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  DAY BY DAY WITH
  THE RUSSIAN ARMY
  1914-15


  [Illustration: THE AUTHOR.]




  DAY BY DAY WITH
  THE RUSSIAN ARMY

  1914-15

  BY
  BERNARD PARES

  _Official British Observer with the Russian Armies in the Field_

  _WITH MAPS_

  LONDON
  CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.
  1915




  TO
  NICHOLAS AND MARY HOMYAKOV




  Tidings from the Tsar of Germans,
    Tidings to the Russian Tsar.

  "I will come and break your Russia,
    And in Russia I will live."

  Moody was the Russian Tsar,
    As he paced the Moscow street.

  "Be not moody, Russian Tsar,
    Russia we will never yield.

  "Gather, gather, Russian hosts;
    William shall our captive be.

  "Cross the far Carpathian mountains;
    March through all the German towns."

          _Marching Song of the Third Army._




PREFACE


For the last ten years or more I have paid long visits to Russia, being
interested in anything that might conduce to closer relations between
the two countries. During this time the whole course of Russia's public
life has brought her far nearer to England--in particular, the creation
of new legislative institutions, the wonderful economic development of
the country, and the first real acquaintance which England has made
with Russian culture. I always travelled to Russia through Germany,
whose people had an inborn unintelligence and contempt for all things
Russian, and whose Government has done what it could to hold England
and Russia at arm's length from each other. I often used to wonder
which of us Germany would fight first.

When Germany declared war on Russia, I volunteered for service, and was
arranging to start for Russia when we, too, were involved in the war. I
arrived there some two weeks afterwards, and after a stay in Petrograd
and Moscow was asked to take up the duty of official correspondent with
the Russian army. It was some time before I was able to go to the army,
and at first only in company of some twelve others with officers of
the General Staff who were not yet permitted to take us to the actual
front. We, however, visited Galicia and Warsaw, and saw a good deal of
the army. After these journeys I was allowed to join the Red Cross
organisation with the Third Army as an attaché of an old friend, Mr.
Michael Stakhovich, who was at the head of this organisation; and there
General Radko Dmitriev, whom I had known earlier, kindly gave me a
written permit to visit any part of the firing line; my Red Cross work
was in transport and the forward hospitals. My instructions did not
include telegraphing, and my diary notes, though dispatched by special
messengers, necessarily took a month or more to reach England; but I
had the great satisfaction of sharing in the life of the army, where
I was entertained with the kindest hospitality and invited to see and
take part in anything that was doing.

The Third Army was at the main curve in the Russian front, the point
where the German and Austrian forces joined hands. It was engaged in
the conquest of Galicia, and on its fortunes, more perhaps than on
those of any other army on either front, might depend the issue of
the whole campaign. We were the advance guard of the liberation of
the Slavs, and to us was falling the rôle of separating Austria from
Germany, or, what is the same thing in more precise terms, separating
Hungary from Prussia. I had the good fortune to have many old friends
in this area. My work in hospitals and the permission to interrogate
prisoners at the front gave me the best view that one could have of
the process of political and military disintegration which was and is
at work in the Austrian empire. I took part in the advanced transport
work of the Red Cross, visited in detail the left and right flanks of
the army, and went to the centre just at the moment when the enemy
fell with overwhelming force of artillery on this part. I retreated
with the army to the San and to the province of Lublin. My visits to
the actual front had in each case a given object--usually to form a
judgment on some question on which depended the immediate course of the
campaign.

I am now authorised to publish my more public communications, including
my diary notes with the Third Army. I am also obliged to the _Liverpool
Daily Post and Mercury_ for leave to reprint my note of September 1914
on Moscow. I think it will be seen that if we lost Galicia we lost it
well, and that the moral superiority remained and remains on our side
throughout. We were driven out by sheer weight of metal, but our troops
turned at every point to show that the old relations of man to man
were unchanged. The diary of an Austrian officer who was several times
opposite to me will, I think, make this clear. When Russia has half
the enemy's material equipment we know, and he does, that we shall be
travelling in the opposite direction.

It was a delight to be with these splendid men. I never saw anything
base all the while that I was with the army. There was no drunkenness;
every one was at his best, and it was the simplest and noblest
atmosphere in which I have ever lived.

                                                        BERNARD PARES.




DAY BY DAY WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY


_July-August 1914._

While the war cloud was breaking, I was close to my birthplace at
Dorking with my father, whom I was not to see again. Though eighty-one
years old he was in his full vigour of heart, mind and body, and we
were motoring every day among the beautiful Surrey hills. He had had a
great life of work for others, born just after the first Reform Bill
which his own father had helped to carry through the House of Commons,
and stamped with the robust faith and vigour of the great generation
of the Old Liberals. Like every other interest of his children, he had
always followed with the fullest participation my own work in Russia,
and I had everything packed for my yearly visit there. In London I had
had short visits from Mr. Protopopov, a liberal Russian publicist,
and later from the eminent leader of Polish public life, Mr. Dmowski,
than whom I know no better political head in Europe. Both had expected
war for years past, but neither had any idea how close it was. Mr.
Protopopov was absorbed in a study of English town planning and Mr.
Dmowski was correcting the proofs of his last article for my _Russian
Review_, which he ended with the words, "The time is not yet." He
came down and motored with us through what he called "the paradise of
trees"--and Poland itself has some of the finest trees in Europe; and
my father was keenly interested in his hopes for the future of Poland.
He was going to the English seaside when events called him back to an
adventurous journey across Europe, in the course of which he was twice
arrested in Germany, the second time in company of his old political
opponent, the reactionary Russian Minister of Education, the late Mr.
Kasso. To them a German Polish sentry said that as a Pole he wished for
the victory of Russia, for "though the Russian made himself unpleasant,
the _Schwab_ (Swabian or German) was far more dangerous."

When I read Austria's demands on Serbia, I felt that it must mean a
European war, and that we should have to take part in it. I remember
the ordinary traveller in a London hotel explaining to me how
infinitely more important the Ulster question was than the Serbian.
It was clear that the really mischievous factor was the simultaneous
official and public support of Germany, who claimed to draw an
imaginary line around the Austro-Serbian conflict and threatened war to
any one who interfered in the war. I had long realised the humbug of
pretending that Austria was anything distinct from or independent of
Germany; and the claim of the two to settle in their own favour one of
the most thorny questions in Europe could never be tolerated by Russia.
The Bosnian withdrawal of 1909 would, I knew, never be repeated, least
of all by the Russian Emperor. The line had been crossed; it was
"mailed fist" once too often.

Serbia's reply showed the extreme calm and circumspection both of
Serbia and of Russia. Then came in quick succession the great days,
when every one's political horizon was daily forced wider, when
all the home squabbles of the different countries--the Caillaux
case, the Russian labour troubles, and the Irish conflict, on which
Germany had counted so much--were hurrying back as fast as possible
into their proper background. There was a significant catch when
the Austro-Russian conversations were renewed, and Germany, who had
now come out in her true leadership, went forward to the forcing of
war. The absurd inconsequences of German diplomacy reached their
extraordinary culmination in the actual declaration to Russia. To make
sure of war, the German ambassador in St. Petersburg received for
delivery a formal declaration with alternative wordings suitable to any
answer which Russia might give to the German ultimatum; and this genial
diplomatist delivered the draft with _both_ alternative wordings to the
Russian Foreign Minister, Mr. Sazonov. It is the last communication
printed in the Russian Orange Book.

The question was, how soon we should all see it. The news of the
German declaration was in the English Sunday papers. Many English
clergymen see virtue in not reading Sunday papers. I went to church.
The clergyman began his sermon: "They tell me that the Sunday papers
assert that Germany has declared war on Russia." Not a very promising
beginning, but England was there the next minute. "If this is true,"
he went on, "and if we come into it, as we shall have to, we stand at
the end of the long period when we have been spoiling ourselves with
riches and comfort and forgetting what it is to make sacrifices"; and
there followed an impromptu but very clear forecast of what was to be
asked of us.

No one will forget the great days of probation, when each great country
in turn was called on to stand and give whatever it had of the best.
Russia was what one had felt sure that she would be. The Emperor's
pledge not to make peace while a German soldier was in Russia, was an
exact repetition of the words of Alexander I, but given this time at
the very beginning of the war. The wonderful scene before the Winter
Palace showed sovereign and people at one; and the wrecking of the
German Embassy was an answer of the Russian workmen to an active
propaganda of discontent that had issued from its walls. Next came
France's turn, her remarkable coolness and discretion, and the outburst
of patriotic devotion which the President of the Chamber voiced in the
words, "Lift up your hearts" (_Haut les coeurs_). Then the turn of
the Belgians, king and people, and their splendid and simple devotion.
And now it was for us to speak.

I believed that we were sure to come into the war, but it was three
days of waiting and the invasion of Belgium that gave us a united
England. The Germans did our job for us. It was a quick conversion
for those who hesitated; one day, neutrality to be saved; the next,
neutrality past saving; the next, war, and war to the end. When we were
waiting before the post office for Sir Edward Grey's speech, every one
was asking, "Have they done the right thing?" This was the atmosphere
of the London streets on the night that we declared war. We all lived
on a few very simple thoughts. It was clear that there must be endless
losses and many cruel inventions, but just as clear not only that we
had to win but that, if we were not failing to ourselves, we were sure
to.

I was in London before our declaration to ask what I could do, and was
now making my last preparations for starting. The squalor of the great
city had taken the aspect of a dingy ironclad at work. At the Bank of
England, where payment could still be claimed in gold, I was asked the
object of my journey. No one seemed to know about routes except Cook &
Son. In the country the mobilisation passed us silent and unnoticed,
except for the aeroplanes which we saw streaming southwards. I saw my
father in his garden for the last time, went to London, and there, in
a confusion of little things and big, with a taxi piled in haste with
parcels of the most various nature and ownership, hurried to King's
Cross, bundled into a full third-class carriage and started for Russia.


_August 21._

At King's Cross I was already almost in Russia. The sixty or so
Russians who had come to the Dental Congress in London, after one
sitting had been caught by the war. Their English hosts looked after
them splendidly, and they themselves pooled the supplies of money
which they happened to have on them. There were also several members
of the Russian ballet, and other Russians on their way from Italy,
Switzerland and France, going via Norway and Sweden to St. Petersburg.
Our route of itself was a striking illustration of the great military
advantage possessed by Germany and Austria. With its interior lines of
communication, the great German punching machine could measure its
forces to any blow which it wished to deal on either side, while for
any contact with each other the Allies had to crawl right round the
circumference. For this military advantage, however, the aggressors
had sacrificed in the most evident way all political considerations.
In a quarrel which Austria had picked with Serbia, Germany forced war
on Russia for daring to mobilise. Germany made an ultimatum to France
at the same time, so as to make war with both countries simultaneously
and give herself time to crush France before Russia could help her. For
greater speed against France, she invaded neutral Belgium, thus making
England an enemy and Italy a neutral. The absurdity became apparent
when, with all this done, we were still waiting for the completion of
the Russian mobilisation which was the nominal cause of the European
War. Hence the union of so many peoples; but for all that the military
advantage remained. It was as if Europe had the stomach ache, with
shooting pains in all directions.

  [Illustration: Centre versus CIRCUMFERENCE.
  (_to illustrate the journeys of members of our party._)]

I asked a friend in the train what might be the state of mind of the
Emperor William. He replied by quoting the answer of an Irishman: "He's
probably thinking, Is there any one that I've left out?"

At Newcastle, the Norwegian steamer had booked at least forty more
passengers than it could berth. I only got on to the boat by a special
claim and had to sleep in a passage with my things scattered round me.
All the corridors were taken up in this way. The Russians are admirable
fellow-passengers: they had organised themselves informally under a
natural leader into a great family. One corridor was set apart for a
night nursery. The women received special consideration, and any one
who had a berth was ready to give it up to them. One Russian, thinking
I was ill, offered me his. I was ensconced with my back to the wall
at the head of a staircase, and they would stop to chat as they went
up or down. They had been greatly impressed by the spirit in England:
the Englishman they regarded as a civil fellow who had better not be
provoked, for if he was he would get to business at once and not look
back till it was finished. They spoke very simply of themselves and
of their little failings, and said that for this reason it was the
greatest comfort to have England with them. What had impressed them
most was the calm and vigour with which we had faced our financial
crisis. They had seen some of our territorial troops, whom they classed
very high for physique and spirit. They had much to tell one of France
and Italy, and also of insults offered to them or their friends when
leaving Germany. There were outbursts of sheer hooliganism marked with
a sort of brutal contempt for Russians, and one lady, they said, had
the earrings torn out of her ears. Their humanity was shocked by all
this. They had nothing but condemnation for anything of the kind, from
whatever side it came, and they were quite ready to criticise their own
people or ours wherever there was any ground for doing so.

The captain said to me, "We sail under the protection of England." We
were stopped once by an English warship, but only for a few minutes. At
Bergen I found new fellow-passengers, and after an evening which was
a succession of fiords, lakes, rocky heights and white villages, we
passed by a wonderfully engineered railway over the snow level and down
to Kristiania. The Norwegians were friendly and sympathetic, the Swedes
courteous but reserved. There had recently been unveiled a frontier
monument showing two brothers shaking hands; and one felt that the one
country would not move without the other.

Between Kristiania and Stockholm I wrote an article on the Poles, and
directly afterwards, puzzling out a Swedish newspaper, I read the
manifesto of the Grand Duke Nicholas. We had with us Poles who were
travelling right round to Warsaw. From Stockholm the more apprehensive
members of our party went