THE RUSSIAN SITUATION 



6iO 



every day filled the streets of the capital 

 with refugees fleeing from the east. 



RUSSIA AIDS AT THE MARNE AND CALAIS 



Ten days before the battle of the 

 Marne the Germans transferred six army 

 corps from the west to the east and Paris 

 was saved. The Germans, utilizing to 

 capacity their wonderful system of rail- 

 roads, were able to make a concentration 

 of troops in the east which almost an- 

 nihilated the Russian army in East Prus- 

 sia. The Russians accepted this disaster 

 with extraordinary complacency on the 

 ground that it was their contribution to 

 the war, and that if they had saved Paris 

 their losses were quite justified. 



Later in the fall, when the Germans 

 were making their terrific drive on Calais, 

 in their effort to strike more directly on 

 England, the Grand Duke again launched 

 a new and unexpected campaign on Ger- 

 many, this time advancing from his base 

 in Warsaw and striking at the enemy 

 from the Polish frontier. Again the Ger- 

 mans were obliged to divert huge bodies 

 of troops to meet this menace of the Rus- 

 sian invasion. By December i the Rus- 

 sians had been driven back to the Bzura 

 line outside of Warsaw. It is true that 

 they had suffered reverses, but it had 

 taken sixteen German army corps to drive 

 them back, and Calais was saved ! 



In 191 5, when the one cherished stra- 

 tegic aim of the Germans was to crush 

 either England or France, 'their program 

 was again upset, this time by the activity 

 of the Russian armies in Galicia and the 

 Bukovina. By the latter part of March 

 the Russians had made such progress in 

 the southwest as vitally to threaten the 

 Hungarian plains, resulting in political 

 chaos in Austria and Hungary. This be- 

 came such a menace to the whole situa- 

 tion that the Germans were obliged to 

 abandon whatever plans they had in the 

 west and give their immediate attention 

 to backing up the dual monarchy, lest it 

 be seduced from its alliance. 



DRAWS HORDES OE GERMANS EROM THE 

 WEST 



Beginning in May, the Germans began 

 pouring their troops into Galicia, and for 

 six months there was an unending flow 



of German divisions and of army corps 

 directed against the Russian front with 

 an extraordinary supply of munitions, 

 while even in men the Russians were out- 

 numbered at strategic points by two or 

 three to one. 



The Germans were able to drive 

 through Galicia and bring about the fall 

 of Warsaw in August, 191 5. Contrary 

 to their expectations, they were unable to 

 bring about an independent peace, and 

 instead of seeing the collapse of their 

 enemy they beheld the legions of the 

 Tsar slip from out their grasp and retire 

 into the vast spaces of the Empire. From 

 August until October the great retreat 

 continued, until exhaustion and falling 

 morale of the invader made it necessary 

 for the Germans to dig in for the winter. 



The Germans claimed that this was the 

 appointed place that they had elected to 

 reach for the winter, but I would state, 

 unequivocally and without fear of con- 

 tradiction, that the German advance 

 stopped there, not because it wished to, 

 but because it literally was unable to con- 

 tinue the invasion any farther. Any ob- 

 server who has seen their lines as I have 

 in many places would concur in the belief 

 that no army would elect to spend the 

 winter on a line which ran through forest, 

 swamp, and plain, achieving, for the most 

 part, no strategic asset. 



RUSSIA GIVES ENGEAND AND FRANCE 

 OPPORTUNITY TO PREPARE 



The world at large looked upon 191 5 

 as a year of Russian defeat, failing to 

 realize that it took between thirty-five 

 and forty corps of German troops, op- 

 erating in the. east, to bring about the 

 Russian disaster. The withdrawal of 

 these corps from the west gave England 

 and France an opportunity to prepare 

 after the war what lack of vision had not 

 done before. When the Germans, in the 

 spring of 1916, sick of their empty ad- 

 vances in the wastes of Russia, attacked 

 the French at Verdun they found them 

 prepared, and their efforts, as the world 

 now knows, to break the French line 

 proved abortive. 



By June of 1916, when the Germans 

 were assembling troops for some other 

 strategic aim, Brusilloff launched his of- 



