tion>Bernard Pares
Day by Day with the Russian Army, 1914-15
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066215392
Table of Contents
DAY BY DAY WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY
DIARY OF AN AUSTRIAN OFFICER DURING THE AUSTRO-GERMAN RECONQUEST OF GALICIA
CONSTABLE'S LIST OF BOOKS BEARING UPON THE WAR
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
