Part 5 (2/2)

The Attack On Verdun

The central act of the German offensive thus closed with defeat at Verdun; there were two others, one fought in the Alps and the other on the sea. The Italian campaigns were never more than subsidiary operations in the war, for it was not until 27 August 1916 that Italy declared war on Germany, and the number of German divisions on the Italian front was never more than six. Even to Austria Russia was the dangerous foe, and Italian strategy threatened at worst no more than the temporary loss of Trieste, a trifle compared with that of Galicia. For the difficulties of the terrain, jealousy between Italians and Jugo-Slavs, and Italy's lack of the industrial means for equipping a sufficiently formidable army, put it beyond her power to threaten any vital spot in the Hapsburg dominions. Italy, moreover, had not entered the war with the same motives or same unanimity as the other Powers, and her army at the front was not the same embodiment of national strength and spirit. The Austrian offensive in May was therefore due rather to the temptations held out by the weakness of the Italian flank than to any urgent necessity of defence against the projected Italian advance. Nevertheless the Italian plains were always seductive, and it would obviously be convenient to dispose of the Italian threat before Austria had again to face the serious menace of Russian invasion; and an attack on the Asiago plateau was Austria's natural contribution to the general German plan of antic.i.p.ating in detail the combined Entente offensive (see Map, p. 298).

The first year of the Austro-Italian war had seen no real impression made on Austria's mountain defences, and even in the valley of the Isonzo Gorizia still forbade an Italian advance on Trieste. The Italian line was the worst possible for defence, and it depended for its security upon the fact that the bulk of the Austrian forces were involved in Russia and in the Balkans. The front was on the Isonzo, but a flank of over 200 miles invited a thrust down one of the various pa.s.ses towards Venice which, if successful, would cause the whole front to collapse like a pack of cards; and marvellous though the feats of Italian valour and mechanical ingenuity had been in the mountain fighting throughout the winter, they had not wrested the pa.s.ses from Austria's hands. The attack was preceded by a bombardment which began on 14 May, and the scene selected lay on a line drawn from Trent to Venice through the Sette Communi, Posina, and Pasubio. The flanks held fairly firm, but the centre gave way, and on the 20th-24th the line was withdrawn on the left to Posina and Pasubio. Things were no better in the Sette Communi on the right, but west of Pasubio the Italians stopped the Austrian advance in the pa.s.s of Buole on 30 May. On the same day, however, they had to evacuate Arsiero and Asiago, south of the Sette Communi. But by now Cadorna had got his reinforcements, and on 3 June he announced that the Austrian offensive was checked. The attack was, however, renewed on the 13th, and the Austrians advanced to within four miles of Valstagna and the railway running down the Brenta valley to Padua. They got no farther, and before the end of June Cadorna began his counter-offensive. By that time the thoughts of the Austrians and most of their troops were elsewhere; and just as the German campaign at Verdun was ruined by the Entente offensive on the Somme, the Austrian advance from the Trentino was stopped by the Russian attack in the East. In the first week of June Brussilov had gone through the Austrian lines like brown paper at Lutsk and Dubno.

The third German offensive was on the sea, but no operation in the war remains more obscure with regard to its motives, conduct, and importance than the battle of Jutland; a century pa.s.sed before Nelson's tactics at Trafalgar were made clear, and a long period may have to elapse before there is any solution of the problems surrounding the great naval battle of modern times. The British admiral in command has expressed his considered opinion that the meeting of the German and British fleets on 30 May was an accident; but a.s.suredly it was not by accident that the whole naval forces of Germany were on that day outside their accustomed harbours, and they could not have been brought into action against their own consent. There was some motive in that unusual appearance, and the motives of strategy are to be found in the conditions of policy. That Germany needed a victory in 1916 is obvious from her persistence, despite the gravest losses, in the Verdun campaign; but if she needed one over France, she needed one yet more sorely over Britain; and if it was worth while losing one or two hundred thousand men at Verdun, it was worth while taking considerable risks at sea on the chance of frustrating British partic.i.p.ation in the coming offensive on the Somme.

Deliverance from the nightmare of a combined Entente offensive was but a part of the fruits which would follow from a German victory at sea. It would probably decide the issue of the war at a single blow. Germany had, of course, known all along that the Entente depended absolutely for success upon Great Britain's command of the sea; but it was not easy to shake that command, and so long as there seemed a prospect of winning the war by other means, the frightful risks of a naval battle would be avoided. By the spring of 1916 those other means were receding beyond the region of hope or possibility. Russia was repairing her arms; Great Britain was making stupendous preparations; France had withstood the shock of Verdun; and the hopes which Germany built on discontent in Ireland, her intrigues with Irish prisoners of war, and the escapades of Sir Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt, crumbled after the insurrection which broke out in Dublin in April. The autumn promised a sere and yellow leaf to the German High Command. Nor did this darkened European vista exhaust the clouds on the horizon. After the torpedoing of the Suss.e.x on 24 March President Wilson had extorted from the German Government a pledge not to sink without warning merchant vessels found inside or outside the war zone which the Germans had proclaimed in February, and had refused to accept the condition they sought to attach to the pledge, that he would require corresponding pledges from Great Britain to observe the ”freedom of the seas.” Tirpitz had been dismissed to give verisimilitude to Germany's new virtue; but she had no intention of keeping her pledge any longer than was convenient, or abandoning any reasonable prospect of bringing us to our knees by a submarine campaign, and she knew that its effective extension would provoke American intervention. Such intervention would, however, be negligible if in the meantime Britain's Fleet had been crippled and her control of the sea undermined.

A successful naval battle might therefore not only impair British partic.i.p.ation but preclude that of the United States. Otherwise the two together would dissipate any lingering German hopes of victory; and the imminence of the danger counselled the taking of risks which had hitherto been eschewed. But the results of a naval defeat are not risked if they are likely to prove fatal, unless there is some chance of success; and Germany had some grounds for hope under both these heads. A fleet which flees is little better than no fleet at all, and for two years Germany had put up with British command of the seas. The destruction of her battle-fleet would no doubt depress her people, but it would not seriously interfere with her submarine campaign, and on land the war would go on as it had done. Still, the existence of the German Fleet was a factor in the moral of the German people; and the Government would not have risked it without some hopes of at least a partial success. The hopes depended partly on the skill of the new commander, Von Scheer, and partly on his too-well justified belief that the Germans possessed better sh.e.l.ls, better armour, better searchlights, and more accurate range-tests than the British Navy. The guns were also ranged for elevation up to 30 deg., whereas the British elevation was only 15 or 20; and the difference was fatal to some of our battle-cruisers. The conclusion seems to have been that an adventure was worth while, and that if the weather conditions were wisely selected, it was feasible to fight a naval battle on the principle of limited liability, breaking it off if and when the losses incurred exceeded the value of the results obtained. Clearly, for instance, if the German battle-fleet could engage the British battle-cruisers without itself being engaged by the British battle-fleet, the event might justify moderate expectations.

On the morning of 31 May the German High Seas Fleet set out on its ”northern enterprise.” What the German Government meant by that phrase has never been revealed. It has been inferred that a concentration of naval and military force against Russia was planned to antic.i.p.ate Brussilov's coming offensive, but there were no signs of that movement on land, and the Germans had enough to do with Verdun and their lines elsewhere in France without committing themselves to another adventure in Russia; while the idea of a raid on the s.h.i.+pping between England and Norway seems an inadequate explanation of the force sent out. On the other hand, if the design was to cripple the British Navy, the opportune moment had been lost, for the adverse balance against the German Fleet had been enormously increased since the war broke out. In the autumn of 1914 occasional breakdowns in the machinery of British super-Dreadnoughts, accidents like the torpedoing of the Audacious, and the inadequacy of dock-accommodation had made uneasy the minds of men who dwelt upon these contingencies and made no allowance for similar mishaps to the enemy. But even they were rea.s.sured when in April 1915 British construction far outstripped any German possibilities; and as time went on the race grew ever more unequal. It is true that France ceased to partake in the compet.i.tion, leaving this silent struggle of the workshop and the dockyard to Great Britain; and the chance of a battle in the Baltic had to be abandoned because no Allied battles.h.i.+ps could be relied upon to reinforce the North Sea Fleet. But Britain's margin was ample enough, and at the battle of Jutland her weight of metal was as two to one. The Germans, however, had advantages of their own, particularly in a delaying fuse which caused their sh.e.l.ls to explode after penetrating the enemy's armour instead of before. Their capital s.h.i.+ps were also better armoured, and rarely sank when struck by sh.e.l.ls or torpedoes. This was also true of the British battles.h.i.+ps, and none were sunk on either side except the old German Pommern; but the British battle-cruisers fared badly. The German marksmans.h.i.+p was also better during the earlier stages of the battle, though inferior later on; and they had in Von Scheer an admiral of conspicuous ability.

The accident of the battle arose from the fact that the British Fleet was simultaneously on 31 May engaged in one of its periodical sweeps through the North Sea. It had already turned back towards its northern bases when at 2.20 p.m. enemy vessels were signalled to the east. Beatty, who had under his orders the four ”Cats,” Queen Mary, Princess Royal, Lion, and Tiger, together with two other battle-cruisers, the Indefatigable and New Zealand, and the four biggest and newest battles.h.i.+ps, Barham, Warspite, Valiant, and Malaya (the Queen Elizabeth herself was undergoing repairs at Rosyth), at once turned back south-eastwards to cut off the enemy from his retreat along the Jutland coast. The enemy vessels were Hipper's cruisers, and they also turned south to fall back on their battle-fleet, at whose proximity Beatty can only have guessed. At 3.48 the action began with Hipper's battle-cruisers, Derfflinger, Lutzow, Moltke, Seydlitz, and Van der Thann; none of them carried heavier than 12-in. guns, while Beatty's ”Cats” had 13.5-inch and his Queen Elizabeths 15-inch guns. A light-cruiser attack against our line was crumpled up by corresponding vessels, but the bigger German s.h.i.+ps escaped fatal damage from our heavier fire (it took hours to dispose of the enemy at the Falklands), and by 4.42 they were in sight of their battle-fleet.

Beatty's business was now to turn and draw the Germans northwards into Jellicoe's jaws, but the turning in face of the German battle-fleet was a critical manoeuvre. Beatty's battles.h.i.+ps were north-west on his starboard quarter, and as his battle-cruisers turned they masked the Queen Elizabeths' fire while exposing themselves to the concentrated attention of the German Fleet. A high-angle sh.e.l.l fell on the thinly protected deck of the Queen Mary; she blew up and sank in a few seconds. Another fell down the ammunition shaft of the Indefatigable with the same appalling result. Beatty was not deflected from his course; possibly no other could have been taken. The rest of his cruisers got round without mishap, and the brunt of the fighting now pa.s.sed to Evan-Thomas's Queen Elizabeths, who stalled off the whole German Fleet as both forces steamed north in Jellicoe's direction. It was probably during this stage that most of the damage was done to the German Fleet. The Lutzow and the Pommern were sunk; the battles.h.i.+p Konig was so battered that her forecastle was only 61/2 feet above water when she struggled into port; and the Seydlitz and the Derfflinger were in little better case.

At 5.56 Beatty sighted Jellicoe's battles.h.i.+ps at five miles' distance on his port bow. His task was now to cross the front of the German line, head it off east and southwards, and afford Jellicoe room for deployment between Beatty himself and Evan-Thomas. For reasons of tactics and prudence Jellicoe deployed on his port wing, i.e., towards the east, This took him away from the Germans, but tended to cut them off from their base. The deployment was skilfully executed, though Admiral Hood and his battle-cruiser the Invincible, while taking position in front of Beatty, suffered the fate of the Queen Mary and Indefatigable; and the British Fleet soon formed a single line curving round east and south-eastwards like a net into which the Germans were being drawn. The crisis had arrived, and German naval power seemed on the verge of extinction. But the weather came to a.s.sist Von Scheer's tactical skill. He turned with less misfortune than had attended Beatty's similar manoeuvre two hours earlier, and set himself to fight a magnificent rearguard action and extricate his fleet as best he could. Fortunately for him the visibility grew steadily worse, and with it the range of fire diminished. This deprived Jellicoe of the advantage of his heavier guns, and indeed reduced the range of gun-fire to that of torpedoes. Here Von Scheer discovered his chance, and it was upon torpedo attacks that he relied for the defence of his fleet. Jellicoe, with his superior speed, could have closed had he deemed it wise. But he thought of what hung on the fate of the fleet he commanded, and shrank from exposing his battles.h.i.+ps to the risk of torpedo destruction. His dilemma was acute: gun-fire was very effective at 18,000 yards, the torpedo began to be so at 10,000. Our cue was to fight between the two; but low visibility hid the German s.h.i.+ps outside torpedo range, while within it fifty lucky German torpedoes might have sent every British Dreadnought to the bottom and decided the war in Germany's favour. On the other hand, we might have sunk every German s.h.i.+p and conceivably ended the war in 1917. War is an experimental science; but this experiment was never made, and no one can say what the result would have been if it had. Beatty wished to make it, Jellicoe refrained.

So the fight went on, the mist hiding the Germans at longer range and their torpedo attacks deterring us from a closer encounter. At 7.5 Jellicoe attempted to close on the Germans by turning three points to starboard. Von Scheer replied with a torpedo attack, and to avoid it some of our s.h.i.+ps turned four, and some of them six, points to port. Seizing the opportunity, Von Scheer made off to the west, helped by the mist and by his own smoke screen; and shortly the Germans were lost to sight. Night closed in with the British Fleet between the Germans and their base at Wilhelmshaven hoping to complete their work on a glorious First of June. Jellicoe and Beatty agreed that to continue the battle in darkness amid torpedo-craft and submarines was impossible, and Von Scheer had other designs in view. It was a night of excursions and alarms with many destroyer actions. When dawn broke the Germans were not to be seen. Cut off from direct access to Wilhelmshaven, Von Scheer had turned from south-west round to north and then east, and had got his s.h.i.+ps one by one past the rear of the British line into harbour. His escape is the mystery of the battle: throughout the night his starboard s.h.i.+ps were continually barging into vessels on our port, but no news of these encounters reached the commander-in-chief. Till nearly noon Jellicoe watched for a fleet that never appeared, and then made his way back to his base, a victor baulked of the ostensible fruits of his victory. The disappointment was made worse by the inept.i.tude of the Admiralty and the ignorance of the press, which emphasized our losses without explaining the significance of our success. Besides the three battle-cruisers we lost three armoured cruisers, Defence, Black Prince, and Warrior of 13,000 or more tons apiece, and eight destroyers, while the super-Dreadnought Marlborough was badly holed and the Warspite was put out of action. The German looses in destroyers may have been equal or greater, but in cruisers they were considerably less. The Government was foolish enough to deny the loss of the Lutzow and admit it a few days later. But our own estimates were not conspicuous for their accuracy; and the German official account published on 16 June and long regarded as ”a tissue of careful falsifications,” was admitted after the armistice to have been substantially correct.

The public in both countries were indeed egregiously wrong in their judgment because they were completely ignorant of naval warfare, and measured success at sea by mathematical equations just as they measured progress on land by miles. It was only the navies engaged that knew the truth, and they had inadequate means of making their knowledge known. British sailors were loath to admit even among themselves the defects in their vessels, gunnery, and leaders.h.i.+p which the battle revealed; but they made less a secret of Von Scheer's skill. He had with a smaller force inflicted greater damage on his enemy, and he had s.n.a.t.c.hed his fleet from the jaws of destruction. He was no doubt favoured by the weather, and he turned to the best advantage his facilities of defence; for the enemy in retreat can use his torpedoes with greater effect than his pursuer, can tempt him into minefields and submarine traps, and conceal himself by smoke-screens. German Dreadnoughts had, moreover, been built for defence in home waters and not for keeping the seas. s.p.a.ce, which was used to strengthen their armour, had in our capital s.h.i.+ps to serve the needs of offence, speed, and comfort; and subsequent inspection at Scapa Flow showed that the German High Seas Fleet was not designed to provide its crews with living room for more than seventy-two hours without recourse to port.

But all these advantages and Von Scheer's skill could not reverse the verdict in that trial of strength, and our qualms about the battle of Jutland were a just nemesis on our inveterate habit of judging by material tests. The decisive factor in war is not the material but the moral effect; and while the German Fleet was not destroyed at the battle of Jutland, its moral was hopelessly shattered. Few of the German sailors who had been in a naval battle had hitherto returned to tell the tale, and those who went out in the High Seas Fleet on 31 May had been taught to believe in its invincibility. But, said a German officer, ”the way we were utterly crushed from the moment your battle fleet came into action took the heart out of them. Another hour of daylight would have finished it,” while only three men in Jellicoe's main battle fleet were wounded. Der Tag had come with a vengeance, and from that day every attempt to take out the German Fleet to battle produced a mutiny or the threat of one.

The third enemy offensive had come to greater grief than the other two; and the battle of Jutland had justified the earlier German strategy which kept the German Fleet safe in harbour while it kept our own in British waters and faint hearts on tenterhooks. Germany's naval power had now gone with the moral of its crews, though the ghost of it haunted for two and a half years longer the timid minds of our materialists on sh.o.r.e, and retained on this side of the Channel hundreds of thousands of troops needed for offence or defence in France and Flanders. The German Fleet had never, however, been a predominant factor in the war, and it was with a different proposition that the Entente had to deal when at last its turn came to take the offensive and make a real attempt to break the German lines.

CHAPTER XII

THE ALLIED COUNTER-OFFENSIVE

In spite of the disasters she had suffered in 1915 and of her winter campaigns in Galicia and the Caucasus, Russia was the first of the Allies to take the offensive in 1916. She was, indeed, engaged in attacking at some point or other along her vast and various fronts from December till April. In February she again attempted to seize the important bridgehead across the Dniester at Usciesko and carried it on 22 March. Four days before that she had initiated another offensive on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Narotch, and in April she was pressing on Trebizond. The Lake Narotch operation was possibly designed to frustrate a German attack on Riga, and it was only that preventive success that was achieved. It is true that the first and second German lines were carried after artillery preparation by the Russian infantry. But the scanty Russian artillery behaved like a travelling circus; having done its business, it packed up and removed to seek another opening. The Germans discovered the move, blasted the Russian trenches, and on 28-29 April recovered more than they had lost. The campaign in Armenia was more successful, and on 18 April Trebizond pa.s.sed securely into Russian hands, giving her a shorter route across the Black Sea and a better base for future operations in Asia Minor (see Maps, pp. 146, 182).

These, however, were minor operations compared with the offensive for which Brussilov was preparing in May as the Russian contribution to the combined attack on the Central Empires. It was not timed to take place until the end of June. But the Austrian pressure on Italy from the Trentino seems to have forced an acceleration which the German attack on Verdun failed to extort from the Western Allies; and on 3 June a bombardment began on the whole of the Russian front from the Pripet marshes southwards to the Rumanian border. Ivanov had been recalled to headquarters and the line was under Brussilov, with four generals-Kaledin, Sakharoff, Scherbachev, and Lechitsky-to command his various army-groups. Opposed to them were four Austrian generals and the German Bothmer, who held the front from Zalocze on the upper Sereth to the Dniester. From Kolki northwards the Pripet swamps made progress difficult, and Bothmer offered a stubborn resistance on the Strypa. But in the Volhynian triangle and the Bukovina the attack achieved a surprising success. The infantry advance began on the 4th and by noon the Austrian front was completely broken. In two days the Russians advanced more than twenty miles, and on the 6th they entered Lutsk, the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand's headquarters, capturing enormous booty and many thousands of prisoners. On both sides the breach was widened; to the north Rojitche and to the south Dubno both fell on the 8th, and the Volhynian triangle pa.s.sed completely into Russian hands. Their triumph continued for another week: their salient was deepened by a further advance to Zaturtsky and Svidniki, within twenty-five miles of Kovel, and broadened by the fall of Kolki to the north and Demidovka and Kozin to the south. In less than a fortnight Kaledin and Sakharoff had covered fifty miles and taken 70,000 prisoners.

Scherbachev was less successful against Bothmer in front of Tarnopol; but his left wing carried Buczacz, farther south, and crossed the Strypa, while beyond the Dniester Lechitsky outdid Kaledin's success at Lutsk. Forcing the pa.s.sage of the Dniester near Okna on that same 4th of June, he broke the Austrian front and drove one half of it west to Horodenka and the other half south-east towards Czernowitz. The latter portion was now an isolated and disorganized fragment of the Austrian army which could do nothing but escape across the Pruth and the Carpathians leaving Lechitsky to overrun the Bukovina. On the 17th the Russians entered Czernowitz, its capital, and six days later they reached Kimpolung, its most southerly town. Other columns swept west to Sniatyn and Kuty, and by the 23rd the whole of the province had been conquered. The Austrians were in no position to impose a pause upon the frontier of Galicia, and Kolomea fell on the 29th. Tlumacz followed on the 30th and Bothmer's right was seriously threatened. Gathering some German reinforcements he counter-attacked on 2 July, recovered Tlumacz, and checked Lechitsky's right, though his left continued its advance along the Carpathian foothills and captured Delatyn on 8 July, thus cutting the railway to Marmaros Sziget. The Dniester and the Pruth were now flooded with July rains, and a month elapsed before Lechitsky could resume his march.

Other causes had checked the Russians farther north. Brussilov's offensive may have been merely a vast reconnaissance in force, but its astonis.h.i.+ng success had stirred the Germans to prompt action. Ewarts was beginning an attack on the important junction of Baranovitchi north of the Pripet marshes, and presently the line of battle spread down the Shchara and along the Oginski ca.n.a.l. If he succeeded like Brussilov, Brest-Litovsk might be caught between two fires with dire results to the whole German front in Russia and future in the Balkans. It was a peril to which the German prospects at Verdun and forebodings on the Somme were secondary considerations; and both the Western allies profited from Brussilov's campaign. One German corps was hurried from Verdun to Kovel in six days, and others followed at a less exhausting speed. Austrians also came from the Tyrol and the Balkans, and Ludendorff was sent to restore confidence in the command. Kovel was the southern key to Brest-Litovsk; the northern flank could look after itself since Ewarts was making little progress, and Bothmer had barred the way for the time to the other essential points at Lemberg and Stanislau. But Kovel was in serious danger, for the Russians had penetrated to Lokatchi due south of that fortress; and it was for its defence that Ludendorff organized the Austrian counter-offensive in the latter half of June.

Kovel was saved. The Russian line was pressed back from Lokatchi to Zaturtsky, from Svidniki to Rojitche, and behind the Stokhod. But the counter-offensive was spent by the end of the month, and early in July the Russians resumed their advance. North of the Pripet Ewarts was no more successful than he had been in June; German divisions were made of sterner stuff than the Austrian, and Hindenburg knew well enough what was at stake. After heavy losses the Russian attack died away without appreciable gain of ground, and north of the Pripet at least the enemy line was secure. Nor, even south of it, was Brussilov able to do much more than straighten his own, bringing it forward to the point reached by his salient in front of Lutsk. This, however, involved some danger to Lemberg and effected the fall of Stanislau farther south. The chief obstacle was Bothmer in the centre, on whose stubborn resistance the Germans prided themselves although most of his troops were Austrian; and he occupied most of the Russian attention for the rest of the campaign. But the most striking advance was made in the north of Brussilov's command, where summer had dried the low-lying ground south of the Pripet marshes. Here General Lesch, whose Third Russian Army had been brought down from north of the Pripet, broke the Austrian line on the Styr between Kolki and Rafalovka on 4-5 July, and in four days reached the Stokhod. He even crossed it at points, but failed to carry it in its entirety so as to threaten the northern defences of Kovel.

The main offensive was launched in Galicia, doubtless with a view to its reaction upon the att.i.tude of Rumania; and here Bothmer was menaced by Sakharoff in the north and Lechitsky in the south. To disconcert the northern attack the Germans had planned a counter-offensive on the 18th, but Sakharoff got his blow in first three days before. Forcing the Austrians across the Styr in front of Dubno, he advanced along its tributary the Lipa, captured Mikhailovka and Bludov, and then swinging south occupied Berestechko and threatened Brody on the 20th. It was entered after a week's fighting on the 28th. Thence he struck south towards the railway from Krasne to Tarnopol which supplied Bothmer's left, while Bothmer's right was being simultaneously threatened by Lechitsky now that the floods on the Dniester had subsided. On 7 August he recaptured Tlumacz and reached the Dniester near Nijniow; on the 10th he forced his way into Stanislau, while Scherbachev attacked on the north bank of the Dniester. Almost outflanked on the north by Sakharoff and on the south by Scherbachev and Lechitsky, Bothmer had at length to retreat to the Zlota Lipa with his right in front of Halicz, his centre at Brzezany, and his left at Zborov. He was vigorously attacked by Scherbachev, and his right was pushed back on both banks of the Dniester as far as Halicz until it stood upon the Narajovka. But the centre stood firm against Scherbachev's great effort of the 29th, though Potutory was taken and Brzezany reduced to a salient; and the fighting of September and October failed to modify the position anywhere except far south in the Carpathians, where Lechitsky secured Mount Kapul and the Jablonitza and Kirlibaba pa.s.ses, and advanced as far west as Huta.

This movement was in sympathy with the Rumanian declaration of war on 27 August, and spoilt the Russian chances of a successful concentration against Bothmer. Russia was not sufficiently furnished with munitions or trained men to provide for two great efforts on that front, and her summer campaign had failed of complete success largely because of the services it rendered to her allies. No fewer than sixteen divisions were withdrawn, between June and September, by the Germans from the Western front and one from the Balkans to meet Brussilov's offensive, and they included some of the best of the Prussian Guards. Austria diverted seven divisions from

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