It is behind these vast marshes that we shall find the Russians planned to make their first determined stand.
Here, too, the Russians expected to have the advantage of being surrounded by their own people, for this is the country of the White Russians, so called on account of their costumes. Here the purest Slavic type is preserved; they have not blended with other stocks, as the Great Russians with the Finns and the Little Russians, farther south, with the Mongols. For a while this territory was subject to the kings of Poland, who oppressed its inhabitants most barbarously, from the effects of which they have not even fully recovered. To-day White Russia is one of the poorest and most backward parts of the empire. And even yet the great bulk of the landlords are Poles.
CHAPTER XLIII
AUSTRIAN POLAND, GALICIA AND BUKOWINA
Let us now pass ahead of the armies into the southern section of the eastern front. Here we have to consider only Austrian Poland, Galicia and Bukowina, for here there is much less swaying back and forth, the Russians maintaining their lines much more steadily than farther north. This section is an undulating terrace which slopes down to the Vistula and the Dniester; behind rise the Carpathian ranges, forming the natural frontier between the broad, fertile plains of Hungary and Russia. Here the population is quite dense, there being 240 inhabitants to the square mile. Nearly half of the total area is in farm lands, about one-fourth woodland, and the rest mostly meadow and pasture, less than a quarter of one per cent being lake or swamp. Rich crops of barley, oats, rye, wheat, and corn are grown here, while the mineral resources include coal, salt, and petroleum, the latter especially being important in modern warfare on account of the great quantities of fuel necessary for motor carriages.
Here, in Galicia, we shall witness the conquests of the important city of Lemberg—with its 160,000 population—fourth in size of all Austrian cities, only Vienna, Prague, and Triest being larger. Further in toward the mountains we shall see the storming of the strongly fortified city of Przemysl (pronounced Prshemisel), also important as the junction of the network of railroads that the Austrians had built throughout the country, including several lines passing over the Carpathians into Hungary. And farther west still we shall look upon the invasion of the old Polish city of Cracow, also strongly fortified. This section is especially rich in industries, mines, and agriculture.
Here, too, are staged many of the battles of the rivers—parallel with the mountain ranges flows the Dniester in a southeasterly direction, into which, flowing down from the north and running parallel with each other, empty the Gnila Lipa, the Zlota Lipa, and the Stripa, all of which figure prominently in the war movements, for each of these is crossed several times by both armies engaged at bloody costs.
As will be noted by reading the chapters on the fighting on the eastern front, here, as in East Prussia, the Russians make a determined advance and actually succeed in conquering this territory from the Austrians. At one time we find them even in possession of all except one of the chief passes in the Carpathians and threatening to overrun the plains of Hungary. To hold Russian Poland it was necessary that they should have a firm grip of East Prussia and Austrian Poland, thus protecting the flanks of their center. Had they been able to hold their grip, then they could have straightened out their entire line from north to south, and Warsaw would have been safe. But we shall see both their extremities driven back; therefore Warsaw was in danger, in spite of its fortifications.
That the Austrians should have allowed themselves to be thrust back over the Carpathians is one of the surprises of the early stages of the war. For these mountains are only second in size in all Europe to the Alps themselves, forming the eastern wing of the great European mountain system. They are about 800 miles long and nearly 250 miles wide in parts. Some of the higher peaks reach 8,000 feet above sea level.
Imagine the vision of an army marching along the roads from the foothills to the mountains leading through mysterious, shadowy spruce forests, where the soil is covered with rich carpets of moss. Foaming streams ripple in among the moss-covered bowlders. Then the paths emerge on the cheerful, emerald-green pastures of the slopes, alive with the flocks of goats, sheep and cattle, attended by their shepherds. A little farther and the whole scenery changes, and the armies approach tremendous mountains of solid granite, ominously dark, shining like hammered iron, rising abruptly from the stone débris and black patches of mountain fir, and towering bluffs and crags seem to pierce the sky with their sharp peaks, bastions and jagged ridges, like gigantic fortresses. Clouds of white mist, driven and torn by gusts of wind, cling to the precipitous walls, and masses of eternal snow lie in the many fissures and depressions, forming large, sharply outlined streaks and patches.
The Magyars inhabit the great central plains of Hungary which constitutes ethnologically a vast island of Magyars in a sea of Slavs. The Carpathian slopes on the Hungarian side of the ranges, including the mounts of the Tatra—with the exception of the Zips district, which is peopled with German-Saxon colonists—are inhabited, in their western parts, by two million Slovaks, in the eastern parts by half a million Ruthenians or Little Russians, and on the Transylvanian side by nearly three million Rumanians. The border lines between these Rumanians and the Magyars and between the Hungaro-Slav groups (Slovaks and Ruthenians) and the Magyars lie far down within the borders of the great central Hungarian plains. This line at one point extends to within a few miles of the Hungarian capital of Budapest.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE BALKANS—COUNTRIES AND PEOPLES
This survey of the fighting ground in eastern Europe brings us now to the "cockpit of the war." From a military point of view, as well as from the political, the Balkan theatre is of equal importance with other big fronts in Europe. It is the gateway to the Orient for central Europe. Here the armies engaged are numbered only by the hundred thousands, none reach a million. But from the point of view of human interest and political intrigue it is by far the most picturesque. Here the hatred between the combatants is most bitter; indeed so bitter that when it burst into flame a mad whirlwind of passion swept over half the world. For here the great conflagration began.
A map of the Balkan Peninsula is almost, on the face of it, a full explanation of the causes of the war. The military campaigns, studied in connection with their physical environment, explain all the diplomatic intrigues of the past fifty years, for they are the intrigues themselves translated into action.
Geographically speaking, the Balkan nations are those situated in the big peninsula of southern Europe which lies below the Danube River and the northern border of Montenegro. Some authorities, however, include Rumania, and others even bring in Austria's Slavic provinces, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The most noticeable feature of this vast war-ridden region is its mountains. Those same Carpathian Mountains, which form the natural boundary between the land of the Magyars and the Russian plains, take a sudden turn westward at the Rumanian frontier, then sweep around in a great semicircle, forming a shape resembling a scythe, the handle of which reaches up into Poland, the blade curling around within the Balkan Peninsula. Behind the handle, and above the upper part of the blade, stretch the broad plains of Hungary, through which flows the great Danube, the largest river in Europe next to the Russian Volga—a river which flowed with blood during the Great War. Just in the middle of the back of the blade this great river bursts through the mountain chain, swirling through the famous Iron Gate into the great basin within the curved blade. On the south of its farther course to the Black Sea lie the plains of northern Bulgaria.
The curving chain of mountains below the Iron Gate is the Balkan Range. But excepting for the plains of Thrace, lying south
