tion between Government and society is having 
 a good result. Energy is being shown in the 
 manufacturing of equipment, and generally in 
 what England calls the organisation of the 
 nation. The output of equipment and muni- 
 tions has been steadily increased. Difficulties 
 have to be faced. They lie in part in the short- 
 ness of machinery and of trained hands; and 
 in greater part in the fact that the synthesis 
 of classes implied in "co-operation of Govern- 
 ment and society" has not been achieved. It 
 is not possible to improvise confidence. The 
 Liberal Press daily prints evidence that the old 
 bureaucratic suspicion of voluntary effort, of 
 social initiative survives; that it is hampering 
 organisations and individuals whose only mo- 
 tive is a patriotic will to serve their country. 
 
mo COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 This moral hindrance, born of old distrust and 
 oppression, operates against "the organisation 
 of the nation" in the same way as strikes and 
 disorders, the fruit of our Government's ante- 
 war policy of anarchy, hinder the organisation 
 of England. 
 
 To avert disaster, Russia needs a respite. 
 Even with a respite, her chance of recovery is 
 small; without a respite, she has no chance. A 
 respite would have been gained if the Niemen- 
 Bug line had been held for the winter; after 
 the line was lost it would have been gained 
 if the enemy had assumed the defensive, and 
 sent his superfluous forces to some other front. 
 Possibly the invasion of Servia will bring Rus- 
 sia the needed rest. But the Austrians and Ger- 
 mans, who understand the political and moral 
 principles of war as well as they understand 
 the political principles, may not give Russia 
 a respite, but may pursue the campaign to 
 extremes. If so, unless a powerful diversion 
 comes from some other front, the case of Russia 
 and of the whole Entente is past repair. 
 
 The only front possible is the Belgian and 
 French. The notion that on this score Russia 
 has cause of complaint against France and 
 England is not correct. Officially, Russia has 
 laid stress on the constant withdrawals of Ger- 
 
ARMS AND MEN 221 
 
 man troops from the West for employment in 
 the East; and in the Press are vague com- 
 plaints that Russia is bearing most of the 
 sacrifice. The implied complaint is not justi- 
 fied. It was Russia's misfortune, and not her 
 merit, that the Germans and Austrians after 
 the battle of the Marne turned attention to 
 her. Had they continued a successful offensive 
 towards Paris, and held successfully against 
 Russia a defensive line based on the Prussian 
 fortresses, the Vistula, Cracow, and the Car- 
 pathians, France would be complaining that it 
 is she who bears all the sacrifice. It was the 
 use Germany made of her ability to attack on 
 either side, while the Entente could attack on 
 neither, which brought the present misfortunes 
 on Russia. It is not true that Russia, in order 
 to save from destruction the French and British 
 armies, diverted her strategy from its normal 
 course, and sacrificed in East Prussia valuable 
 armies. The armies destroyed at Tannenberg 
 and at the Winter Battle of Masuria invaded 
 Prussia because for Russia's proposed general 
 offensive it was essential to clear the East- 
 Prussian flank. Russian generals were not so 
 naive as to plan the relief of France and Eng- 
 land by consciously sending armies to destruc- 
 tion. Russian strategy has been governed, first 
 
M% COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 by the aim of crushing Germany and Austria, 
 secondly by the aim of crushing Austria, and 
 thirdly by the aim of defending home territory. 
 
 If Russia has not got her respite, recupera- 
 tion, with a new offensive, or even — at least 
 until the impassable interior is reached — with 
 a successful defensive, is out of the question. I 
 base this judgment on the present relation of 
 strength in the Eastern campaign. A Franco- 
 British offensive so vigorous as radically to 
 change the relation of strength in Russia's fa- 
 vour by causing Germany to send large forces 
 west would retrieve the situation. But the 
 present Austro-German superiority margin in 
 Russia is great, and the diversion offensive 
 would have to be of overpowering character. 
 
 It seems that the issue of the war depends 
 on operations in the West. As France has al- 
 ready put her last man in the field, the issue of 
 the war depends on England. Nothing but 
 efforts by England out of all proportion greater 
 than she has made so far can save the Entente 
 from crushing defeat. So far the British people 
 has been misled about this. It has been led 
 to rely not on its own efforts but upon allies 
 who are too weak, and on factors which have 
 no value on war, on "attrition," on "silver 
 bullets," the heaping up of munitions, on rhet- 
 
ARMS AND MEN 223 
 
 oric about steam-rollers, and on the hope of a 
 material, intellectual, or moral collapse of our 
 chief foe, who in these three respects is superior 
 to ourselves. The hopes have been deceived. 
 The present war will be won — if it has not al- 
 ready been won — by the belligerent with the 
 largest and best armies led by the best generals. 
 The defeat of Russia can be retrieved only if 
 England can put into the field forces com- 
 parable with Germany's in numbers, quality, 
 and leadership. If she cannot do so, she may 
 as well make peace. A half-hearted war, lim- 
 ited by considerations of national comfort, the 
 whims of Labour, the foreign exchange rate, 
 the balance of exports and imports, is of no 
 more use to our allies than would have been 
 neutrality. If England knew that she could 
 only wage a limited liability war, sufficient to 
 prolong the Entente's agony, but not to save 
 it from defeat, she ought not to have gone to 
 war at all. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 FINIS POLONIAE 
 
 FAR in the north, in midsummer, the sun 
 rises so soon after it sets in the pines or 
 in the rye that afterglow and the fore- 
 glow of dawn unite. The red belt stretches too 
 far, and lasts too long, for reality; it seems that 
 behind the rye, Hyperboreans are burning the 
 earth. Such a belt of fire, overhung by smoke, 
 moved with the armies east, west, then again 
 east. During position struggles the fire went 
 out — no fuel was left. When the ruin was 
 behind trees only a corona glowed; sometimes 
 the trees were in flames. Chimney rows, all 
 that stood of ruined villages, made bars across 
 the glow. They looked like fences built to stay 
 the flames. 
 
 No one knows how much of Poland burned. 
 The London Relief Fund said three-quarters; 
 the Committee of Vevey beats it in precision; 
 both invent enough to make a worse cause 
 succeed. These exaggerations were published 
 before the devastation of East Poland by the 
 
 224 
 
FINIS POLONIAE 225 
 
 retreating Russians last summer. Some small 
 towns in West Central Poland were then in 
 ruins; some had been half or three-quarters 
 destroyed. Great areas had seen no war; the 
 largest towns which had seen war were little 
 harmed. Near Warsaw one house in thirty 
 may have suffered. The worst destruction was 
 on the Bsura, Rawka, and Nida; a gun-duel 
 raged for four months; on a long, narrow belt 
 little was left for relief fund reports to raze. 
 The larger theatre round Lodz, where battles 
 raged for three weeks, is not all ruin. Some 
 small towns have disappeared; the total of de- 
 struction is greater than on the Bsura, Rawka, 
 and Nida. This follows a rule of the war: the 
 relative destruction is conditioned by duration 
 of battle; the absolute destruction by area 
 and duration. Isolated farms suffer more than 
 villages. Farms with enclosed spaces are bat- 
 tered because they give cover to infantry; big 
 buildings are targets for airmen's shells. Towns 
 suffer from bombs; they suffer from artillery 
 only when they are in the battle line. Towns 
 in the battle line, held with resolution, are 
 destroyed. When the Austro-German envel- 
 opment movement compelled successively the 
 evacuation of the Vistula and Bug lines, a new 
 kind of destruction began, causing more loss 
 
226 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 and suffering than all ravages of the preceding 
 year. The retreating Russians carried off the 
 civil population, destroyed or removed food 
 stores and portable property, and burned farms, 
 villages, and townlets. Where the invaders 
 compelled a rapid retreat, much property was 
 spared. Of the larger towns, Brest-Litovsk, 
 which has 50,000 inhabitants, was the only 
 one wholly burned. When the retreating armies 
 traversed territory populated by Russians, dev- 
 astation ceased. The military value of devas- 
 tation is doubtful; the invaders do not depend 
 on the country for supplies or shelter; and the 
 invaders seized the occasion to proclaim to the 
 Poles that they only had to suffer in Russia's 
 cause, whereas Russians were spared. 
 
 Of damage west of the Bsura, Rawka, and 
 Nida, I heard from refugees. During the battle 
 of Lodz flames were everywhere. An airman 
 who flew at night over Petrokow Provinces saw 
 fires without end. Beneath were jagged patcjhes 
 of yellow and red; farther, smaller fire patches 
 with rounded outlines; on the horizon gleamed 
 dots. He felt that he was flying upside down, 
 looking at an exceptional sky with torn nebulas, 
 comets, suns, and star points. In this battle, 
 through accident or design, the burning grew 
 worst towards the end. Sometimes shells burst; 
 
FINIS POLONIAE 227 
 
 sometimes reprisals were taken. Sometimes 
 there were street fights — these end with flames. 
 Houses had to go because they gave the 
 enemy cover, or stood in the line of fire. At 
 Warsaw, at Ivangorod, at the fortresses of the 
 Bug, Narev, and Niemen, villages were razed. 
 The Austrians burned and blew up round 
 Przemysl and Cracow. When a town, as 
 Jaroslau, was hurriedly fortified, fire worked as 
 hard as spades. Field fortifications began with 
 razing. Sappers came to the commune head- 
 man; notice was given; and surveys were 
 made. Out of the cabins tumbled the peasants, 
 and out of the yards were trundled carts; the 
 carts were loaded with bedding, utensils, and 
 clothes; the rest was left. I saw such an evic- 
 tion. The wet thatches would not light; 
 matches were laid to curtains inside. Dynamite 
 cartridges, buried under a middle wall, blew 
 up three cottages. The villagers were told to 
 break down the brick chimneys and the still 
 erect walls. Women wept, and children wept 
 or clapped their hands. Trees were sawn 
 through; big tree trunks were blown to bits. 
 Some of the villagers fled to Warsaw; others 
 found shelter in spared villages; some lost their 
 heads, refusing to leave their homes, and they 
 were dragged out by soldiers or friends. 
 
228 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Many civilians suffered. The hospitals of 
 Warsaw sheltered twenty persons hurt by shells 
 during flight, half of them women and children. 
 Wounded peasants came wrapped in rags and 
 saved from freezing by sacks and straw mats. 
 Women came in uniforms taken from the dead. 
 In villages which had become centres of battle 
 many peasants were burned. A sergeant, who 
 left a North Poland village as the Germans en- 
 tered, told me of this. The main street was in 
 flames. There was a block of traffic — artillery, 
 Red Cross waggons, refugees' carts. The flames 
 set off explosives in a munition cart. A panic 
 began. The Germans and the Russians believed 
 that townsmen had attacked them. The leop- 
 ard of a travelling menagerie got loose. Shel- 
 ley's dream of fire and wild beasts in a sea 
 storm was no worse. 
 
 The country people suffered because they 
 stayed when it was time to run, and ran when 
 they ought to have stayed. The battles round 
 Lodz and on the Bsura lasted for weeks. At 
 the beginning the peasants in villages some 
 way distant fled; seeing a stalemate, they re- 
 turned; the stalemate, they reasoned, would 
 last. Then the battle ended, the victor ad- 
 vanced quickly, and the peasants were trapped. 
 Many fled from rumours, but faced realities. 
 
FINIS POLONIAE 229 
 
 The people of Schabja Wolja, near the Warsaw- 
 Skierniewice railway, rushed west on hearing 
 that the Germans were advancing from War- 
 saw, having got there after a march along the 
 Upper Vistula. Often the first danger-signal 
 was a shell falling by night; there was a race 
 down the burning street; villagers escaped, 
 half naked, and left their goods behind. Many 
 were killed by shells, burning beams, and rifle 
 bullets. Some rushed into the enemy's lines, 
 and got bullets from sentries. Sometimes the 
 war looked harmless; confidence was felt; then 
 the war changed its face, and brought panic 
 and death. I saw a village in the Schidlowec 
 district which had forty out of two hundred 
 houses burnt. The Germans twice held it, and 
 they did no harm. War was maligned. The 
 Russians held it, and their peaceful ways con- 
 firmed the belief that war was maligned. The 
 soldiers spent money, and regret was felt when 
 they left. The Germans intrenched to the 
 west; the Russians were said to be east. A 
 patrol advised the peasants to leave. Assured 
 that war is a maligned thing, they stayed. 
 They found themselves the centre of a big battle. 
 The first shell blew off the roof of the communal 
 administration ofhce. More shells fell. The 
 peasants, shocked by the disclosure of War's 
 
230 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 reprobation, fled to a ravine; and lay there a 
 day and a night while their houses blazed and 
 collapsed. Into the ravine came a couple of 
 shells. 
 
 During an excursion along the Lodz road, 
 made with citizens who wanted to hear the 
 artillery roar, I saw refugees in movement. The 
 refugees were peasants. They told me they had 
 vowed to stay at home, and all broke the vow. 
 When one fled, others fled; when only a few 
 remained there was a panic, each seeking to 
 outfly the rest. The last man found in a village 
 is looked on as a spy. Six mud-covered carts 
 carried bundles of clothes, boxes, pigs, and 
 geese. The owners, except a grandmother 
 wedged between pigs, walked. A battered town 
 droschky brought a woman and three small 
 children, kept from freezing by shields of 
 bottle-packing. I heard of peasants starving 
 to death, and of suicide from hunger; and I 
 saw some living skeletons, children, who ran 
 after Cossacks, crying "Bread, Bread!" Hun- 
 ger was a temptation to spy for either side, or 
 for both sides alternately, or at once. 
 
 Most villages in South Poland had food for 
 three or four weeks. There were big stores in 
 the towns. The Germans requisitioned grain. 
 Villages without bread managed to buy it at 
 
FINIS POLONIAE 231 
 
 moderately high prices; this business was done 
 on credit, and usurers made fortunes. I found 
 villagers eating bread from mouldy grain. The 
 grain had been stored on the ground floor of a 
 country house. German officers had lodged 
 overhead. The house caught fire, and the water 
 used in extinguishing spoiled the grain. The 
 country towns suffered from a fuel famine, 
 caused by congestion of railways and roads. 
 Manufactured goods were scarce. But except 
 among refugees and in centres of burning, the 
 need was not great. 
 
 The refugees from Lodz, Petrokow, and West 
 Poland were mostly Jews; small traders who 
 curried favour with the invader by putting 
 "Jewish Business" over their shops, as the 
 townsmen Poles, to show they were not Russian 
 officials, put "Polish Nationality," "Jewish 
 Nationality," softened German hearts, but failed 
 to deflect shells. The ruin of Jewry was great. 
 At the end of November many Jews left Lodz. 
 The Germans, who entered a week later, found 
 the town without food, and they gave permis- 
 sion to leave. Refugees made detours south, 
 and got through a gap which separated the 
 front of Lodz-Lowitsch from the front Czen- 
 stochowo-Cracow. They travelled in country 
 carts, and in decayed droschkies, which broke 
 
£32 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 down in the morasses. Praiseworthy stead- 
 fastness in suffering combined with absorption 
 in higher matters. I saw, in company with 
 other women and with men, a Jewess of Tus- 
 chin, whose child was killed by a shell. Like 
 all the Jews, she spoke German. "Das kleine 
 Ding spielte in dem Hof. ..." The men broke 
 her off, explaining that a tool-shed was burned; 
 the corrugated-iron roof cost forty roubles. A 
 woman, hearing the mother's tale, cried with 
 compassion; her husband reminded her that 
 the roof cost forty roubles. I long heard his 
 heart-breaking, "Forty roubles. . . ." and the 
 women's heart-breaking whines. 
 
 Towns that were spared were full of the 
 homeless. Some of the homeless lived ten in 
 a room; where rooms were full, the refugees 
 camped. Some found lodgings in trenches. 
 At Skrinno, a townlet west of Radom, I found 
 thirty families of trench dwellers. There was 
 a deep trench, roofed with planks, and divided 
 into cubicles. The dwellers were happy; they 
 had vodka — the first bottle I saw. In Blendow, 
 a compassionate shell blew open the vodka 
 shop, and gave fleeting oblivion. In the coun- 
 try held by the enemy, the trench settlements 
 were better. There were comfortable dug-outs 
 for permanent habitation, with skylights, stoves 
 
FINIS POLONIAE 233 
 
 from ruined houses, and ventilators. The 
 greatest settlement was near Glovno, the centre 
 of the Lodz-Lowitsch line, where the battle for 
 Lodz was fought. Underground were tables 
 and chairs, utensils, even looted pianos; a dug- 
 out served as a general shop. The Germans 
 sent gendarmes to establish order and to catch 
 spies; the gendarmes found order, and were 
 told that no spies would be harboured. The 
 mayor and administration of the trench settle- 
 ment were recognised. They lynched robbers, 
 made improvements, drained the dug-outs, and 
 provided common bakeries. A priest told me 
 that health was not bad. The refugees refused 
 to come to Lowitsch; they had lost the instinct 
 of settled life; war, they reasoned, will return; 
 if even soldiers have to seek safety in trenches, 
 where should civilians be? 
 
 In this there was reason. Most towns were 
 as dangerous as battle-fields. In Glovno, forty 
 men perished in a day. During the last hours 
 of the great battle, the Germans shelled Lodz. 
 An assistant of M. Gutchkoff, the Red Cross 
 inspector and former Duma Speaker, who was 
 the last man to leave before the enemy came, 
 told me that in this half-German town, German 
 shells with malice sought German targets. A 
 shell killed the German housekeeper of the 
 
234 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 German club, the German theatre and the 
 offices of the German Lodz Gazette were battered, 
 and the first air-bomb wrecked a German 
 electro-technical workshop. The centre of Lodz 
 suffered little; the suburbs were burnt; Stry- 
 kow, Glovno, and the southern part of Kon- 
 stantinow were razed; Ljutomersk, after a 
 three weeks' street fight, had bare walls. Rain 
 saved Lowitsch, a German-Jewish town. Sparks 
 blown across the Bsura set the suburbs ablaze. 
 After Russian soldiers had failed to stay the 
 flames, a saving downpour came. A Jew knelt 
 in the mud, praying that his house might be 
 spared. His house was spared, and a falling 
 chimney broke his leg. 
 
 Burning did less to finish Poland than efface- 
 ment by spade and axe. Forests were turned 
 into fields, and fields into wastes. The roads 
 and railways became weapons of war; they were 
 made or unmade as they passed from hand to 
 hand. During the German advance, impressed 
 workers made roads. Muddy tracks from West 
 Prussia to Warsaw were paved with pine-sap- 
 lings, laid side by side. Osiers, pinned at the 
 ends with pegged battens, made surfaces for 
 causeways through the morasses. The railway 
 gauge was changed from 1.523 m. to the Ger- 
 man 1.435. A railway was built from Slupzy 
 
FINIS POLONIAE 235 
 
 on the frontier to Lowitsch, and trains, we 
 heard, ran from Mons to Lodz. The Poles 
 blessed the enemy; travelled in clean trains; 
 and along flat surfaces unknown before drove 
 to market their surprised cows. The Germans 
 retreated; roads, causeways, railways vanished, 
 and the Sarmatian waste came back. 
 
 This was Hindenburg's plan. The roads were 
 chess-boarded — dug up or blown up alternately 
 on different sides — and left with holes of snow- 
 water, some ironically placarded "Mixed Bath- 
 ing. " The railway lines were torn up, and the 
 rails removed; the stations were destroyed; 
 the water-towers were razed, and the points 
 and signal apparatus smashed. The telegraph 
 wires were chopped up, the poles were sawn 
 through, and the isolators broken. Blood was 
 spilt to insure destruction. The Russians near 
 Radom drove off a small rearguard which had 
 caused surprise by holding a weak position. 
 Sappers with Polish civilians were found be- 
 hind the battle-line, destroying a railway station. 
 Already, the wooden buildings were burnt, the 
 brick foundations broken, metal was smashed, 
 even the stovepipe was rent. Being without 
 explosives, the sappers had diverted the rails 
 toward a water-tower, and sent along them a 
 locomotive which razed the tower and tumbled 
 
236 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 into a stream. A village boy, seated on a motor- 
 waggon, clipped coils of spare telegraph wire. 
 Officers said there was a machine on an eight- 
 wheel bogey which swallowed torn-up rails, 
 and discharged them as corkscrews. Roads 
 and railways which the invaders could use in 
 the reinvasion, already planned, were spared. 
 From the bridges at Brest, Gostynin, and 
 Ljubravtes the girders were removed, but the 
 pillars were left, so that repairs might be made 
 in a few hours. By this route, the outflanking 
 army of Mackensen was to march. In South 
 and Central Poland, where our centre was to 
 flounder helplessly while its right was being 
 crushed, destruction was thorough. 
 
 A quarter of the fields round Warsaw cannot 
 be tilled. They are swallowed by roads, or rent 
 by trenches, sometimes by three trenches, one 
 behind the other, with entanglements which 
 the peasants, expecting the war will come back, 
 fear to remove. The forests have been burned 
 or cut down. As the roads grew, the woods 
 dwindled. Pines, having straight trunks, were 
 most needed. The osiers were shorn from wil- 
 lows. At Opatow I saw an avenue of living 
 trees without a twig. On the main road is an 
 avenue of old oaks, all sawn five-sixths through, 
 felled, and turned into the fields in neat rows. 
 
FINIS POLONIAE 237 
 
 The trees hampered artillerists. On the west 
 front of Ivangorod, the Austrians loopholed 
 the oaks, and put sharpshooters behind. The 
 wood was shelled to bits. The use of the tree- 
 tops as crows' nests of lookout men caused de- 
 struction. Everywhere behind the Nida where 
 rights took place, copses were blasted; trees 
 were pierced by shells that did not explode, or 
 were shorn, uprooted, or split. Forests on the 
 Bsura which hindered fighting were burned. 
 Before the battle of Tannenberg, the Germans 
 soaked a wood with petroleum: in the climax 
 of the victory they set the trees aflame; and 
 into the flames drove the flying enemy. There 
 was fun in this for a race of forestry experts. 
 They saw the point; and in the battered streets 
 of Kalisch planted rows of limes. 
 
 Lodz changed hands five times. Soon after 
 war began, the Germans came. A stream of 
 refugees from Kalisch flowed before them. The 
 Russians returned, and stayed for a fortnight. 
 On their first advance to Warsaw, the Germans 
 came back, staying till the end of October. 
 Manufacturing had ceased; there was no fuel; 
 in the streets hungry workmen swooned. The 
 Commandant, General v. Libert, and the Com- 
 mander of the Citizens' Militia, M. Grohmann, 
 introduced order. After the retreat from War- 
 
238 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 saw, the Russians retook possession. On Decem- 
 ber the sixth, after their success in the three 
 weeks' battle, the Germans came again. M. 
 Grohmann was still chief of the Militia. Colonel 
 v. Zurich was the new Commandant. The 
 German Polish Legion did garrison duty; when 
 the invaders marched on the Miazza, no soldiers 
 were left. Again there were no lights, no fuel, 
 little food. The Commandant ordered that a 
 light be shown in every window. Grohmann 
 protested. There were no candles and no 
 petroleum. "Windows must be lighted," re- 
 peated the Commandant. Grohmann got a 
 respite. He asked the Commandant to dinner. 
 The guest was received in a dark dining-room. 
 In came the butler with a stump of candle, 
 guarded as jealously as the knight in Selma 
 Lagerlofs tale guarded the flame from the 
 Sepulchre. When soup was eaten, Grohmann 
 blew the candle out. "What do you mean?" 
 asked the German. "To spare the candle. 
 We can talk in darkness. To eat we need light." 
 The fish was brought. The chief of the Militia 
 lighted the candle. When the course was over, 
 the candle was again extinguished; and the talk 
 went on in darkness. The candle was lighted 
 for the other courses, and was put out as they 
 ended. When coffee appeared, the dwindling 
 
FINIS POLONIAE 239 
 
 stump was lighted. It sputtered, flared up 
 ironically, and went out. The window-lighting 
 decree was revoked. 
 
 Like the Russians in Galicia, the Germans 
 and Austrians in Poland behaved as if they 
 had come to stay. South Poland, held by Aus- 
 tria, continued under military rule and jurisdic- 
 tion, with district commandants at Petrokow 
 and Kielce. The Germans established a civil 
 administration, and, after capturing the Bug 
 defence line, they formed of all Poland in their 
 occupation a "General Government for War- 
 saw," under General v. Beseler. They kept 
 order, relieved hunger, and shot spies in scores. 
 Trial by jury was introduced; Lodz was given 
 a municipal council; and the Jews, as the race 
 which hated Russia most, were favoured. The 
 factory magnates expelled Russian from the 
 schools, and substituted Polish. German news- 
 papers opened offices; and German traders 
 opened shops. When fuel and raw material 
 were found, many factories started; factories 
 which produced things needed for the Army 
 started first. A day after Lodz fell, shell-cases 
 were being cast. This was the German way. 
 At Libau factories were set to making muni- 
 tions at once. There were no speeches to work- 
 men; and no praise of society ladies for filling 
 
240 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 shells in the half-hour before tea. In Lodz, 
 German signs were put up beside Polish. The 
 market square of Lowitsch became Kaiser- Wil- 
 helm-Platz — the thousandth such Platz in Ger- 
 man lands. There was a Hindenburg-Strasse, 
 also a Mackensen-Strasse. In the Kaiser-Wil- 
 helm-Platz, to the memory of the German and 
 Russian dead, rose a square tower of unhewn 
 stones with a peaked roof, massive and ugly 
 as the new German monuments are, in discord 
 with the plain, dignified houses. Photographs of 
 it have been in German papers; I remember 
 the town since Revolution days. In Chorzele 
 was set up a colossal bust, worked by a Land- 
 wehr cavalryman, of Hindenburg, the face 
 turned towards Warsaw. On the pedestal are 
 the names Tannenberg and Masuria. 
 
 The economic measures resemble those re- 
 ported to have been taken in Flanders and 
 France. Copper and lead were requisitioned. 
 The raw metals were taken; owners of manu- 
 factured copper articles had to register. It 
 was forbidden to send copper and lead out of 
 the towns. Copper coins might be circulated 
 in the towns, but not sent outside. Goods were 
 paid for with requisition notes. Sometimes the 
 owners got blue tickets with an eagle stamp: 
 Die russische Regierung wird ersucht . . . : "The 
 
FINIS POLONIAE 241 
 
 Russian Government is requested to pay. ..." 
 A Jewish woman told me, with tears, that "the 
 Prussian soldiers carried everything off." She 
 remembered that they paid for a jam-boiling 
 pot as solid brass, "though it was brass only on 
 the surface," and she smiled through her tears. 
 On the Vistula the Germans established a 
 steamer service; they regulated the channel, 
 and in places dammed the banks. They com- 
 pelled farmers to till. Captured Russian officials 
 had to make lists of farms and farmers, giving 
 the average yield, the labour needed, the source 
 of the labour supply. Farmers who refused to 
 work were forcibly sent back; if they were out 
 of reach, soldiers worked the farms; the yield, 
 after payment of expenses and a fine of twenty 
 per cent., was banked. Professors of farming 
 "in civil clothing and helmets" came, also 
 practical farmers and foresters. The measures 
 were harsh, but they made for industry. For 
 loungers there was no more grace in Lodz than 
 in Posen. Despotism aggravated by order dis- 
 pleased a nation used to despotism tempered by 
 neglect; and many Poles went south to the 
 easier sphere of Austria, where at least they 
 need not work. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 TRANSPORT 
 
 DURING the advance of September, 1914, 
 South Central Poland on the left Vis- 
 tula bank was held by Germans. These 
 were troops of Hindenburg, sent to relieve Aus- 
 tria by threatening the right of IvanofFs armies 
 in Galicia. When the Russian army, concen- 
 trated behind the river, threatened to cross in 
 the north and in the south, the Germans went 
 north to check the threat to Hindenburg's left. 
 They were replaced by Austrians, who were to 
 stop a Russian crossing in the south. The Aus- 
 trians failed, and retreated; the Russians came 
 after them, and a battle was fought in the 
 Lysa Gora hills. On November the third, the 
 Russians occupied Kielce; and they marched 
 from there to Miechow, near Cracow. 
 
 In the advance which followed the German 
 victory of Lodz, South Poland fell to Austrians 
 under Woyrsch. The Austrians stormed Petro- 
 kow on the seventeenth of December; the 
 Russians retreated. An Austrian column, com- 
 
 242 
 
TRANSPORT 243 
 
 ing from the direction of Cracow, marched 
 to the Nida. This is a tributary which flows 
 in a southeasterly course from a point near 
 Kielce to the Vistula at Nowi-Kortschin. It 
 continued the Rawka-Bsura river line, the de- 
 fence of Central Poland. The Pilitsa cut the 
 line; to the north were Germans, with a bridge- 
 head at Inowlods, to the south Austrians. 
 Woyrsch tried to force the Nida, as Hinden- 
 burg tried to force the Bsura and the Rawka. 
 He found the left (the east) bank strongly held, 
 and he sat down to position warfare. The Rus- 
 sians on the Nida were first shaken by the de- 
 feat of Tarnow-Gorlice. 
 
 Fighting on the Nida was with shells and 
 rifles. There were some bayonet collisions. In 
 January the Russians tried to cross the river. 
 The Austrians counter-attacked. Next month, 
 there were fights south of the Ivangorod rail- 
 way. Engineers and airmen worked hard. 
 The Russians blew up an Austrian bridge at 
 Schernicki. At Bochinez fighting was inde- 
 cisive. There was a struggle for the ford at 
 Wisliza. Ice blown up by the Russians swept 
 the enemy down. In April the northern half 
 of the Russian lines was shelled heavily. The 
 Austrians, somewhere near Konsk, bombed a 
 chateau of the universal Counts Tarnowski, 
 
244 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 and fed the flames with proclamations promising 
 Poland prosperity. The chateau was supposed 
 to shelter a Corps Staff. Cracow Austrophiles 
 and spies infested Kielce and the Lysa Gora. 
 In the virgin forest around Sandomierz bandits 
 swarmed; on the day I passed through the 
 town they were put to flight by the guards of 
 an episcopal clerk. 
 
 The central etappe service of the Nida armies 
 went by the road from Radom to Kielce. Par- 
 allel runs a railway joining Ivangorod with the 
 industrial district of Silesia. The traffic was an 
 epitome of Russia. Into Radom ran trucks 
 and vans from the Siberian fine, the Trans- 
 caspian line, the Central Asia and Eastern 
 Manchuria lines; I saw vans marked "F. J." 
 from Finland: and later heard Finns complain 
 of a van famine. The van famine was uni- 
 versal — it impeded the food supply; in Petro- 
 grad trails of housekeepers waited at butchers' 
 shops, and failed to get meat. Sanitary trains 
 with wounded men from all places between the 
 Vistula and the Pilitsa passed Radom. Many 
 trains were of fourth-class Siberian emigrant 
 cars, painted grey-white and marked with Red 
 Crosses. Their four window-panes distinguished 
 them from other carriages. On the platforms 
 stood surgeons with red spots on their overalls, 
 
TRANSPORT 245 
 
 and young women nurses, serious, ugly, and 
 irritable as people are who think only of work. 
 Through the unclean windows I saw, crossed 
 by the bars, bandaged and often bloody heads; 
 sometimes men in yellow-white shirts raised 
 themselves on their elbows to grin. 
 
 I started for Kielce in the wheeled oven known 
 as teplushka, the warming-place. It is a heatable 
 railway carriage with rough seats. The fourth- 
 class carriages, marked "eight horses or forty 
 men," were fitted with seats after mobilisation; 
 seats, with straw for bedding, are all that differ- 
 entiates them from the eight-horses state. The 
 warming-place is kept heated, and the door is 
 kept shut. When the door is opened at a station, 
 soldiers cry, "The draught!" and rush to shut 
 it. Men who have spent months in windy 
 trenches seize the first chance to wrap them- 
 selves up. This is a Russian way, common to 
 all classes; as a physical and psychical idiosyn- 
 crasy, it is caricatured in Tchekhoff's Man in 
 the Case. Cossacks whom I told that it was 
 spring said, "That is why we keep out the cold. 
 It is spring in the Kuban, cattle and flowers 
 are in the open air; here it is only a Polish 
 spring." If the door were kept closed, and the 
 stove kept heated, it would seem like spring 
 in the Kuban. 
 
246 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 The soldiers would not talk of war. The 
 most talkative had seen battles; but all they 
 said was, "I was on the position . . . when 
 you get to the position . . . the position was 
 taken. ..." They used the Russianised word, 
 positsiya. The peace talk was absorbing. It 
 began about a lady, a landowner's wife, Kapi- 
 tolina Platonovna; no one, a soldier said, could 
 be called Kapitolina; but in Kherson a man 
 named Plato is always a gentleman. There 
 was a Bishop Plato in the first Duma. The 
 soldiers argued about the right way of saluting 
 by cavalrymen who ride with both hands. 
 They said that soldier chauffeurs when driving 
 do not salute at all. At Jastrshomb, not far 
 from Radom, the soldier who knew Plato was 
 a Bishop, washed his shirt piecemeal in a small 
 can: when the train stopped, he waved the 
 shirt on the platform; later he clambered on 
 to the carriage roof, and spread the shirt. The 
 soldiers crowded on the platform and laughed, 
 saying, "Hang it on the sun!" The washer- 
 man said, "The nearer the sun, the sooner it 
 will dry. Teach your godfather to sneeze!" 
 
 In six hours we covered forty versts. The 
 train went not to Kielce, its destination, but 
 to Suchednew, near the junction for Lodz. 
 For transport farther, I had to send to a village 
 
TRANSPORT 247 
 
 east of the station. The carriage came at half- 
 past three in the morning, and took four hours 
 to cover the twenty miles to Kielce. There 
 were some houses in ruin. I walked in the dawn 
 to a hamlet, near the railway line, which had 
 not one brick left in place; there were brick 
 heaps with charred balks, broken chairs, bat- 
 tered cheap pictures, rags, papers. Close by 
 is the grave of two civilians killed by a shell. 
 When it grew light, there was firing from heavy 
 guns. One shot came every five minutes. 
 Weaker sounds came from the south. The 
 Austrians were bombarding our lines on the 
 provincial frontier of Radom and Kielce. Near 
 Kielce, I forgot Poland's misery. Misery is 
 flat. On the left were slopes and bare hillocks, 
 and behind rose the real hills of Lysa Gora. 
 At Kielce I was to meet an officer who had 
 promised that I should see the Austrians, as I 
 had seen them in Galicia, but should see nothing 
 more, as the front was quiet. I met him coming 
 into the town by the road from the south; after 
 him a trail of wounded. The lightly wounded 
 walked; eight were packed like sandwiches in 
 a Red Cross automobile. The streets showed 
 the usual painful sight — men with bandaged 
 hands, and childish looks of surprise and in- 
 jured innocence. Fighting, I learned, was 
 
248 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 going on; a Red Cross official had been twice 
 to the Nida marshes, and was going back. 
 The marshes in thaw were a better defence 
 than the thread of Nida water south of the 
 railway. Now they were frozen. There had 
 been heavy shelling; infantry fighting had be- 
 gun, but there was nothing, I heard, to see; 
 one side — no one knew which — was trying 
 to cross and take the other's trenches. Per- 
 haps both were trying. We drove in a motor- 
 car south, and crossed the Black Nida. Here 
 there were old trenches, and a cottage in ruins; 
 some way north are the universal graves. We 
 met a soldier with a wreath of pine-needles in 
 paper ribbons; he wore the wreath round his 
 neck like a ruff. "What's the necktie for?" 
 "To bury the men." "What men? " The lines 
 were miles away. Someone, we learned, had 
 dug into graves to hunt for valuables. The 
 Poles were angry; they came in crowds to the 
 etappe station to say no Pole was guilty. The 
 battlefield politicians must have felt sore; the 
 dead officers' watches had gone to their heirs, 
 and the soldiers never had anything worth steal- 
 ing except life. 
 
 At the Black Nida, the roar of big guns was 
 loud. It ceased; there were other sounds, lower 
 and sharper; and it began again. Wounded 
 
TRANSPORT 249 
 
 were coming, all along the road; some came afoot 
 from the Rembow marshes miles away. They 
 said that the Austrians had attacked, that the 
 Russians had attacked, that they did not know 
 which had attacked. A staff motor-car passed 
 at great speed. Cossacks brought a few pris- 
 oners, one with bloody bandages. Like most 
 Austrians I have seen, they were slight, rosy, 
 and neat, a contrast to our dust bundles with 
 dust faces. They answered our greeting with 
 "Gru'ass Gott /" a South-German pronuncia- 
 tion; they said No when I asked if they were 
 Tyroleans — I think they came from Salzburg 
 or Upper Austria. Their story was that the 
 Russians attacked. We overtook an ammuni- 
 tion column. The driver said that there was a 
 vast battle going on, "hundreds were killed, 
 perhaps millions." The last ammunition col- 
 umn had sought shelter behind a wood; Aus- 
 trian airmen flew over it, dropping bombs which 
 exploded in mid-air, and made white clouds. 
 These were signals; the enemy acted on them 
 by shelling the wood from high-angle guns. 
 Next a soldier bearer with flesh torn from his 
 leg, came on a cart. A peasant woman drove. 
 He said he had been struck three days before; 
 the Austrians were now attacking. The road 
 after this was blocked with transport, ammuni- 
 
250 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 tion carts, ambulances, and a battery of field 
 guns. The guns had not forgotten their kettles 
 and pots. Our car could not pass. After tack- 
 ing up a field in the way of Commodore Trun- 
 nion, and finding that ditches stopped naviga- 
 tion, we returned to the road, left the car with 
 the chauffeur, and made for the next village. 
 Here was an etappe hospital full of wounded 
 men; the artillery roar was loud, and from the 
 roof we saw columns of smoke. We found one 
 officer's horse, and, after long delay, a pony 
 with a Cossack saddle, and made six miles along 
 the road, partly in fields, and all the way through 
 or past transport, ammunition cars, and guns. 
 An hour later, I was nearer the Austrians than 
 I had been anywhere except on the Dunajec; 
 but I saw no Austrians except prisoners, and 
 these only in fours and fives. Fighting was 
 going on in an unknown place, in an inexplicable 
 way. 
 
 Fights are seen only by fighters, and these 
 see little. Red Cross men and newspaper corre- 
 spondents see battle material, but little of the 
 use. Specks in the sky are the chief things seen 
 of the enemy's attempts to destroy. These are 
 shrapnel shells; the bursting of brisant shells is 
 best watched from a roof; there are eruptions of 
 smoke and mud, with flame plainly visible in 
 
TRANSPORT 251 
 
 weak light. In position fighting shrapnel explo- 
 sions are easier to see than shell explosions. 
 Shells are dropped in the advanced trenches 
 and shrapnel is used against artillery, infantry 
 in movement, ammunition columns, and other 
 things in the rear. This is not always so, but it 
 is the rule. You see guns slowly moving with 
 ammunition waggons, reserves, cavalry which 
 seems to be idling, a field-hospital, wounded men 
 on foot, in carts, and prisoners. You also see 
 many officers, single or in small groups; soldiers, 
 single or in groups; and single horsemen, all 
 moving or watching; and unless you are ex- 
 pert in war you do not know what they are 
 about. 
 
 Prominent is the service of the wounded. 
 The first work is out of sight. Civilian and 
 soldier bearers with stretchers are behind the 
 fighting line; they have been there since the 
 battle began. A battalion has twenty bearers 
 with five stretchers. The bearers carry for first 
 aid the badly wounded; the lightly wounded 
 walk. First aid is given at a bandaging point, 
 which is served by Red Cross cars. The band- 
 aging point may be in the open air, it may be a 
 tent. From there the wounded are taken to 
 the field-hospital, usually in a house, where first 
 operations are done; afterwards they go to a 
 
252 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 permanent war hospital. If you get to a field- 
 hospital you are as near as you can safely be. 
 
 In position warfare, where the battle consists 
 of shell fire and rifle fire, with slow infantry 
 progress, you can safely get nearer. You can 
 get through saps to field artillery positions, and 
 easily to the positions of big guns and howitzers 
 in the rear. If there is an eminence you can 
 see through good glasses the trenches, and dots 
 of your own, and even of the enemy's infantry. 
 Reserve troops in movement behind the line 
 are seen. Poland is flat, and the few eminences 
 are dangerous; woods are shelled because they 
 give cover to reserves, sharpshooters, and muni- 
 tions. 
 
 Most things appear as details in confusion. 
 Of the nature and aim of the whole you have no 
 notion; line officers cannot tell you, only when 
 you get week-old newspapers is everything easy 
 and plain. There is confusion of men, guns, and 
 waggons at the rear, and of smoke discs and mud 
 spouts in front; you are sharp if you can tell 
 where are friends and where are foes, and which 
 side has filled the air with the discs of smoke. 
 The unbroken roar and rattle, the rattle's strange 
 weakening on one side and nervous waxing on 
 the other, and the echo effects and reverbera- 
 tions near big buildings and forests confound 
 
TRANSPORT 253 
 
 the confusion. If the battle is big, you feel 
 dazed, and you soon get tired. 
 
 The fighting this day was in the Rembow 
 marshes. There was a patch of flat country, 
 with thin snow and bare patches. Far behind 
 the fighting line were big shell-craters, which 
 must have been old, for they were half full of 
 snow. Some craters were outside the cottage, 
 from the roof of which my companion, three 
 relieved line officers, and I watched. The shells 
 which made these craters blew the cottage win- 
 dows in. The frozen marshes and the frozen 
 Nida were out of sight, or they were blent with 
 the plain. Fighting went on to the south. The 
 artillery roar relaxed, but rattle of musketry 
 was continuous. Loud reports came, I was told 
 from Russian 21 cm. mortars, used to break up 
 trenches. Officers whom I asked about the 
 mortars pointed to a plain with shrubs: nothing 
 was to be seen, except at one point where an 
 abrupt hillock was covered with something dark, 
 perhaps sapling-pines. 
 
 A few Austrian shells could be seen bursting, 
 not enough to explain the roar. The first explo- 
 sions were little clouds of earth, which rose all at 
 once out of the white ground, and subsided, 
 leaving patches of black. I saw no flame. Later, 
 the Austrians sent shells at a square park of 
 
254 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 ammunition waggons and carts outside a farm. 
 One blew a gap in the side of this dark mass. 
 The rest went over it, and burst steadily on the 
 same spot, snowless from traffic. A few of the 
 shells sent up regular spouts of earth; most 
 raised ragged masses which looked like very big 
 waves hurled over rocks, dark as you see such 
 waves when you are nearly underneath. There 
 was white foam, not on top. This was smoke. 
 The smoke delays. It seems as if the black 
 wave came out of the spray, and the wave tum- 
 bles back on the spray, and crushes it into the 
 ground. While this bombardment went on, 
 an enemy aeroplane flew. Officers told me it 
 was flying along our lines, but they knew only 
 vaguely where the lines were. The map showed 
 the Nida to turn at right angles; if the line 
 was the Nida, and both sides held it as a trench, 
 it was impossible to know whether to look east 
 or south. 
 
 Behind the invisible lines, movement went 
 on. Wounded came back, all bandaged, some in 
 carts. Then came an empty ammunition waggon 
 drawn by two horses. A shell had wrecked it. 
 Spokes were missing, the stump of a shaft stuck 
 from the hooked footboard, the rail on top 
 was broken, and paint was off the side. Going 
 south, obliquely to the probable line of fighting, 
 
TRANSPORT 255 
 
 there was a battery of field guns. I believe it 
 was the battery seen on the road. Guns not 
 in action, turned backwards with lowered muz- 
 zles, awaken thoughts of depression and retreat; 
 these seemed domesticated and tame. I asked 
 an officer where they were making for. "The 
 Austrians," he said, "are crossing higher up. 
 Lower down." He had been on the Bsura and 
 Rawka which flow north; the Nida, which then 
 made up the rest of the tactical frontier, flows 
 south. In a fight near Warsaw this officer had 
 lost a finger. He told me that he tied the finger 
 stump, fought all day, and was bandaged by a 
 doctor at night. 
 
 Our field guns began to bombard the Austrian 
 positions beyond the Nida. The roar of the guns 
 was loud; no effects were seen — the distance 
 was too great. I heard that shell was used. The 
 Austrians continued to shell the park of waggons, 
 which dispersed, and to pour shrapnel on coun- 
 try to the north. The target at first was out of 
 sight; the shrapnel shells seemed to be bursting 
 over a snowless dark space; later something 
 came into sight, reserve infantry winding to- 
 wards the trenches or ammunition columns. A 
 few shrapnel shells went over a house not far off, 
 making high whistles which were well heard 
 through the gun roar and musketry rattle. 
 
256 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 There were discs — really globes — of white 
 smoke which melted quickly; underneath some, 
 for an instant, showed specks of black. Some- 
 times the shrapnel shells burst at the same mo- 
 ment, sometimes after regular intervals; before 
 one disc melted another appeared; and at one 
 moment a big arc of sky was strewn with discs 
 which winked and went out. To the right some- 
 thing burning sent up a column of smoke, mixed 
 with unstable and dull fire; the smoke broke 
 up and spread in wisps, engulfing the shrapnel 
 globes. Later, there were other sky signs which 
 I did not understand: plumes of smoke, blue 
 against the lighter sky, with torn tops and 
 stalks dwindling to points. I counted them, one, 
 two, three, and questioned an officer. Officers 
 seldom know much of battle phenomena; they 
 take no interest. This officer said, "You see 
 all sorts of things in war." 
 
 During the exchange of shells and bullets, 
 wounded went past; a few in Red Cross waggons, 
 more in peasant carts, and most of all on foot. 
 I went to meet them. I asked the wounded 
 whether many were killed: they said, "Nobody; 
 lots of us have bits chipped out." This was a 
 soldier's observation of a few yards of trench. 
 One man's boot, as he passed the cottage, leaked 
 blood in the snow. He had been bandaged by a 
 
TRANSPORT 257 
 
 bearer, and sent straight to the field-hospital, 
 the first-aid point being overworked. A cav- 
 alryman, somebody's orderly, was brought on a 
 cart. He had fallen partly under his horse, and 
 pressure stayed the bleeding from a wounded 
 arm. On the next carts were men seated, un- 
 able to walk, but merry; they waved their hands. 
 The last cart brought a dead man. His body 
 was put aslant, feet down, in a shell crater and 
 covered in. A clod knocked the handkerchief 
 from his face. Most dead men are calm, this 
 man's face was quizzical and surprised, as if he 
 had been stopped in a joke. 
 
 The fight ended in rain. There was less and 
 less noise; then there was a lull; next a single 
 shrapnel disc, rifle shots, and silence. I heard 
 that the Austrians had made some attacks and 
 been repulsed, and that we counter-attacked. 
 Forty prisoners were taken in the first hour, 
 others were taken later. As we rode back, women 
 who had been watching the fight told us that 
 this was the bloodiest fight of the war. There 
 were hundreds of wounded. To the question, 
 how many hundreds, one said, "We saw eight 
 carts with wounded all at once"; the other said, 
 "We saw ten." These carts I found further on 
 in a crush of empty ammunition waggons, peas- 
 ants' carts 9 and Cossacks in the saddle. We 
 
258 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 rode across the fields. At the hospital the crush 
 was worse; and an hour passed before our 
 car could start. Everything was mixed up, the 
 drivers made surprising manoeuvres, sometimes 
 backing yards to gain feet, sometimes dashing 
 through openings that quickly shrank. In the 
 confusion reigned order; nobody fussed; carts 
 tumbled with dignity into the big roadside 
 drain; and the transport oaths — the tchort 
 vozmi I diavol ! and anathema I — were so placid 
 that strangers ignorant of Russian — and Greek 
 — would think the men were at prayer. 
 
 The etappe service bewilders laymen; also 
 soldiers. I asked many, and a few knew more 
 than I. You see crowded roads, carts crawling 
 with food, munition carts with far too many 
 horses, loads of bridge material, meaningless 
 loads of thin iron rims, and all the wheeled traf- 
 fic of the Red Cross. The wheels turn in their 
 own way, leisurely, without regard to one an- 
 other, in social equality: the motor-car gets 
 only the precedence it exacts by speed and 
 strength — the dirtiest peasant cart pays it no 
 respect. Most of the carts go laden south and 
 go empty north, but the Red Cross carts go 
 empty south and return full north. That is 
 the etappe service: a circulation of food and 
 bullets which come back in the bodies of men. 
 
TRANSPORT 259 
 
 The organisation is hidden. On the trees are 
 rough-cut signboards, scrawled in tar "Etappe 
 Road"; and in town is the etappe commandant, 
 a tired officer who holds a telephone receiver 
 while his elbows disturb piles of blotted forms. 
 The etappe organisation is not so simple as that. 
 It has military structure; diagrams with col- 
 oured, ramifying lines; inspectors, and power to 
 impress labour, govern, and punish. The auto- 
 mobiles, horsemen, carts, that look so disorderly, 
 converge and diverge where they ought to; col- 
 umns without confusion cross one another. The 
 service controls railways, rivers, canals, auto- 
 mobile parks, storehouses, butcheries, bakeries. 
 It feeds the army and it feeds itself. It is linked 
 with the sources of production. If the sources 
 are adequate, a fit etappe service insures the 
 army's supply. So much theory I got from 
 officers. I saw later the practice of the etappe. 
 
 Between Kielce and Radom I travelled in an 
 empty train. From Radom the railway to War- 
 saw goes through Ivangorod, across the Vistula, 
 and along the right bank. It is a hundred miles. 
 By rail it would take a day, maybe two days — 
 the trains stop for hours at a time, and the 
 average speed is walking speed. I arranged to 
 go by automobile with an officer friend from 
 Bjalobrshegi on the Pilitsa to Warsaw. For the 
 
260 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 twenty miles to Bjalobrshegi I had to find a 
 carriage. The whole journey would take five 
 hours. At a stream which lies a third of the 
 way, I was tempted to drive aside to see Aus- 
 trian trenches. There was nothing in them, 
 except a picture of the Emperor Francis Josef, 
 and mud-trodden picture supplements of Berlin 
 newspapers. The expedition took two hours; 
 before I reached Bjalobrshegi the motor car had 
 left. To the north is the river which has washed 
 down more blood than all other rivers together. 
 It washes nothing else; the town is Poland's 
 dirtiest; its Jews have the greasiest caftans, and 
 its children the most tattered breeches. There 
 were no carriages, no horses, and an etappe 
 official whom I met in the hotel offered to take 
 me to Warsaw if I waited three days. 
 
 When I said I should walk, the official asked 
 about my bag. The bag forced me to a journey 
 which proved unclean and novel. To the hotel 
 came a big, very dirty man, with top boots and 
 a whip. He laid down a blue paper, and said 
 he was a viestovoi, a messenger. The Russian 
 word is akin to "Avesta"; the viestovoi is akin 
 to horses, whips, blue forms, and grubby en- 
 velopes. He takes papers with etappe columns. 
 As a rule he is a deliberate, responsible man. 
 When I asked the messenger if he could get me 
 
TRANSPORT 261 
 
 a carriage, he said, "Yes, I shall myself take 
 you to Warsaw; M. Lebedieff went, and he 
 was pleased." I thought I should get a saddle 
 horse. We went to a yard where there was a 
 park of loaded carts. Many drivers lounged. 
 The bag was put on a cart, on top of sacks. 
 On the sacks, beside the bag, I waited for an 
 hour, watching the messenger roll tobacco in 
 newspaper wisps and hearing, "We shall start 
 at once." He disappeared, returned after half 
 an hour, said, "We shall start at once," and 
 started. Starting meant watching the drivers, 
 who walked one horse after the other into the 
 cobbled street, mixed the carts up, and said 
 calmly Anathema! My cart was last. Before 
 we left Bjalobrshegi it was lost in an endless 
 train. 
 
 The train of carts is the greatest part of 
 traffic on the etappe. Carts come from every- 
 where. In Europe, with railways, roads, and 
 many automobiles, transport is easy. A big 
 motor car supplies a hundred times more men 
 than a peasant cart — it carries ten times the 
 load and makes ten times as many journeys. 
 Here there are no railways worth mentioning, 
 and few motor cars; the roads are tracks, and 
 the peasant carts, small and rickety, have 
 horses to match. My transport cart differed 
 
262 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 from a peasant cart in peace time by a "C. 409" 
 in red paint. Other carts had "C," their class 
 in the etappe scheme, and numbers. The carts 
 had no springs. The shafts were unpainted 
 pine-sticks, dust grey as all the woodwork is; 
 the harness was a rope. A ridge of wood in 
 front was the box. When ruts were crossed, 
 the sacks wobbled, and the passenger held on 
 by the driver's ridge of wood. The messenger, 
 standing high in his stirrups, rode alongside: 
 he reproved the driver, kept him awake, and 
 swore imperturbably. 
 
 The messenger said that the transport train 
 was small. "How many carts?" "Maybe a 
 thousand." I saw neither beginning nor end. 
 In front was a similar two-wheeled cart with a 
 peasant driver in short sheepskin coat and cap 
 of lambskin. Farther on, an artillery forge 
 cart rumbled. It was an intruder, and the 
 driver behind jeered at it. Before it were carts 
 without end, and behind me was the same end- 
 less chain. Beside went a second chain of carts 
 with another letter in red. At Grojec, this 
 branched off, and we were joined by two more 
 trains, one short. Near Grojec the road rises. 
 I stood on the sacks, swaying as they wobbled, 
 and searched through field-glasses for a patch 
 of free road. There were only carts. 
 
TRANSPORT 263 
 
 The drivers slept. When we came to a nar- 
 row bridge, or met a motor car, the messenger 
 thrust his whip down my driver's neck and 
 woke him. At small villages the messenger 
 took out a thick watch, and made notes on a 
 blue form. He discovered an etappe official, 
 who sent a very young man and a grizzled man 
 into the road. These men checked the carts. 
 Some carts were missing. The thin Polish horses 
 were guilty. Every half hour the train met a 
 staff motor car. The horses kicked and reared. 
 The staff officers, the chauffeurs, the drivers 
 bawled, "Cover his eyes!" the horses lashed 
 out, dashed into the ditch, and smashed the 
 shafts. Nobody worried. If the wrecked cart 
 was near the head of the team, it arrived with 
 the tail — the team took longer to pass the 
 wreck than the driver took to make a new shaft. 
 
 The messenger and, when he awoke, the 
 driver, behaved as my hosts. The messenger 
 came from Lody, near Minsk; he had a wife 
 and seven children, and he belonged to the 
 Army Service Corps. He pointed to his shoul- 
 der straps, and said, "There you are !" I asked 
 why he wore civilian trousers: he said, "I 
 have never worn army trousers except in Au- 
 gust." Of Lody he said, "It's peaceful now, 
 but there's nothing to drink, so folks are ir- 
 
264 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 ritable." He showed me the blue form, and I 
 saw that he wrote really well. The driver was 
 annoyed. He turned and said, "Yes, he can 
 write and he can talk; I am a dark man, but 
 I can write my name." At a village half-way 
 to Groizy the messenger fished from his saddle- 
 bags grey bread, broke it, and offered me half. 
 Again the driver was annoyed. He hesitated 
 and pulled some grey bread from a sack. He 
 offered me half, and seemed pleased when I 
 declined. 
 
 The messenger told me that the transport 
 men do not want the war to end. They earn 
 good wages. They drive day and night, they 
 never go home, hear nothing of wives and chil- 
 dren, never change their clothes, never go to 
 bed. When the endless train winds into War- 
 saw, or Siedlec, or Brest-Litovsk, it spreads 
 into a square, rests, loads, and starts again. 
 The drivers are under military law, but most 
 are civilians, especially the fellows in the lamb- 
 skin caps: these were Poles. "There are 
 seventy thousand transport drivers earning 
 good money." "How many drivers alto- 
 gether?" "Maybe a hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand, maybe more. That is seventy thousand 
 civilians and fifty thousand soldiers. The rest 
 don't count." "Why don't they count?" 
 
TRANSPORT Z§5 
 
 "They are White Russians. They live round 
 Pinsk in the bog, and get skin-diseases from 
 eating spoiled grain." 
 
 All night the transport went. The messenger 
 covered me with a sheepskin, but it was too 
 cold to sleep. We passed the half -burnt village 
 of Lasy. Next day we reached Warsaw by the 
 Grojec alley, which is unwashed like Bjalobr- 
 shegi. The messenger refused to take money, 
 saying, "It's Crown work." The driver took 
 a rouble, and looked at the messenger derisively, 
 as much as to say that Crown work is just the 
 work for which roubles are meant. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 SOLDIERS 
 
 OUTSIDE Warsaw, at Brwinow, an elderly 
 man in mixed uniform, plainly a scholar, 
 wrote from the dictation of illiterates 
 letters to certain Mariyas and Lukeriyas. The 
 illiterates served in a new unit. The letter- 
 writer wrote with zeal and anger, ignoring in- 
 structions of the soldiers, who asked, "Have 
 you put in the stops ?" but not, "Have you put 
 in the sense?" The scene recalled Repin's 
 Zaporog Cossacks Writing a Letter to the Sultan. 
 The letter- writer was newly chosen. Before 
 him, scamps haunted the front, and wrote 
 letters of affection and litigation. The scamps 
 asked three kopecks for work worth two; they 
 mixed things up — ladies awaiting avowals 
 of love received threats that unless they paid 
 . . . Then came a Pole, who spoke Russian. 
 He charged little, and forgot no stops; his 
 weakness was that he could not write. The 
 soldiers dictated, "Genuflections to Mariya 
 Semionovna, genuflections to Lukeriya Pe- 
 trovna; and have you repaired the shed? ..." 
 
 266 
 
SOLDIERS 267 
 
 and the Pole, with a shorthand writer's impas- 
 sivity, scratched noughts, pothooks, crosses, 
 hangers, and oghams. In this way he ad- 
 dressed the envelopes. After gaining praise 
 by neat work, he wrote for a man who could 
 read. The man seized the unfinished letter, 
 and bawled: "The Pole's a fraud! He can't 
 write Russian! He's writing in Polish!" The 
 fraud was replaced by an honest, cross man, 
 who wrote at least half of what was said, and 
 to impress wives in the cabins of Sashina added 
 rhetoric of his own. 
 
 Wounded men dictate their letters to nurses. 
 Men letter-writers, mostly unpaid, write for 
 soldiers in camp. Letters dictated are more 
 eloquent and less original than the soldiers' 
 own. The letter-writer may concoct adventures, 
 lending one adventure to two or three men. 
 In newspapers I found the same letter with dif- 
 ferent signatures, describing adventures which 
 could hardly have happened twice. In War- 
 saw, M. Arsenieff showed me letters with his- 
 tories of fights. Some were newspaper echoes; 
 some told of real things in plain words. There 
 were no politics. I saw Berlin given as "Vas- 
 kingrad," an analogue of Petrograd, meaning, 
 "Bad Willy's Town"; and I read this: "A 
 reserve man of our battalion boasted that no 
 
268 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 bullet would kill him. He got a stomach wound. 
 He rose from his bed, and said, 'It's not a 
 bullet, is it, doctor?' 'No,' said the doctor, 
 'a shell splinter.' 'Then I was right,' said the 
 reserve man, and died." Soldiers seldom use 
 images. The Austrians, one told me, were 
 "like stones skimming over the surface of 
 water." He meant that the enemy was bravest 
 when he charged. "When they ceased to 
 move, they dropped like stones." As reason 
 for not following up a success, I heard, "We 
 all had wounded legs." The soldiers, this 
 meant, were tired. 
 
 The education of soldiers of the same social 
 class is not on the same level, and there are 
 many classes. At Schtchepetowo railway sta- 
 tion, a private soldier, his face concealed by 
 bandages, a tube for breathing in his mouth, 
 stood with a well-dressed young woman. He 
 was the lady's brother; he had volunteered 
 not for patriotism, but because he held that 
 no man had the right to be happier or more 
 wretched than other men. The soldiers of the 
 active army, in peace time over a million, are 
 nearly all literate. These are young men. 
 Schooling has spread; and the first months' 
 service of illiterates are spent in battalion 
 schools. Reservists are worse schooled than 
 
SOLDIERS 269 
 
 active men. There are soldiers who learned 
 to read without help. The reading passion is 
 strong. Soldiers rush into railway carriages, 
 and beg for "gazettes." Many read like the 
 coachman in Dead Souls, for the mechanical 
 joy of reading; they pore over papers out of 
 date; more intelligent men read aloud, and 
 discuss the news; the most intelligent tear 
 the papers into strips, twist funnels for tobacco, 
 and smoke. 
 
 The moral and mental states of soldiers are 
 not conditioned by learning. The "dark" sol- 
 diers are as good as the "conscious," and as in- 
 telligent in different ways. The dark soldier 
 puts childish notions in childish, coloured words; 
 he is himself. The conscious factory-hand 
 soldier has notions which, being in grown-up 
 speech, sound grown-up, but are often inane. 
 Neither knows much of war; but the dark 
 soldier knows more, as he thinks the aim of 
 war is to satisfy needs. To the dark soldier 
 the aim of the war is to take German land, 
 because in his commune no man has more than 
 five acres; the conscious soldier, fed on some 
 daily Viedomosti, says that the aim of the war 
 is to put the Kaiser in a cage. 
 
 The view of battle is unromantic and Ho- 
 meric. An army fights in order to win; an in- 
 
270 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 dividual fights in order to kill and to escape 
 being killed. Tempered by compassion and the 
 will to help, is the notion that a wounded man 
 is inferior. He has been bested by the foe. A 
 fight with rifles against unseen foes is as much 
 a test of fitness as a duel with swords. Every 
 soldier ought to have a chance. At Pavlovsk 
 I heard a wounded man telling how he had 
 been hit before going into battle. "Why did 
 they hit me, an innocent man, before I killed 
 their men? Why? Why?" A wounded man 
 who had been through the Bsura battles praised 
 a certain Matvei for escaping by agility a shell 
 which wounded many. Matvei, he said, was 
 a good soldier; and he condemned himself and 
 the men who were killed. He could not grasp 
 the notion of laying down life for the Father- 
 land; when told that the killed men died 
 gloriously, he said, "If we had ducked in time 
 we might have killed ten Germans apiece." 
 With some these notions are strengthened by 
 the belief that a wound means death. The 
 soldiers say, "First time you get drob (gun- 
 shot — a slight wound) ; second time you get 
 grob (a coffin)." Slight wounds are not re- 
 ported to kinsfolk. The village, the soldier 
 knows, will say, "Fancy a tall lad like Grishka 
 being fooled by a German!" 
 
SOLDIERS 271 
 
 The soldiers believe that brave men come off 
 best. Brave men in civil life make brave sol- 
 diers. I found soldiers running about the plat- 
 form of Vilna station with kettles of boiling 
 water, while they argued, "Must the third- 
 class buffet attendant give boiling water gratis? " 
 Months before, I learned, a third-class atten- 
 dant refused; to convince him a soldier quoted 
 paragraph — of the regulations. This was a 
 brave man; he went unscathed through many 
 fights while his comrades perished. The sol- 
 diers developed this thesis: there are two kinds 
 of brave men; brave men who never get killed, 
 and brave men invulnerable in battle who die 
 of violence outside battle. The men spoke of 
 bullets that changed their paths; kettles that 
 saved life by taking bullets down their spouts; 
 and shells deflected by cigarettes. In hospital 
 was a soldier whose adventures surpassed in- 
 vention. At Tannenberg a bullet pierced his 
 cap; he escaped by a chance on the East Prus- 
 sian frontier; of a patrol surprised by the 
 enemy he alone returned. His fate came where 
 there was no enemy. On the way to camp 
 with firewood he fell to a sentry's bullet. 
 
 Soldiers believe in selection by missiles. 
 "While we were marching," they told me, "a 
 shell struck the head of the man in the first 
 
272 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 rank; it rose and spared the man behind; then 
 it fell and killed the third man; and so on." 
 "The killed men may have been taller than the 
 spared men." "They were taller. But we saw 
 the shell dip and rise. If the spared men were 
 meant to be killed, they would have been tall." 
 I walked with a trail of lightly wounded on a 
 road near Mstchonow. They told me in soft 
 South-Russian with Roumanian idioms, that 
 every ninth man on the roll of their battalion 
 was dead: all the ninth men, doomed to death, 
 were dead, so the battalion would escape fur- 
 ther loss. "Somebody else is now ninth man," 
 I said, "there will always be ninth men until 
 only eight are left." They argued. These sol- 
 diers spoke of the war as The Robbery. They 
 asked, "When will The Robbery end?" I 
 took them for Pacifists. Later I learned that 
 the Slav razboi, which means highway robbery, 
 is used by the Bessarabians in the sense "War." 
 It is strange that the posterity of Trajan's 
 Colonists have no word of their own. Their 
 choice shows the irony of Latin minds. 
 
 Between the soldiers and the men who make 
 war and profit by war there is a moral opposi- 
 tion. Any man who talks to the soldiers without 
 seeing that must be without compassion and im- 
 agination. The soldiers do not think as think 
 
SOLDIERS 273 
 
 the men who make wars: they are not hunters 
 of sensation; few of them care more for the 
 frontiers of Empires than for the landmarks in 
 their own communes; and they are not guilty 
 of the crooked domestic bookkeeping which 
 wars generously erase. Not being philosophers, 
 they do not know that war is no worse than 
 other evils of life. They want happiness, and 
 have no notion of happiness except freedom 
 from the pain, hunger, and cold which The 
 Robbery brings. There is little enthusiasm; 
 the more Russian the unit, the less enthusiasm 
 there is. Polish soldiers, though they hate 
 Russia, and resent the compulsion to fight 
 brother Poles, are more militant by nature than 
 the Black Earth moujiks. In Cossacks lives 
 the tradition of war as a trade and a sport. 
 Disappointment was great, for in the static 
 campaign in Poland cavalry was little used, the 
 Cossacks least. Austrian Hussars fought as in- 
 fantry. In a camp near Warsaw, well out of 
 the war area, I heard Cossacks lament. They 
 had been at Mlava in North Poland, and ex- 
 pected to go to East Prussia. Then came the 
 winter battle of Masuria, and the expulsion from 
 Prussia of the fragments of the Tenth Army. 
 After changing places, the Cossacks found them- 
 selves far from the war, with no hope of getting 
 
274 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 near. They came from the Don with the notion 
 that war is a thing of charges and booty. The 
 officers disliked inaction. The men reasoned 
 that strategical interests should give way to 
 Cossack tradition. "It is a pity the Germans 
 don't have a success." "Why ? " "They would 
 then come far into Russia, and the Cossacks 
 would be allowed to fight." For warlike ar- 
 dour, the Circassians and the Moslems of Asia 
 match the Cossacks. Generalisations are un- 
 sound; there are too many races, and no way 
 of learning what they think. Many speak no 
 Russian except tak totchno, the army expression 
 of assent — "We are delighted to do our best," 
 and "We are delighted to remain!" In these 
 phrases is a homely sound; they express the 
 fraternal Russian spirit. But they are not 
 spontaneous. The Statute of Internal Service 
 says what soldiers must answer to every re- 
 mark. 
 
 The soldiers value themselves high. They 
 behave, especially the reservists, as solid fathers, 
 whose lives have a moral and economic worth; 
 who, apart from the pain to themselves of death, 
 measure the pain to others. They reason with- 
 out shame that it would be a bad thing if they 
 were killed, because son Vanka is young, because 
 brother Luka, known to the village as Feather- 
 
SOLDIERS 275 
 
 head, cannot manage a farm. Letters written 
 after battle show joy at escape. Braggarts are 
 ridiculed as "trench chickens." Great events 
 are taken with calm. On an autumn evening, a 
 wounded soldier came into an inn in Petrograd 
 where I sat, talking to workmen. An old peas- 
 ant asked, "Where do you come from, worthy 
 man?" The soldier said, "From Germany, 
 from Germany, grandfather." Perhaps he had 
 seen the cataclysm of Tannenberg; but he would 
 say no more. 
 
 In death are shown resignation or animal 
 indifference: very seldom there is fear. I saw, 
 borne on a stretcher, a wounded man who shook 
 nerves by exclaiming, "Don't let me die!" 
 He was a middle-aged man, with the face of a 
 Privy Councillor, and the piping, "Don't let me 
 die !" was incongruous, even absurd, for he was 
 as good as dead. The soldiers reason simply 
 about death. They have no notion of immor- 
 tality; or they have mechanical notions: men 
 in the grave are so lively that they spoil the 
 grass overhead; Christian corpses object to 
 corpses of Jews; and so on. On the terraced 
 trenches at Tarnobrzeg I heard men talk of 
 death. There was a cross with the words, Im 
 Kriege Feind ; im Tode vereint — the Austrians 
 put this up everywhere, and the Germans put 
 
276 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 Ruht sanft or Auf Widersehen. The soldiers 
 knew that friends and foes were buried together; 
 and they asked whether the Austrians were 
 Catholics or Uniates, and whether they edged 
 away from the Orthodox dead. There was 
 nothing to prevent the dead moving when the 
 ground was soft with snow-water. Men could 
 live anywhere. "They breathe in the air, and 
 they swim in the pond." "And in the fire, 
 Wiseacre?" "If they get into the fire, then let 
 them get out." The soldier called Wiseacre 
 spoke bitterly of his wound; he had lost three 
 fingers of the right hand, and he asked, "What 
 good am I as a workman ? " I heard from others 
 this groping question as to the future; it was 
 more painful than "Don't let me die!" — it 
 strengthened my belief that it is not the pain of 
 death, but a fair valuation of themselves as 
 husbands and workers which makes the soldiers 
 take care. 
 
 This feeling does not spoil them for battle. 
 Little is heard of shirkers and voluntary sur- 
 renders; the mass surrenders do not reflect the 
 soldiers' wills. Deserters are few, and their ends 
 are tragic. A sick soldier, Orthodox, but of 
 Polish blood, came for rest to Bielostock; nursed 
 by a red-cheeked, beetle-browed Polish girl, he 
 fell in love; a priest married them; the soldier, 
 
SOLDIERS 277 
 
 disguised as a pedlar, fled with his bride to 
 Kovno. He was caught, and court-martialled; 
 the bride, told that she too might be shot, was 
 ordered to leave Poland; in the night, she rushed 
 at a sentry, knowing that he would shoot. There 
 are some "self -shooters" (samostrieltsi) . A let- 
 ter says that in a trench fight a soldier held his 
 hand before an Austrian rifle, expecting a bullet. 
 The explosion took off the hand : the self -shooter 
 was bandaged, tried, and shot. 
 
 Of strategy and tactics the soldiers know 
 little. They trust in the bayonet, and, like sol- 
 diers of all armies, believe that the enemy dreads 
 it. They understand holding trenches and mow- 
 ing attackers down. They have little sense of 
 orientation. If they repulse the attack, it is 
 the same whether they face east or west; when 
 well led, they fight as well in retreat as in ad- 
 vance; they keep their heads, so long as the 
 enemy is seen only on one side — in big battles 
 that is always so. The soldier wants a visible 
 objective; with a town in front to be attacked, 
 or a town behind him, he is best. In other re- 
 spects — with the exception that he does not 
 report his triumphs in advance — he thinks 
 much as a British Minister. He believes that 
 war needs no preparation or applied genius; 
 that it is a thing of impromptus and interven- 
 
278 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 tions; that luck must turn; that if you only 
 wait, something will get you out of a hole. 
 
 This spirit governs the soldiers' reasoning on 
 victory and defeat. No pride is felt in success 
 achieved by courage and skill — these are 
 human virtues: the intervention of Providence 
 or chance is the only right cause of pride. The 
 story that General Schwartz's horse saved Ivan- 
 gorod went round the army; jealous soldiers 
 adapt it to other victories. General Schwartz 
 commanded the fortress during the attack of 
 October. His soldiers were in expectant mood, 
 for they had seen on a white horse the ghost 
 of General Michael Skobeleff. Schwartz had a 
 white horse, for war use coloured green. On 
 battle days it rained and blew. The general 
 rode a long way in a straight line; the rain 
 washed white the windward side of the horse; 
 the leeward side remained green. The general 
 rode to a point where his men wavered. A 
 shell burst; the horse shied; the soldiers saw 
 the green side, then the white. They were sure 
 that this was Skobeleff; he had not had time to 
 finish colouring his horse. "They cheered; they 
 charged, and the Swabians ran." 
 
 The mystical view — the view that rational 
 thinking and consequent action have little value 
 against accidents — is pushed far; soldiers re- 
 
SOLDIERS 279 
 
 ject generalship, and take joy in showing how 
 simplicity outwits it. This is the tenet of 
 peasant Nihilism — that wisdom, wealth, and 
 strength are helpless things against the Chris- 
 tian arcana hidden in the spirits of the weak. 
 A little child shall lead. Primitive stratagems, 
 or merely unconscious follies, give falls to the 
 pride of the brain. Feodor the Fool beats Ger- 
 man generals. The Fool was an intellectual 
 blank; it was easier for Heaven to write genial 
 things in him than on brains thick with the 
 stupidities of Staff colleges. The Fool sum- 
 moned the captured general, and lectured him 
 on the folly of trying to thwart God with maps 
 and bent pins stuck into them. Maps were use- 
 less; the pins might be sent to the general's wife. 
 Another Fool, a certain Bogatoff, fooled another 
 German. Bogatoff was such a fool that he lost 
 his way. He changed into peasant clothes. He 
 was captured, and brought before a general. 
 
 A big man, the general, covered with stars, like a French- 
 man, like a sort of Napoleon. He asked Bogatoff to show 
 the road through the marsh. Bogatoff showed. The gen- 
 eral called him a blockhead, and said, "The road could 
 not be there." "It is," said Bogatoff. "We all know it, 
 I helped to make it. There was another road, but it's 
 destroyed." 
 
 Bogatoff guided the Germans along the wrong track; and 
 they fell into the marsh. "Ours" opened fire. "What's 
 that?" asked the general. "It's my workmen breaking 
 
280 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 stones," said Bogatoff. The Germans went on; their army 
 fell into the marsh; and all were killed. The Tsar gave 
 Bogatoff the general's decorations; and now it is Bogatoff 
 who shines like a Frenchman, like a sort of Napoleon. 
 
 Beyond the day's comforts and discomforts, 
 the soldiers take interest in family matters, land, 
 moral problems, and religion. They speak more 
 of children than of wives, praise schooling and 
 schoolmasters, and complain of village thieves. 
 When they speak together, they call their chil- 
 dren Vanka, Varka, Stiopka, with the ha end- 
 ing, — derogatory, like the Italian accio; if an 
 Intelligent listens, they say, with respect, Ivan, 
 Varvara, Stepan. I asked a soldier why he did 
 this. He got red. He told me that when he 
 drove away from home in Penza, he wondered 
 what would become of his family, and cried; 
 and his children ran after him, jeering, "Father's 
 afraid he'll be killed." 
 
 The soldiers have mixed notions of morals, 
 they seldom impute hypocrisy; they hold that 
 church-going thieves and drunkards are sincere, 
 only deep piety could lead a thief to church — it 
 is no trouble for a good man to pray. Religion 
 is not morals, but exaltation — the ecstatic 
 Suvoroff, 
 
 "Who loved blood as an alderman loves marrow." 
 read the lessons in Kontchansk church. With 
 
SOLDIERS 281 
 
 morals goes deportment. The soldiers are de- 
 corous; they greet one another politely, with- 
 out familiarity. I heard soldiers praising the 
 virtues, solidity and gravity. A corporal told 
 how two men who streaked their cheeks with 
 ochre were killed. They were killed because 
 they lacked gravity. Gravity, he said, is pass- 
 ing from the world. In the old days men were 
 grave. They wore long coats, and talked seri- 
 ously in low voices; nowadays men wear short 
 jackets — even gentlemen wear short jackets — 
 and there is no dignity left. "We wear over- 
 coats in winter: when we take them off, what 
 are we ? Spiders. Short jackets are the cause 
 of the war." He condemned the clothes of 
 France and England, and condemned the Ger- 
 mans for flooding Russia with "German cloth- 
 ing:" This meant European clothing. A sol- 
 dier objected, "Men can be serious in any kind 
 of coat. Only popes need long coats." 
 
 Of the land question I heard much. There 
 were mysterious lawsuits lasting for years; 
 trouble with meddlesome commissaries, timber 
 wars, and the immemorial question, individual 
 tenure or communal? Hard, responsible men, 
 who embody gravity in long coats, want individ- 
 ual ownership as fostered by the Law of 1906; 
 mystics, weaklings, the younger idealogues — 
 
282 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 men who pit the Fool Feodor against Hinden- 
 burg — stand for ownership in common. You 
 see their hankering after equality in need. The 
 sharper men of both classes condemn the pre- 
 vailing perversion of land reform for political 
 aims. I heard soldiers talking of a Kharkoff 
 man who profited more than is usual from the 
 law. He was killed. "The Government is 
 guilty," said the soldier. "Of what? Killing 
 the man, or letting him grab the land?" The 
 soldier was not clear. 
 
 The army has no art except song. M. Ar- 
 senieff looked for drawings; finding none, he 
 ordered them. The drawings were behind the 
 German soldier art, which I saw a year ago on 
 reservists' trains; the profiles had almond eyes: 
 one drawing had humour; it showed the Kaiser 
 with moustaches turned up, and Dundreary 
 whiskers turned up in the same way. The like- 
 ness was bad. Of army theatricals the brave 
 General Kondratenko was a supporter. I bought 
 in Radom a faded pink book, A Collection of 
 Plays for Soldiers. In it were a play Don't Dig 
 Pitfalls; You'll Fall in Yourself, with heroes 
 called Glutton and Drink-it-Up; a play on the 
 Slav Faust, Pan Tvardowski; and The Tsaritsa's 
 Slippers, dramatised from Gogol. Russian voices 
 are better than German, and in the songs there 
 
SOLDIERS 283 
 
 is more poetry, but the singing is disorderly. 
 There is a war-song about the Vistula, which re- 
 calls our own; the burden is the long way to the 
 Vistula; and there is doggerel with the refrain, 
 "Bullets fly. ..." — Pulyi letayut — which says 
 that, 
 
 "The rifle bullets go through you like pins; 
 Bullets of shrapnel shells shatter your shins"; . . . 
 
 this need not worry you, as most bullets wound 
 only the wind. I have heard German soldiers 
 singing the same thing: 
 
 "Die Mushetenkugel macht ein kleines Loch, 
 Die Kanonenkugel ein weit grosseres noch. 
 Die Kugeln sind alle von Eisen und Blei, 
 Und manche Kugel geht bei manchem vorbei." 
 
 To war-songs most soldiers prefer Down by 
 Mother Volga, the Pedlar's Song of Nekrassoff, 
 and new songs about "red girls," "black eyes," 
 and village Lovelaces — "accursed curly Van- 
 kas," whose victims' husbands jump down wells. 
 I found a soldier who could sing, "High, high is 
 the sun under heaven; deep, deep is the ocean 
 sea," the most poetical beginning in the me- 
 diaeval epos. He had learned it from a school- 
 master, and sang badly. Cossacks gave me a 
 narrative poem with an old Russian plot, and a 
 moral from the tale of Polycrates. The hero, 
 
284 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 "the Cossack" without a name, fell in love with 
 a "red [beautiful] maid," a Kirghiz sultan's 
 child. The Cossack converted and married the 
 infidel maid, and she bore him children. The 
 Cossack was too happy; he feared that content- 
 ment was extinguishing his spirit, and he blinded 
 his wife's blue eyes, and cast her unto the Ural. 
 In history, Stenka Razin, the Volga freebooter, 
 loved with passion an abducted Persian princess. 
 In payment to the river that gave him power 
 and wealth, he sacrificed her, as "the Cossack" 
 sacrificed the "red maid." Songs like this, not 
 songs of battle, are sung. In the Bsura trenches, 
 concertinas were played; the Germans heard, 
 and to the music of Volga bargee chanties sang 
 "The Two Comrades" and other songs of war. 
 The epic spirit lives. Peasant soldiers and 
 Cossacks rhyme about present deeds. The war 
 with Japan gave plenty of verse, uninspired, 
 beginning: 
 
 "Adjutant-General Grippenberg, 
 One of our best leaders . . ." 
 
 From a Cossack officer I got a new composition 
 which told with more poetry how a ford in Gali- 
 cia was found: 
 
 The Russian leaders asked, "Where is the ford, where 
 is the ford of the San?" No one answered. The Rus- 
 sians delayed till morning the crossing. 
 
SOLDIERS 285 
 
 At night, In the midnight, the Cossack Yegor Yegoroff 
 rose. He dreamed. He saw before him not the tedious 
 San, but the glorious, quiet Don. He knew the Don by a 
 willow, a broken willow whence he had cast stones in the 
 glorious, quiet Don; he knew that one verst lower was a 
 ford. 
 
 The Cossack set a Christian cross, an Orthodox cross, 
 on the bank, and marked the ford. 
 
 At dawn the Russians sought a ford in the tedious San. 
 The Cossack rode to the Christian cross, and shouted, 
 "This is not the San, but the glorious, quiet Don. I 
 know the ford of the Don. It is near the broken willow." 
 
 The lieutenant said, "Be still!" 
 
 "This is the ford; I know the ford." 
 
 "Be still!" 
 
 The Cossack thrust his lance through a sheep that was 
 being dressed for dinner; thrust it far; half the lance was 
 stained with blood. He took the bloody lance, and cast 
 it into the middle of the San, exclaiming, "This is the 
 glorious, quiet Don, and here is the ford!" The lance 
 stuck upright; the blood was not covered. 
 
 The lieutenant saw that the San was indeed shallow. 
 There the Russians crossed. 
 
 The soldiers' relation to enemies is a reproach 
 to the bad politicians and bad writers who show 
 in safe arm-chairs so much courage and intol- 
 erance. Men who have really suffered, who have 
 exchanged their homes for wounds and hunger, 
 do not talk of vengeance. If a soldier wrongs a 
 prisoner or a civilian, he may repent it next day; 
 reasoned plans of wrong-doing are never his. 
 The worst thoughts of soldiers are above the 
 daily talk of arm-chair heroes; and the best 
 
286 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 things have more truth and poetry than all 
 the arm-chair rhetoric of the year. Newspapers 
 printed a soldier's letter, asking for a concer- 
 tina, a loud one so that the Austrians might hear. 
 A soldier told me the war would end in a month. 
 Expecting an arm-chair tale of marches on Ber- 
 lin, I asked, "Why ? " He said that the enemy's 
 soldiers were great sinners; but suppose they 
 should lay down their arms and ask for forgive- 
 ness? Queerer things have happened. Asked, 
 "What put that in your head?" he laughed 
 mysteriously and cunningly, as much as to say, 
 "That is above your understanding." He had 
 seen two prisoners brought in; they were young 
 men, and both were crying. Why were they 
 crying? No one offended them. They were 
 crying because they were sorry. If some were 
 sorry, why shouldn't all be ? Who knows what 
 is in any heart? The vision of Hindenburg's 
 millions, all with reversed helmets as lachrymal 
 urns, coming for pardon seemed to me matter 
 for laughter; and I laughed. The soldier 
 looked hurt. He looked as if he had never read 
 speeches; he also looked sharp and bitter, as if 
 he wanted to say, "Where did you get your 
 plans for ending the war; and do you really 
 think they're more likely than mine ?" 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 ULTIMA RATIO 
 
 WITH the Germans on the Bsura, thirty 
 miles west, Warsaw was more tranquil 
 than in October when they held a sub- 
 urb. Beyond the forts, guns were heard; west 
 winds brought the noise to the Election Field at 
 Kolo; some heard the noise at night in the city 
 limits. The dirt and the levity remained. The 
 Russians, soldiers or nurses, were at work. The 
 Poles talked of trips to hear the gun-roar, of 
 fancy-dress balls with rouged Thick Berthas 
 and Zeppelins. The nephew of a ruling official 
 went to see things; he rode through a gap in 
 the lines some way south, and was caught by 
 Germans. Seeing he was not a spy, but an 
 amateur of battle — a Schlachtenbummeler — 
 they sent him back. There were other ama- 
 teurs — rich, idle men who came in disguises; 
 some as Red Cross workers who did no work; 
 some as writers for newspapers that do not pay; 
 some distributing cigarettes. They talked about 
 supreme battlefield thrills and expressions on 
 
 287 
 
288 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 dead men's faces. The house of the Countess 
 
 teemed with heroes, who were fed, and 
 
 asked if they hated the Germans . . . how it feels 
 to drive your bayonet . . . ? The Countess spir- 
 ited home a man who had lost fingers, a good- 
 looking, slow man, with conceit based on vic- 
 tory in battle with cooks. "Were you badly 
 frightened?" the Countess asked, "when the 
 enemy came in sight." "No," said the soldier, 
 and blushed. "I knew you meant to treat me 
 only to tea." 
 
 The right wing of our army retired to the 
 Bsura after the defeat of Wlozlawsk in Novem- 
 ber, and before Christmas, on the Bsura, Rawka, 
 and Nida began an immobile campaign. Spirits 
 were good, if not radiant as the Third Army's 
 were. Two months' fighting made clear that 
 the Bsura line could be held; if it were forced, a 
 field defence farther east would prolong our re- 
 sistance. Would the town be held as a fortress if 
 the field defence failed ? No one knew whether 
 the nineteen forts and the tete de pont at the 
 railway bridge were armed and in repair. The 
 forts were too near to save the town from bom- 
 bardment; they would need a big garrison; with 
 army and refugees, there would be a million 
 mouths to feed. The citizens knew little of 
 these things. They pointed to the unarmed 
 
ULTIMA RATIO 289 
 
 Citadel on the outskirts, built by Nicholes the 
 First to punish the rebels of 1830, as their pal- 
 ladium; and the amateurs of battle discussed 
 the Citadel's threat to Field-Marshal Hinden- 
 burg. 
 
 There were no panics. I saw no aircraft or 
 bombs until after my return from Galicia; but 
 I heard of both. In Christmas week, four aero- 
 planes came together; and a few men were 
 killed. Down fluttered leaflets requesting peo- 
 ple to stay indoors at certain hours. Guns in 
 Praga shelled the aeroplanes with shrapnel. A 
 month later there were four days of air raids. 
 A Taube was brought down by the Okecie fort. 
 A hotel roof was broken. In February aircraft 
 bombarded the forts. On the day I returned 
 from Galicia, an aeroplane sailed over the Stare 
 Miasto, and disappeared, leaving a trail of 
 broken roofs, and a booklet on Freedom. The 
 bombs hurt no one; the booklet on Freedom 
 struck a jeweller who was looking out of a win- 
 dow. The impact so startled him that he fell and 
 broke his neck. The Poles joked on the deadli- 
 ness of German fiction. In hospital there were 
 many air-bomb victims. In the Cafe Bristol, 
 amateurs of battle described their wounds. 
 
 In the middle of February, in Left- Vistula 
 Poland the snow melted. Snow held in ravines. 
 
290 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 On the right bank the snow was thin; in Ma- 
 suria, a hundred miles north, the fragments of 
 Sievers' Tenth Army struggled knee-deep, and 
 Germans in sledges pursued. The winter, se- 
 vere in the Carpathians, was mild here. The 
 Vistula tributaries which formed our defence 
 line were long frozen; this did not help the Ger- 
 mans, who had forced the Rawka when it was 
 open, and could not force all of the Bsura when 
 it was frozen. As rivers, the Bsura and Rawka 
 did not count much. They were narrow, but 
 the banks had natural strength, and they were 
 fortified well. 
 
 From the Vistula confluence to Sokatchew, 
 due west of Warsaw on the Kalisch Railway, the 
 Bsura banks are high and wooded. Near the 
 confluence, the Russians held the right bank. 
 Behind, with hamlets scattered, are marshes 
 impassable in thaw. South of Sokatchew there 
 is less wood. Here the Bsura ceased to be the 
 defence line. The Germans had got across; 
 they were fighting on the Sucha, one of three 
 small streams which run parallel. Borzymow, 
 a scene of fighting early in February, is here. 
 The Upper Sucha runs through forest. From 
 Bolimow south to Rawa, the Rawka was the 
 dividing line. Rawa on the right bank was held 
 by Germans. In places, the Russian lines over- 
 
ULTIMA RATIO 291 
 
 looked the German; in the slopes were terraces 
 of trenches, and earth-sacks in rows. This was 
 as on the Dunajec. Mining war went on. 
 Both sides had difficulty in gaining ground; 
 on the balance the enemy gained. The Ger- 
 mans had reserve field fortifications which 
 stretched to the marshes of Lowitsch. They 
 turned Kolo, on the Warthe, into a permanent 
 fort. 
 
 The German positions were well masked. 
 Sometimes it is useless to mask trenches from 
 airmen. The straight line reveals them. An 
 airman showed me photographs, taken at mod- 
 erate height, of what seemed to be unpeopled, 
 scrub-covered land. There was no sign of war. 
 The photographs were of a Bsura position, held 
 by intrenched men, which bristled with guns. 
 The trenches were roofed, the roofs were covered 
 with branches and pine-saplings, and, to break 
 the line, bushes were planted in irregular groups. 
 Further south, the Germans scraped a streak of 
 land, laid down some uniforms, and presented 
 it to airman as a trench. Where snow lay, land 
 ribbons were cleared, and the dark lines looked 
 like trenches. Sometimes the tricks deceived 
 our airmen; sometimes our tricks, which may 
 not be described, deceived theirs. Both sides 
 photographed without ceasing. A German air- 
 
292 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 man and his mechanic had to descend in the 
 marshes. They told with guffaws how the peas- 
 ants, fearing the paper bird's flight, sawed off 
 a wing. 
 
 The German offensive lost in vigour, and 
 gained in cleverness. After the attacks of Janu- 
 ary, men were spared, and cheap advantages 
 sought; the defence was to be worn out by ruses, 
 by changes of method, by night attacks seldom 
 carried through. Movements of troops were 
 screened with smoke curtains, usually made 
 with straw. Before the battle of Wlozlawsk, a 
 veil of smoke hung from the Vistula south for 
 thirty miles. The aim was to hide a concentra- 
 tion at Thorn. Behind the Rawka were the 
 same veils, sometimes hiding important things, 
 sometimes hiding nothing, being ruses to divert 
 attention from regroupings elsewhere. On the 
 morning of the 5th of January the Germans 
 sent up smoke. The screen stretched two versts 
 along the front; in the south, at right angles, a 
 second screen rose. After flying high, our air- 
 men returned with the report that the enemy 
 was moving infantry and artillery south along 
 the line. The plan was not to attack us on the 
 south, but to deceive us by a feint of troop move- 
 ments, and to attack us in the north. In the 
 night, without any screen, reinforcements had 
 
ULTIMA RATIO 293 
 
 been sent to the north, and now they lay hidden 
 in reserve trenches and woods. The Russians 
 saw through the plan, and the attack failed. 
 
 The engagement developed into street fighting 
 of a kind common during the struggle for War- 
 saw. The Germans, with machine guns, oc- 
 cupied a ruined village between the lines. The 
 Russians resolved to attack. They shelled the 
 ruins. The Germans kept quiet, and it was be- 
 lieved they had retired. When our men, at- 
 tacking, got to the outskirts, the enemy came 
 in fives and tens from behind walls. Rein- 
 forcements helped the Germans to gain all ex- 
 cept the end houses; the Russians cleared 
 out, shelled the battered houses, and made a 
 new attack. The cottages, one by one, were 
 fought for; some were taken and lost. The 
 Germans, hidden between walls, checked a gen- 
 eral Russian advance. The Russians found a 
 heap of sheet-iron. With three or four sheets 
 laid together, they made a shield and, sheltering 
 behind it, they advanced up the street. The 
 Germans made their last stand behind brick 
 stoves and chimneys. Every stove and chim- 
 ney was defended. In six hours the village was 
 cleared. 
 
 In the night attacks stratagems were used. 
 Wounded men who streamed into town next day 
 
294 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 told me stories. As a rule, night attacks were 
 signalled with rockets; next, up went star-shells, 
 shedding daylight; when the attack was under 
 way searchlights glared, so that our men might 
 shoot in blindness and be dazed in bayonet work. 
 In January the programme was tried on succes- 
 sive nights. The Russians got used to it, and 
 though the glare hampered, they fought with 
 success. At the end of a week, the signals were 
 repeated; the threatened trench was strength- 
 ened; and, convinced that the enemy was creep- 
 ing beneath the searchlight glare, the defenders' 
 men fired low. No Germans were seen. Sim- 
 ultaneously to the north, without signals, star- 
 shells, or searchlights, the enemy surprised a 
 trench. The same night, the ruse was tried 
 twenty miles south on the Rawka front; and 
 again by Woyrsch's Austrians on the Nida. The 
 Staffs had prescribed the same tactics for the 
 whole front. 
 
 Protective appliances were used. A shield 
 which I tested stopped Browning bullets at close 
 range. Against rifle-bullets fired perpendicu- 
 larly, the shields were useless. The creeping 
 soldiers may have held them aslant, with the 
 lower half of the oval ahead; held so, the shields 
 might deflect rifle-bullets. On the Sucha front, 
 east of the Rawka, were lever machines for de- 
 
ULTIMA RATIO 295 
 
 stroying entanglements and bridges for barbed 
 wire. Our entanglements are made with four 
 or six rows of stakes, closely wired. A length 
 of mesh-backed canvas, moved in a roll during 
 advance, was thrown over the rows of wire. 
 The Austrians used a steel-shod plank, ten yards 
 long by one yard high, mounted on wheels. 
 Infantrymen crept behind it. Hand grenades 
 were the only weapon against this. Bullets do 
 not penetrate, and artillery cannot be used, for 
 fear of hitting friends. 
 
 When creeping towards entanglements the 
 Germans pushed sacks of clay, or they rolled 
 barrels. An officer from the Sucha told me of 
 this. The enemies held trenches at the tops of 
 easy slopes. Our men sapped across the valley 
 to within fifty yards of the German trench. The 
 Germans, using grenades, stopped the advance. 
 In the twilight the Russians saw a dozen barrels 
 rolling towards them. Behind, it was believed, 
 were Germans. Bombs were thrown, some bar- 
 rels were shattered or knocked askew, others 
 rolled steadily on after the men behind must have 
 been killed. When all bombs were thrown, a 
 second regiment of barrels advanced against a 
 neighbouring trench section; the entanglements 
 were cut and the trench was lost. The un- 
 broken barrels on the first section began to re- 
 
296 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 treat up the slope. Surprise was great. The 
 enemy had tied strings to spikes in the barrel 
 heads, and sent the barrels down by their own 
 weight. 
 
 The trenches in places were as close as they 
 are in Flanders. Hand bombs were more use- 
 ful than rifles. The soldiers bombed the ene- 
 my's trench, cleared him out, and rushed the 
 trench with small loss. Rifle fire was confined 
 to sharpshooting. At first, the Germans had 
 ruses to get our men to expose themselves. 
 Shell fragments were tied in handkerchiefs, 
 and thrown in front of our trench. When heads 
 rose, bullets flew. Rifles in loopholes covered 
 every yard of our line. The Russians held up 
 Turks' heads, usually canisters wearing German 
 helmets. Friendly notes were exchanged. The 
 Germans said that in the first week of February 
 the Kaiser was on the Rawka and Bsura. It 
 was the fiftieth story of the Emperor's visit; 
 this time the story was true. Some days later, 
 in the crisis of the Winter Battle, he reviewed 
 troops in Lyck. Germans found a St. George's 
 Cross in trenches which our men had surprised. 
 They threw it, stuck in a potato, across the 
 intervening yards. The Russians returned a 
 New Testament. From the enemy came re- 
 quests to surrender. — "The more the better." 
 
ULTIMA RATIO 297 
 
 The Russians wrote, "Only two can come"; 
 they threw this across, and after it they threw 
 two bombs. After this wit, peace prevailed; 
 there were meetings for mutual improvement 
 and protection. 
 
 In the German trenches order was pushed to 
 extremes; the Russians looked on the enemy 
 as pedantic, and once had reasons for the belief. 
 In a Bsura village, our men took fifty prisoners. 
 The prisoners were locked in houses, their rifles 
 were stored elsewhere. A German counter- 
 attack reversed things. The Germans captured 
 half a company. Both sides were reinforced; 
 there was a street fight; houses blazed; the 
 prisoners taken by the Russians escaped, but 
 the rifles were kept; the prisoners taken by the 
 Germans were released, as their prison caught 
 fire. Both sides abandoned the ruins. The 
 Russians got back with German rifles, and the 
 Germans with Russian. The Germans sent a 
 non-commissioned officer to ask for an ex- 
 change of arms. The Russians were puzzled; 
 there were enough spare rifles taken from the 
 killed. The German said he had been sent by 
 the battalion armourer, whose books were put 
 out of order by an exchange without precedent. 
 The armourer knew what to do when rifles re- 
 turned without owners, when owners returned 
 
298 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 without rifles, even when men came back with 
 their own rifles and with the enemy's. But he 
 had no precedent for a company of Germans 
 returning armed as Russians; "his book-keep- 
 ing was upset and his moral equilibrium dis- 
 turbed." As there was no need to add the up- 
 setting of moral equilibrium to the necessary 
 pains of war, the Russians exchanged. I heard 
 other parlementaire stories. An officer, the 
 survivor of an outpost, found himself at dawn 
 near the enemy's lines. Knowing that flight 
 would draw bullets, he waved a handkerchief, 
 announced that he had been sent by his com- 
 mander, and asked for a truce for burying the 
 dead. As the dead had been removed, the 
 Germans were surprised. A telephone message 
 to higher authority brought the reply that a 
 truce was not needed, and the parlementaire 
 was sent back. 
 
 The stagnation on the Bsura, and the very 
 slow advance over the Rawka to the Sucha 
 may have been due to trouble in artillery trans- 
 port. On the Bsura and Rawka the German 
 heavy artillery did not show to such advantage 
 as in the East Prussia and Galicia battles, 
 fought at the edge of a good railway net. On 
 the Bsura the losses from shells were not great. 
 In part this was because the bombardment 
 
ULTIMA RATIO 299 
 
 was seldom intense, in part because the Rus- 
 sians developed to extremes their effective bur- 
 rowing system. They went farther and far- 
 ther underground. A disabled officer made a 
 wax model of the Rawka lines, showing the 
 high banks, *the trenches, the earth sacks with 
 sapped approaches; and, round and in these, 
 the pits of exploded shells. Few shells fell in 
 the trenches. The shells which fell near over- 
 whelmed, knocked down, and blinded men 
 with earth, but they killed few. The larger 
 shells killed at a distance, by concussion, gas 
 pressure, or scorching. Shells which struck 
 the sticky Rawka clay made neat holes, sent 
 the clay high, and destroyed within a narrow 
 sphere. 
 
 The roads from Warsaw to the Bsura and 
 Rawka showed that the theatre of main oper- 
 ations was elsewhere. The Winter Battle of 
 Masuria was being fought. Transport of food 
 still went west, but the Red Cross traffic de- 
 clined, and ammunition columns rumbled back 
 to Warsaw to reinforce the East Prussian front. 
 There were few prisoners. I saw Germans at 
 Blone, healthy men, belonging to replacement 
 troops; they had been in Poland a week. Their 
 uniforms and equipment were good; they had 
 new eating utensils and tent sections, and 
 
300 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 diaries which they kept posted by order. The 
 Staff read the diaries. At Rawka a German was 
 captured with suspicious ease. His diary read: 
 
 "We cheered the Corps as it started from 
 
 Thorn"; and gave other useful facts. The 
 Staff officers read with suspicion; the entries 
 were untrue — the surrender, they believed, 
 was a ruse. One of the prisoners was wounded, 
 a young man, good-looking, with an empty 
 schoolboy face. He had been bandaged by 
 Russians; his trousers were cut away. He pro- 
 duced a bandage packet with a red compress, 
 and showed it with pride. My companion, 
 a Red Cross official, bound the wound in the 
 open air; the sufferer was given a stick: with 
 a mild "Danke gehorsamst!" the prisoners 
 went. 
 
 Blone is a townlet on the Kalisch railway 
 half way to the Bsura. It was a German Staff 
 headquarters during the October invasion. Here 
 were reserve positions of great strength. The 
 Red Cross official who took me to Blone wanted 
 to go to Wisitki, which is nearer the Sucha; we 
 got part of the way, broke down, and waited. 
 A German cylindrical field baking oven, with a 
 high funnel — it looked like a primitive loco- 
 motive — rusted near the road, and near it 
 were graves with crosses, some plain, some 
 
ULTIMA RATIO 301 
 
 shaped like the Iron Cross. There were soldiers 
 everywhere; they cooked or washed; one un- 
 der trees ate buckwheat porridge, and pulled 
 ropes through holes burnt in a plank. "What 
 is that?" "I cannot know; I was bidden do 
 it" — an epitome of moujik passivity. This 
 answer, though he must have heard it fifty 
 times, enraged my companion. He told me 
 stories to prove that the peasants are sottish 
 and malicious; and then he laughed, and said: 
 'What am I saying? They are no worse than 
 I am. Everyone abuses the peasants, and heaps 
 sins on their backs. If the ropes are not properly 
 pulled through the holes, someone will say that 
 the soldier is a blockhead, but probably the 
 soldier wasn't told what to do. When a chimney 
 falls, the builder says, 'What can you do with 
 such workmen? When the lawyer loses a 
 peasant's case, he says the peasant muddled 
 the evidence; when the peasant dies because 
 someone neglected him, the doctor says, 'What 
 can you do with this people?'" "And when 
 you lose battles ?" "In the army, I have never 
 heard an officer say, 'What can you do with 
 such soldiers?' I don't think anyone says it. 
 The moujiks in my province, Kursk, are 
 wretched and forsaken; the moujiks in Khar- 
 koff are worse. The only place where the 
 
302 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 moujik has God's image is Siberia. The Sibe- 
 rians are robbers and tyrants." "Is that God's 
 image?" "I mean they are men. The Siberian 
 wants things; the will is strong; if he could 
 persist at anything for fifteen minutes, things 
 would go well with him. The moujik of Europe 
 doesn't even want. He's a hen." 
 
 We turned away from Wisitki, crossed the 
 railway, re-entered Blone, and then drove to- 
 wards Sokatchew. I heard of the wonders of 
 this battered town, and saw none of them. 
 There was a chimney shot three-quarters through 
 which stood, and there were other things. We 
 did not go in. From Adamowa, beyond the 
 river, German 21 cm. mortars were dropping 
 shells. Not to do damage, for the sky-line 
 showed there was little to damage except 
 chimneys and toppling walls. From a point 
 south, our men were shelling Adamowa and 
 Altanka, an invisible hamlet on the river brink. 
 Adamowa, I heard, was visited by the Kaiser 
 when he came to Poland; if so, he took risks. 
 I saw two shells falling in Sokatchew' s ruins, 
 or in front of them; in the west were dull flames 
 and smoke. Two wounded men came out of 
 the ruins. They said that the doctor who 
 dressed their wounds was struck by a shell 
 splinter. One limped, the other had lost his 
 
ULTIMA RATIO 303 
 
 thumb. We put the limping man next the 
 chauffeur; as his thumbless comrade looked 
 pained, we took him too. He was a squat man, 
 with an ill-tempered, humorous face. "What 
 will you do when you get to your village?" I 
 asked, expecting the mournful, "What good 
 am I as a workman?" He laughed, and said, 
 "I shall work; I am a clever man." The limp- 
 ing man was a shepherd of Kieff, a young man, 
 thin and handsome, with a daring expression. 
 He was not abashed by my companion, or by 
 "the French traveller" — so he called me; he 
 talked boldly and openly, looking over his 
 shoulder; when I said something he did not 
 agree with, he interrupted me. "Your High- 
 Well-Born-Ness is wrong. We learned that at 
 school." 
 
 At Blone, I met many officers, and M. Arse- 
 nieff, who had collected soldier art and letters. 
 About soldiers he told me many things, most of 
 them here retold. The news of the battle of 
 Masuria, he said, had got out piecemeal at 
 Petrograd, but it had not shaken faith. The 
 officers talked of the paths of shells; I told 
 them of the Pilsener's deeds at Tarnow, and 
 they said that a Thick Bertha or a Pilsener at 
 Adamowa could batter Blone. M. Arsenieff 
 offered them wine. Three said nothing; they 
 
304 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 looked at one another questioningly as if they 
 meant, "I'll drink if you will"; the fourth said 
 he would drink nothing till the end of the war. 
 When twilight fell we tramped west, watched 
 the waggons struggling, and looked towards 
 Sokatchew. There was the old glow of burning 
 homes, one stage more towards Finis Polonice; 
 in the south the glow was pierced by shattered 
 roofs. The waggons disappeared; they were 
 replaced by Red Cross cars, moving slowly. 
 We went back to Blone, took the car, and 
 drove towards Sokatchew. The glow of the 
 conflagration got bigger. Overhead was an 
 arch of black, without starlight. At midnight 
 it dawned. Russians or Germans sent up star- 
 shells; the air turned blue. A man, who was 
 bending over a dead horse, rose and ran. After 
 that for an hour we looked at fireworks, and 
 heard a few shots. Two star-shells went up at 
 once; they shed the brightest daylight; this, 
 with the afterglow from the burning villages, 
 made the likeness to a white night on the Arctic 
 Circle complete. 
 
 Towards the end of the pursuit in Masuria, I 
 travelled to Petrograd. Warsaw's levity was 
 chastened, not suppressed. Citizens knew of 
 the unlucky battle; they heard that the Ger- 
 mans were marching on Grodno, and they 
 
ULTIMA RATIO 305 
 
 imagined the rest. Hindenburg would cut the 
 line, and invest Grodno; he would rush the 
 Bsura; the Civil Government had left; and the 
 Vistula bridges. . . . There were transports of 
 troops to meet the danger. The railway was 
 blocked. Trains to Petrograd took two or 
 three days; on one day no train ran. Travellers 
 for Petrograd, fearing they might be cut off, 
 went by Moscow. They saved a day. Hoping 
 to see the offshoots of the battle, I went direct. 
 The sixty miles between Warsaw and the Bug 
 were done in twelve hours. There were troop 
 trains, and endless chains of trucks, with field 
 guns, limbers, and some things bulky packed 
 in straw. The trains crawled no faster than 
 ours; there was no confusion, but, in the slow- 
 ness and congestion, Russia's troubles in war- 
 ring were made plain. 
 
 The train was nearly empty. There were 
 officers, a few civilians, and four nurses. In 
 black dress, and black headdress, was Miss 
 Yevreinoff, the playwright's sister; she band- 
 aged three hundred men a day on the Nida; 
 she could stand it no more, and home she went 
 to study International Law under M. Pilenko. 
 I met her brother years ago. From Bielostock 
 we heard the guns bombarding Ossoviec. At 
 Grodno an agitated officer, and a weak, puffy 
 
306 COLOURS OF WAR 
 
 officer in a sheepskin coat, got in. The agitated 
 officer said that German cavalry was outside 
 the forts. They might cut the line. He had 
 come from the battle, told of the defeat, and 
 laughed at the Germans for wasting their shells; 
 they spent at least two shrapnel shells for every 
 man hurt; but as they fired, may be, a hun- 
 dred thousand shells, there were losses. I 
 remembered that the Germans had no shells. 
 He repeated that they might cut the line; 
 pointed to his puffy comrade, and said, "If 
 they catch our friend, they'll flay him alive." 
 "Sderut s nyevo Icozhu!" I looked at the man 
 who was to lose his skin; and saw from the 
 hilt of his sword — it had no guard — that he 
 was a Cossack. At the words "flay him alive," 
 the passengers started. The nurses had been 
 talking of Germans and of International Law — 
 which blend pictorially; and the new, bright 
 war colour made them laugh. 
 
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