Part 12 (1/2)
The general military situation was not at this time wholly rea.s.suring.
It was known that a great German attack upon Verdun was imminent. We had our own special anxieties in Asia owing to the unfortunate turn taken by affairs in Mesopotamia. News had come of the failure of the attempt to relieve Kut by an advance on the right bank of the Tigris, and this, following upon a similar failure some weeks earlier on the left bank, rendered the conditions decidedly ominous. A study of the large-scale maps and of the available reports at the War Office, had served to indicate that the prospects of saving the beleaguered garrison were none too hopeful, even allowing for the fact that General Maude's division, fresh from Egypt and the Dardanelles, was bringing welcome reinforcements to Sir P. Lake. Whatever plan should be adopted for the final effort, this must inevitably partake of the character of attacking formidable entrenchments with but limited artillery support, and of having to carry out a difficult operation of war against time. The Grand Duke Nicholas had expressed a readiness to help from the side of Persia, but little consideration was needed to establish the fact that effective aid from that quarter was virtually out of the question. Situated as the Russian forces were in the Shah's territories, they would be in the position of having either to advance in considerable strength and to be starved, or to move forward as a weak column and to meet with disaster at the hands of the Turks on the plains of Irak.
One read at Stockholm on the way through of the early successes gained by the Germans at Verdun, the news sounding by no means encouraging; so that it was a great relief on arriving in Petrograd to find that the heroic French resistance before the fortress had brought the enemy's vigorous thrust practically to a standstill. We met Sir A.
Paget at Tornea on his way back from handing, to the Emperor his baton of British Field-Marshal. There we also found Colonel Baron Meyendorff awaiting us, who had been deputed to accompany me during my travels.
The Emperor was absent from the Stavka when we arrived at the capital, with the consequence that we were detained there for several days. As we were to make a somewhat prolonged stay in the country this time we fitted ourselves out with the Russian cap and flat silver-lace shoulder-straps; the Grand Duke Nicholas had indeed insisted, when he was Commander-in-Chief, upon foreign officers when at the front wearing these distinctive articles of Russian uniform as a protection.
Cossacks are fine fellows, but they were apt to be hasty; their plan, when they came across somebody whose ident.i.ty they felt doubtful about, was to shoot first and to make inquiries afterwards.
Meyendorff, who was married to an English lady and who spoke our language fairly well, looked after us a.s.siduously and provided us with occupation and amus.e.m.e.nt during the stay at the capital. One day he took us to see trotting matches, a very popular form of sport in Petrograd although it struck me as rather dull. We dined at different clubs, went to the Ballet one night, and another night were taken to the Opera where we occupied the Imperial box in the middle of the house. In those days Russian society thoroughly understood the art of welcoming a guest of the country, for the different national anthems of the Allied Powers were played through before the Second Act, everybody standing up, and when it came to the turn of ”G.o.d save the King,” the entire audience wheeled round to face the Imperial box, our national anthem was played twice over, and I received a regular ovation although all that those present can have known, or cared, was that here was a British general turned up on some official business.
One result of wearing what amounted to a very good imitation of Russian uniform was that officers and rank and file all saluted, instead of staring at one in some surprise; it was the rule for non-commissioned officers and private soldiers when they met a general to pull up and front before saluting; this looked smart, but it was rather a business when one promenaded along the Nevski Prospekt which always swarmed with the military. It was, moreover, the custom in restaurants, railway dining-cars, etc., for officers who were present when a general came in, not only to rise to their feet (if anywhere near where the great man settled down), but also to crave permission to proceed with their meal. This was a little embarra.s.sing until one realized that a gracious wave of the hand to indicate that they might carry on was all that was called for.
The late Sir Mark Sykes had worked under me in Whitehall since an early date in the war; his knowledge of the Near East was so valuable that I had been obliged to detain him and to prevent his going to France in command of his Territorial battalion, much to his disappointment. Latterly, however, he had been acting for the Foreign Office, although under the aegis of the War Office as this plan was found convenient. He was now in Petrograd in connection with certain negotiations dealing with the future of Turkey in Asia, and as it was desirable that he should visit the Stavka and also Transcaucasia, he attached himself to me for the time being.
One forenoon before leaving for Mohileff I proceeded, accompanied by our Naval Attache, Meyendorff and Wigram, to the Admiralty to present the G.C.M.G. to the Minister of Marine and the K.C.M.G. to the Chief of the Naval Staff. It seemed desirable to make as much of a ceremony of the business as possible--British decorations were, indeed, very highly prized in Russia; warning had therefore been sent that we were coming, and why. On arriving we were met at the gates by several naval officers, and were conducted to outside the door of the Minister's room where the presentation was to take place. One then a.s.sumed the simper of the diplomatist, Wigram (who always managed to turn pink on dramatic occasions, which had a particularly good effect) bore the cases containing the insignia, the door was flung open, and we marched solemnly in. I addressed the recipients in my best French, saying that His Majesty had entrusted me with the pleasant duty, and so on, finis.h.i.+ng up with my personal congratulations and by handing over the cases. The recipients replied in suitable terms, expressing their gratification and their thanks; we had a few minutes'
conversation, and were introduced to the other officers present--there were quite a lot--and we then cleared out, escorted to our gorgeous Imperial carriages by some of the junior officers. The Naval Attache spoilt the whole thing by remarking afterwards, ”You know, general, those Johnnies know English just as well as you do.” It was most inconsiderate of him, and he may not have been right; Russian naval officers down Black Sea way did not seem to know English or even French.
On this second occasion we only spent twenty-four hours at Mohileff; the interview with General Alexeieff was successfully brought off on the first afternoon, MacCaw accompanying me as he understood Russian thoroughly, although a General Staff Officer interpreted. I told Alexeieff that our chances of relieving Kut appeared to be slender, and that he ought to be prepared for its fall although there was still hope. He thereupon raised the question of our sending a force to near Alexandretta, so as to aid the contemplated Russian campaign in Armenia. Such a project was totally opposed to the views of Sir W.
Robertson and our General Staff, and it had at the moment--late in March--nothing to recommend it at all, apart from the point of view of the Armenian operations. Although Lord Kitchener and Sir J. Maxwell had been a little nervous about Egypt during the winter, the General Staff at the War Office had felt perfectly happy on the subject in view of the garrison a.s.sembled there after the evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Now that spring was at hand, any prospect of serious Turkish attempts across the Sinai Desert was practically at an end as the dry months were approaching. Troops sent to the Gulf of Iskanderun at this stage--to get them there must take some weeks--could not possibly aid Kut, even indirectly. Such side-shows were totally at variance with our General Staff's views concerning the proper conduct of the Great War. We wished the Russians well, of course, in their Armenian operations, and as they held the Black Sea there appeared to be every prospect of their achieving a considerable measure of success. But nothing that happened in that part of the world would be likely to exercise any paramount influence over the decision of the conflict as a whole.
Alexeieff suggested our transferring troops from Salonika to Alexandretta. I do not think that he fully realized what that kind of thing meant in time, s.h.i.+pping, and so on; but it was pointed out to him that the French would disapprove of such a move owing to the importance they attached to the Macedonian affair, while, as for us, if we took away part of our forces from Salonika we would want to send them to France to fight the Germans, not to dissipate them on non-essentials. It was also pointed out that there were very serious naval objections to starting a brand-new campaign based on the Gulf of Iskanderun, that the tonnage question was beginning to arouse anxiety, and that Phillimore (who was at the Stavka at the time) would certainly endorse this contention. The Russian C.G.S. was not quite convinced, I am afraid. In the course of the discussion he made a remark, which was not translated by the interpreter but which MacCaw told me was to the effect that we could do what he asked perfectly easily if we liked. That was true enough. We could have deposited an army at Ayas Bay, no doubt, and could have secured its maritime communications while it was ash.o.r.e; but we would have been playing entirely the wrong game, wasting military resources, and throwing a strain upon the Allies' sea-power without any adequate justification.
Still, our conference was throughout most amicable. Alexeieff expressed confidence as regards effecting a powerful diversion on the Eastern Front during the summer; but he begged me to try to extract some of our heavy howitzers for him out of our War Office, as he was terribly handicapped, he said, for want of that type of artillery. It was the last that I was to see of this eminent soldier and patriot, who died some time in 1918, broken down under the exertion and anxiety of trying to save his country from the horrors of Bolshevik ascendancy.
The Emperor, as I sat next to him at dinner in the evening, referred to Alexandretta; he had evidently seen Alexeieff in the meantime. He also begged me to press the question of heavy howitzers for Russia at home. He asked a good deal about Sir W. Robertson, and he commented on the fact that two soldiers who had enjoyed no special advantages such as are not uncommon in the commissioned ranks of most armies, Robertson and Alexeieff, should have been forced to the front under the stern pressure of war and should now be simultaneously Chiefs of the General Staff in England and Russia. He spoke of the possibility of Lord Kitchener visiting Russia now that his labours at our War Office were somewhat lightened. He told me that Sykes, who had had a long discussion with the General Staff about Armenia and Kurdistan, had enormously impressed those who had heard him by his knowledge of the geography and the people of those regions, and he asked why, when Wigram and I were wearing the Russian shoulder-straps, Sykes was not; he evidently liked our doing so. The Grand Duke Serge, who was Inspector-General of the Artillery, was staying with the Emperor; he also spoke about the urgent need of heavy howitzers, saying that he hoped within a few months to be on velvet as regards field-guns and ammunition, but that aid with the heavier natures of ordnance must come from outside.
In conversations that we had at Mohileff, Hanbury-Williams expressed himself as somewhat anxious about the internal situation in Russia.
General Polivanoff had recently been dismissed from his post as War Minister in spite of the good that he had effected within a very few months, and this was simply the result of a Court intrigue against an official who was known to have Liberal tendencies and was a _persona grata_ with leading spirits in the Duma. That kind of att.i.tude was calculated to arouse dissatisfaction, not merely amongst the educated portion of the community in general, but also in the ranks of the army; for in military circles the extent to which the troops had been sacrificed as a result of gross misconduct in connection with the provision of war material was bitterly resented. The losses suffered by the nation in the war already amounted to a huge figure, and although at this time the people at large probably held no very p.r.o.nounced views on the subject of abandoning the contest, there undoubtedly was discontent. Under such circ.u.mstances, statesmans.h.i.+p imperatively demanded that mutual confidence should be maintained between the Court and Government on the one side, and the leaders of popular opinion on the other side. The removal of Polivanoff, who was doing so well, was just the kind of act to antagonize the educated cla.s.ses and the military. Suspicion, moreover, existed that some of those in high places were not uncontaminated by German influence and were pro-German at heart.
No reasonable doubt has ever existed amongst those behind the scenes that the Emperor personally was heart and soul with the Allies: but that did not hold good, there is every ground for believing, amongst some of those with whom he was closely a.s.sociated. No stranger brought into contact with Nicholas II. could help being attracted by his personal charm; but he was a reactionary surrounded by ultra-reactionaries and evil counsellors, who played upon his superst.i.tions and his belief in the Divine Right of Kings and who brought him to his ruin together with his country. One had heard much in the past of the veneration in which Russians of all ranks and cla.s.ses held their Sovereign as a matter of course. But, when brought into contact with Russian officers in 1916, one speedily realized that the Emperor Nicholas had lost his hold upon the affections of the army. Not that they spoke slightingly of him--they merely appeared to take no interest in him, which was perhaps worse. As for the Empress, there was little concealment in respect to her extreme unpopularity.
Rasputin I never heard mentioned by a Russian in Russia; but one knew all about that sinister figure from our own people.
Owing to a telegram that he received in connection with his special negotiations, Sykes left hurriedly that night, making straight for Tiflis, and I did not see him again in Russia. We, on the other hand, returned to Petrograd for a day or two. There were special entrances, with rooms attached, for the Imperial family at all the Petrograd stations and also at stations in important cities like Moscow and Rostoff; we were always conducted to and from the trains through these, which was much pleasanter than struggling along with the crowd.
For the journey to Transcaucasia we were provided with a special car of our own. In this we lived except when actually at Tiflis--a much more comfortable arrangement than going to hotels at places like Batoum and Kars; we each had a double compartment to ourselves, and another was shared by our soldier-servant with one of the Imperial household, who accompanied us in the capacity of courier, interpreter and additional servant. There is no getting away from it, travelling under these somewhat artificial conditions has its points. As far as the Don we used the ordinary dining-cars; but beyond that point dining-cars did not run, and meals were supposed to be taken at the station restaurants. For us, however, cook, meal and all used to come aboard our car and travel along to some station farther on, where the cook would be shot out with the debris; it was admirably managed, however it was done, and was more the kind of thing one expects in India than in Europe. Although our soldier-servant had never been on parade in his life (I had taught him to salute when at Petrograd by making him salute himself in front of the big gla.s.s in my room, a plan worth any amount of raucous patter from the drill-sergeant), the very fact of his being in khaki seemed to turn him into a Russian scholar by that mysterious process adopted by British soldiers in foreign lands. Wigram had a grammar, and I had known a little Russian in the past; but in the absence of Meyendorff and the courier neither Wigram nor I could get what we wanted, while the soldier-servant could.
Having seen nothing but everlasting dreary white expanses since quitting the immediate environs of Petrograd, except where the railway occasionally pa.s.sed through some towns.h.i.+p, it was pleasant to find the snow gradually disappearing as one approached the Sea of Azov near Taganrog. Then, after crossing the Don at Rostoff, where extensive railway works were in progress and a fine new bridge over the great river was in course of construction, we found ourselves in a balmy spring atmosphere, although it was only the end of March. From there on to the Caspian the railway almost continuously traversed vast tracts of corn-land, the young crop just beginning to show above ground; at dawn the huge range of the Caucasus, its glistening summits clear of clouds, made a glorious spectacle. In this part of the country oil-fuel was entirely used on the locomotives, and at Baku, where the petroleum oozes out of the sides of the railway cuttings, and beyond that city, the whole place reeked of the stuff. If you fell into the error of touching anything on the outside of the car, a doorhandle or railing, you could not get your hand clean again any more than Lady Macbeth. We arrived at Tiflis late one afternoon, having taken within three or four hours of five complete days on the run from Petrograd. There we were met by a crowd of officers, and were conducted to a hotel.
Next morning we paid a number of formal visits. General Ya.n.u.shkhevitch, Chief of the Staff, had held that same position when the Grand Duke Nicholas had been commander-in-chief at the Stavka.
Tall, handsome and debonair, he was a man whom it was a pleasure to meet, although he may not perhaps intellectually have been quite equal to the great responsibilities placed on his shoulders in the early days of the war. This distinguished soldier of very attractive personality was murdered by revolutionaries while travelling by railway somewhere near Petrograd in 1917. General Yudenitch, we found, happened to be in Tiflis, and at the call that we paid him I arranged to present him with his order on the following morning.
I had a prolonged interview with the Grand Duke at the palace during the course of the day. He was not only Commander-in-Chief in Transcaucasia but was also Governor-General, and he told me that civil duties took up more of his time than military duties. Like Alexeieff, and probably by arrangement with the Stavka, he raised the question of our sending a force to near Alexandretta, and he put in a new plea for which I was not quite prepared. As he spoke at considerable length it, however, gave one time to think. He maintained that the right policy for the Allies to adopt was to knock the Turks out for good and to have done with them, expressing the opinion that it would not be difficult to induce them to make peace once they had undergone a good hammering. I replied that there appeared to be political problems involved in this which were quite outside my province, but that certain obvious factors came into the question. The prospects of prevailing upon the Sublime Porte to come to terms hinged upon what those terms were to be, and Constantinople seemed likely to prove a stumbling-block to an understanding. The Ottoman Government might be prepared to part with Erzerum and Trebizond and Basrah, and even possibly Syria and Palestine, but Stamboul and the Straits were quite a different pair of shoes. H.I.H. gripped my hand and pressed it till I all but squealed. It was delightful to talk to a soldier who went straight to the point, said he, but he dashed off on another tack, asking what were our military objections to the Alexandretta plan; so I went over much the same ground as had already been gone over at Mohileff, promising to let him have a memorandum on the subject.
He p.r.o.nounced himself as most anxious to aid us in Mesopotamia, did not seem satisfied with what his troops in Persia had accomplished, and was concerned at my rather pessimistic views with regard to Kut.
Kut actually held out for ten days longer than I had been given to understand was possible at the War Office. He also conveyed to me a pretty clear hint that in his view Major Marsh, our Military Attache with him, ought to have his status improved. There I was entirely with him, but did not say so; there had been a misunderstanding with regard to rank in Russia, for which I, when D.M.O., had been in a measure responsible. The fact that there is no equivalent to our grade of major in Russia had been overlooked. The Military Secretary's department had all along been ready enough to give subalterns the temporary rank of captain, or to improve captains into majors; but they had invariably humped their backs against converting a major into a lieutenant-colonel for the time being. The consequence was that there were a lot of newly caught British subalterns doing special jobs who had been given the rank of captain, and there were a certain number of captains whom we called temporary majors but who were merely captains in Russia. Marsh was a real live major of some standing in the Indian army, with two or three campaigns to his credit and a Staff College man, and yet at Tiflis he was simply regarded as a captain.
This was put right by the War Office on representation being made.
The Grand Duke spoke confidently as to the forthcoming capture of Trebizond, for which the plans were nearly ready. Good progress, he said, was being made by the force which was working forward along the coast, and he promised that the necessary arrangements should be made for us to visit the front in that quarter. He was most cordial, and he made many enquiries about Lord Kitchener for whom he expressed the highest regard. The interview was an extremely pleasant one, for the Grand Duke's manner, while dignified and impressive, was at the same time very winning, and he made it a strong point that I should discuss everything with him direct although also approving of my holding consultations with his staff. Sykes' visit, he a.s.sured me, was highly appreciated both by himself and by his experts, who had been astonished at the knowledge of the country and the people which Sir Mark had displayed.
Next day the presentation of the G.C.M.G. to General Yudenitch was successfully brought off; that brilliant soldier was more at home in the field than in French, and he would probably have dispensed with all ceremony gladly enough. Scarcely had we got back to the hotel after the performance when he turned up to call, arrayed in all the insignia except the collar. He hoped that he had not done wrong in omitting this, and he was anxious to know when it was supposed to be put on. He rather had me there, because I did not know; but it was easy to say that the collar was only worn on very great occasions.
Inside the case containing the Russian order which the Emperor had handed me at my farewell visit to him before returning home a few weeks earlier, there had been instructions in French with regard to the wearing of the different cla.s.ses of the decoration, a similar plan might prove useful in these days when British orders are freely conferred upon foreign officers.