Various - The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915

V >> Various >> The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915

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Along the roadside through the Cote Lorraine were here and there graves
with rude crosses and penciled inscriptions. At the western edge of the
forest the battle panorama of the Meuse Valley suddenly opened out, the
hills falling away again steeply to the level valley below. The towns
below--St. Mihiel and Banoncour--seemed absolutely deserted, not a
person being visible even around the large barracks in the latter town.
While the little party of officers and spectators, including the
correspondent, were watching the artillery duel on the far horizon or
endeavoring to pick out the infantry positions, a shrapnel suddenly
burst directly before them, high in the air. There was a general stir,
the assumption being that the French had taken the group on the
hillside for a battery staff picking out positions for the guns; but as
other shots were fired it was seen that the shrapnel was exploding
regularly above the barracks, a mile and a half away, the French
evidently suspecting the presence of German troops there.

A ten-mile ride southward led to the position of the Austrian 12-inch
battery. The two guns this time were planted by the side of the road,
screened only in front by a little wood, but exposed to view from both
sides, the rear, and above. For this greater exposure the battery had
paid correspondingly, several of its men having been killed or wounded
by hostile fire. Here, as in the German batteries, the war work in
progress went on with a machinelike regularity and absence of
spectacular features more characteristic of a rolling mill than a
battle. The men at the guns went through their work with the deftness
and absence of confusion of high-class mechanics. The heavy shells were
rolled to the guns, hoisted by a chain winch to the breech opening, and
discharged in uninteresting succession, a short pause coming after each
shot, until the telephonic report from the observation stand was
received. The battery had been firing all day at Fort Lionville, at a
range of 9,400 meters, (nearly six miles,) and the battery commander was
then endeavoring to put out of action the only gun turret which still
answered the fire. The task of finding this comparatively minute target,
forty or fifty feet in diameter, was being followed with an accuracy
which promised eventual success.

The shells from the guns started on their course with characteristic
minute-long shrieks. Watches were pulled out to determine just how long
the shrieks could be heard, and the uninitiated were preparing to hear
the sound of the explosion itself. The battery chief explained, however,
that this scream was due to the conditions immediately around the muzzle
of the gun, and could not be heard from other points. He invited close
watch of the atmosphere a hundred yards before the gun at the next shot.
Not only could the projectile be seen plainly in the beginning of its
flight, but the waves of billowing air, rushing back to fill the void
left by the discharge and bounding and rebounding in a tempestuous sea
of gas, could be distinctly observed. This airy commotion caused the
sound heard for more than a minute.

*The Slaughter in Alsace*

*By John H. Cox of The London Standard.*

BASLE, Switzerland, Aug. 19.--I have just returned from an inspection of
the scenes of the recent fighting between the French and Germans in the
southern districts of Alsace.

Dispatches from Paris and Berlin describe the engagements between the
frontier and Muelhausen as insignificant encounters between advance
guards. If this be true in a military sense, and the preliminaries of
the war produce the terrible effects I have witnessed, the disastrous
results of the war itself will exceed human comprehension.

As a Swiss subject I was equipped with identification papers and
accompanied by four of my countrymen, all on bicycles.

At the very outset the sight of peasants, men and women, unconcernedly
at work in the fields gathering the harvest, struck me as strange and
unnatural. The men were either old or well advanced in middle age.
Everywhere women, girls, and mere lads were working.

The first sign of war was the demolished villa of a Catholic priest at a
village near Ransbach. This priest had lived there for many years,
engaged in religious work and literary pursuits. After the outbreak of
the war the German authorities jumped at the conclusion that he was an
agent of the French Secret Service and that he had been in the habit of
sending to Belfort information concerning German military movements and
German measures for defense--very often by means of carrier pigeons.

The Alsatians say that these accusations were utterly unjust; but last
week a military party raided the priest's house, dragged him from his
study, placed him against his own garden wall and shot him summarily as
a traitor and spy. The house was searched from top to bottom, and
numerous books and papers were removed, after which the building was
destroyed by dynamite. The priest was buried without a coffin at the end
of his little garden plot, and some of the villagers placed a rough
cross on the mound which marked the place of interment.

In the next large village we were told that it had been successively
occupied by French and German troops and had been the scene of stiff
infantry fighting.

Here we found groups of old men and boys burying dead men and horses,
whose bodies were already beginning to be a menace to health. The
weather here has been exceptionally hot, and the countryside is bathed
in blazing sunshine. Further on were a number of German soldiers beating
about in the standing crops on both sides of the road, searching for
dead and wounded. They said many of the wounded had crawled in among the
wheat to escape being trodden upon by the troops marching along the
road, and also to gain relief from the heat.

On the outskirts of another large village we saw a garden bounded by a
thick hedge, behind which a company of French infantry had taken their
stand against the advancing German troops. Among the crushed flowers
there were still lying fragments of French soldiers' equipments, two
French caps stained with blood and three torn French tunics, likewise
[Transcriber: original 'liewise'] dyed red. The walls of the cottage
bore marks of rifle bullets, and the roof was partially burned.

Passing through the villages we saw on all sides terrible signs of the
devastation of war--houses burned, uncut grain trodden down and rendered
useless, gardens trampled under foot; everywhere ruin and distress.

At a small village locally known as Napoleon's Island we found the
railway station demolished and the line of trucks the French had used as
a barricade. These trucks had been almost shot to pieces, and many were
stained with blood. Outside the station the small restaurant roof had
been shot away; the windows were smashed, and much furniture had been
destroyed. Nevertheless the proprietor had rearranged his damaged
premises as well as possible and was serving customers as if nothing had
happened.

Just outside this village there are large common graves in which French
and German soldiers lie buried together in their uniforms. Large mounds
mark these sites. Here again the villagers have placed roughly hewn
crosses.

Not far from Huningen we met an intelligent Alsatian peasant who
remembered the war of 1870 and had witnessed some engagements in the
last few days. Here is his account of what he saw:

"The bravery on both sides was amazing. The effects of artillery fire
are terrific. The shells burst, and where you formerly saw a body of
soldiers you see a heap of corpses or a number of figures writhing on
the ground, torn and mutilated by the fragments of the shell. Those who
are unhurt scatter for the moment, but quickly regain their composure
and take up their positions in the fighting line as if nothing had
happened. The effects of other weapons are as bad. It seems remarkable
that soldiers can see the destruction worked all around them, yet can
control their nerves sufficiently to continue fighting.

"I remember the battles of 1870, in five or six of which I fought
myself, but they bear no comparison with the battles of 1914. War
forty-four years ago was child's play compared with war at the present
time."

In several villages the schools and churches and many cottages are
filled with wounded Frenchmen and Germans, and everything is being done
to relieve their sufferings. In the stress of fighting many wounded
soldiers were left from three to ten or twelve hours lying in the fields
or on the roads. The ambulance equipment of modern armies appears
utterly inadequate, and most of the wounded were picked up by villagers.

A French aeroplane from Belfort reconnoitred the German positions behind
Muelhausen. As it passed over the German works at the Isteiner Klotz
there ensued a continuous firing of machine guns and rifles. The
aeroplane, which had swerved downward to give its two occupants a closer
and clearer view of the German position, immediately rose to a much
greater altitude and escaped injury. It cruised over the German position
for more than an hour, now rising, now falling, always pursued by the
bullets of the enemy.

This aerial reconnoissance [Transcriber: original 'reconnoisance'], part
of which was carried out at an altitude as low as 1,000 feet, was
undertaken at terrible risk, but in this case the aeroplane escaped all
injury and returned in the direction of Belfort, doubtless with all the
information it had set out to collect.

* * * * *

[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

BERNE, Aug. 22, (Dispatch to The London Morning Post.)--Gebweiler, in
Alsace, twelve miles to the northwest of Muelhausen, was taken by the
French at the point of the bayonet on Aug. 20. My correspondent, who has
just arrived at Basle from the field of battle, says that eight
battalions of the German One Hundred and Fourteenth Regiment, numbering
about 10,000 men, engaged the French Army. The French artillery was
deadly and caused great ravages among the Germans, few officers
escaping.

During the whole night the wounded were being transported to villages in
the neighborhood, beyond the reach of artillery. All the buildings of
Sierenz were filled with wounded.

Hundreds of horses were stretched on the field of battle. Those of the
German artillery were killed, and in consequence the German forces left
their artillery, of which about twenty guns are now in the hands of the
French.

The object of the German troops was to cut off the retreat of the French
and force them toward the Swiss frontier--an object which they failed to
achieve.

The wounded received here say that they passed a terrible night in the
open, without water or other succor, with the pitiful neighing of
wounded horses ringing in their ears.

*Rennenkampf on the Prussian Border*

[By a Correspondent of The London Daily Chronicle.]

GRADNO, (via Petrograd,) Oct. 21.--I have returned here after a journey
along the East Prussian frontier, as close to the scenes of daily
fighting as I could obtain permission to go. The route was from the
north of Suwalki southward to Graevo, a stretch of country recently in
German occupation, but where now remains not a single German outpost.

It is stimulating to see the Russian soldier in his habits as he lives
and fights. I have seen many thousands of them camped in the rain,
swamped in bogs, or marching indefatigably over the roads which are long
quagmires of mud, always with an air of stolid contentment and the look
of being bent on business. They include Baltic Province men speaking
German. Jews from Riga and Libau are brigaded with huge Siberians, whose
marching must constitute a world record. The Cossacks are past counting,
and with them are long-coated, tight-belted Circassians and Kalmucks,
all representing a mixture of races and languages like that of the
British Empire itself.

Actually the whole line is a battle front from north of Wirballen to
well into Poland, and no day passes without contact with the Germans.
This is an army in which every man has fought. Most of them have been in
hand-to-hand conflict with the Germans. They have approached the front
through a country which the enemy has devastated. There is no village
which does not bear the mark of wanton destruction. I have seen these
things for myself. Houses have been burned, others pillaged and the
contents dragged into the streets and there smashed. Churches have been
invariably gutted and defiled.

It is impossible not to admire these endless battalions of Siberians.
They are common objects of this countryside. I came past Suwalki as they
were moving up, column after column, in gray overcoats aswing in the
rhythm of their stride, like the kilts of Highlanders. It was they who
bore the brunt of the fighting, unsupported by artillery, in forests of
Augustowo, and, with the Baltic regiments, pushed on and took Lyck.
These are the men who marched forty miles, starting at midnight, then
went into action between Gor and Raigrod and delivered a bayonet charge
which their officers still boast about today.

I may not indicate the geography of the front on which the Russians and
Germans are now facing each other, but the German general plan is to
protect the railway and all approaches to a vital junction such as
Goldapp and Insterburg. Between them and the frontier lies a country of
singular difficulty for the troops. It is easy of defense, with small
broken hills, innumerable lakes and roads winding in watered valleys
among woods. The Germans have gone to earth in their usual lavish
fashion, digging themselves in with a thoroughness worthy of permanent
fortifications. Their trenches are five feet deep, with earthworks in
front zig-zagging as a precaution against enfilading. Some of them are
very cleverly hidden with growing bushes. All peasants remaining at the
country-side in Prussia are compelled to work digging trenches. The
emplacements [Transcriber: original 'implacements'] for guns of large
calibre have concrete foundations.

The Germans had fortified Suwalki, employing forced labor. They had
connected up the trench system with telephone installation and appointed
a Military Governor and other functionaries. Many German officers were
joined there by their wives and families, who when they retired took
with them souvenirs consisting of nearly every portable object of value
in the town, besides much furniture and clothing.

The Russian trenches are scarcely more than shallow grooves in the
ground with earth thrown up in front of them, making barely sufficient
cover for prone riflemen.

At once the German outer positions were carried by storm with ghastly
carnage.

"We didn't dig much," said a Russian officer to me. "We knew we
shouldn't stay there. We should either go forward or back, and we were
sure to go forward."

The cloud of patrols, mostly Cossacks, which flits unceasingly along the
German front is the subject of innumerable stories.

When the news was issued that the Kaiser had come east to take command
of his army on this front a Cossack came in, driving before him a plump,
distressed Prussian Captain whom he had gleaned during the day's work.

"I've brought him," he announced. "I knew him by his mustache," and he
produced an old picture postcard from his breast showing the Kaiser
with his characteristic mustache.

Near Augustowo the roads are literally blocked in many places with
abandoned German transports which became trapped in the terribly muddy
country. Dead horses in hundreds lie everywhere and the Russian Sanitary
Corps is busy burying them. Yet the Russians who are still moving about
this country retain not only their usual average health, but do not even
complain.

Between Augustowo and Raigrod a small stream is actually blocked with
German stores, including much gun ammunition. The German advance which
ended in this debacle has been the costliest defeat in point of
materials which they have yet suffered.

*The First Fight at Lodz*

*By Percival Gibbon of The London Daily Chronicle.*

WARSAW, Dec. 5, (by Courier to Petrograd.)--I have wired you previously
of the German force which advanced around Lodz and was cut off south and
east of the town. This consisted of two army corps--the Twenty-fifth
Corps and the Third Guard Corps. The isolated force turned north and
endeavored to cut its way out through the small town of Breziziny. It
was at Breziziny that final disaster overtook them.

The town and road lie in a hollow in the midst of wooded country, where
the Germans were squeezed from the Vistula and pressed to the rear. They
had fought a battle during the slow retirement of five days and were
showing signs of being short of ammunition. On the fifth day they made
their final attempt to pass through Breziziny. That was where that fine
strategist and fighting man who held Ivangorod on the Vistula brought
off the great dramatic coup for which he had been manoeuvring.

The Germans were holding the town and pouring through when he began his
general attack. Breziziny underwent nine hours of furious shelling and
only half the town is now remaining. The Russian infantry again proved
its sterling quality, and, supported by the tremendous fire of its own
guns, drove home charge after charge, smashing the German resistance
completely. By nightfall out of two army corps, numbering 80,000 men,
there remained only a remnant.

The number of prisoners reaches the total of about 20,000, and of the
remainder fully 80 per cent, were killed or wounded. This is the
estimate supplied to me. Owing to the small area on which the fighting
was concentrated, the dead are lying in great mounds and walls at points
where the charges were pushed home. For miles the countryside is dotted
with dead.

In the sparser grounds an unknown number of fugitives, most of whom are
wounded, are lurking in the woods. From Rawa, south of Skierniwice,
midway between Lodz and Warsaw, to Lodz on the line of the former German
retreat and present advance, not a single village remains. All the
burned-out district is utterly desolate.

On Dec. 1, 2, and 3 the force conducting the defense of the town of Lodz
was all but surrounded. The German positions were at Royicie on the
southern road, within four miles of the long, straggling street which
comprises most of the town of Lodz, while at Zgierz, seven miles to the
north, they had a battery of heavy guns with which they shelled the town
itself, killing several hundred civilians. The fire was chiefly directed
on the railway and station and the Russian guns were unable for some
time to locate the battery. It was discovered and reconnoitred at last
by an aeroplane.

[Illustration: The War in the East (with Net Change of Battle Line Up
to Jan, 1, 1915) from Eastern Prussia to Galicia.]

Then followed an act of heroism and harebrained enterprise which is now
the talk of the whole army. On Thursday night last the Colonel of
Artillery made his way out and with a little group of assistants
contrived to drag a field telephone wire within half a mile of the
German battery. While a searchlight was swinging over the face of the
country, he lay on the ground, and from there directed the Russian guns,
which with his help actually succeeded in silencing the battery. The
Russian guns were at this time placed in the streets of Lodz.

On Thursday night, when the attack culminated, there were 700 guns in
action at one time on both sides, and throughout the night all was
alight with flashes from the guns and bursting shells, and the thunder
of the guns was faintly audible on the outskirts of Warsaw, sixty miles
away.

Then there followed a general assault of the Germans, a charge of huge
masses of men, who followed up into the glare of the searchlights under
an inferno of gunfire. Here again the Siberians demonstrated the
qualities which have made them famous throughout the war. They met the
Germans with a rifle fire from the trenches which not only stopped them
but shattered them. They again played the old trick of allowing the
enemy to approach within fifty feet, meanwhile holding their fire, and
then blowing them off their feet with rifle fire and their use of the
mitrailleuse.

The attack failed utterly, and from the very manner of it the Russian
losses could not be otherwise than light, while the German losses in the
whole of the operations against Lodz and the neighboring positions
exceed a hundred thousand killed. No guess at the number of their
wounded can be attempted, but we know that score upon score of trains
filled with them have gone west along the Kalisz line, and still
continue to go.

*The First Invasion of Servia*

[By a Correspondent of The London Standard.]

NISH, Servia, Aug. 31.--After the butcheries and atrocities which I
witnessed during preceding battles I thought I would get accustomed and
insensible to these scenes of blood, but from my last visit to the
slaughter house I have brought such visions of horror that their very
thought makes me shudder. The object of the Austrian Army seems to have
been complete devastation.

The fierce battle which the Servians gave them incessantly for more than
a week may be divided into two conflicts of equal intensity which raged
along the ridge of the heights of Tser. Each of the two slopes,
descending one to the Save and the town of Shabatz and the other to the
Drina, is now nothing but a charnel house.

I could not say which of these two conflicts was more murderous, but
this admirably fertile region, with its countless fruit trees, is now
sheltering the last remains of hundreds of butchered men, women, and
children.

When after three days and three nights of truceless fighting the
Servians succeeded in surprising the enemy in the middle of the night at
Tser, the toll of dead was so colossal that the Servian troops were
constrained for the time being to abandon burying the corpses.

Everywhere the fighting was of the fiercest conceivable nature, for to
resist the invaders was to the Servians a question of life and death. At
several points they fought right up to the last man, succumbing but
never falling back.

The volunteer corps of Capt. Tankositch, the famous leader whose head
Austria is so anxious to gain, was charged to defend Kroupage, situated
south of the battle front, between Losnitza and Lionbovia. Considerable
Austrian forces attempted to advance with the view of driving the
Captain back.

For two days and three nights Tankositch and 236 volunteers held their
position. At last three whole Austrian regiments surrounded them, but
rather than yield to the enemy Tankositch and his gallant miniature army
resolved to fight to the last. In the dead of night he sent out a small
group to meet the Austrians. This group, consisting of a mere handful of
soldiers, hurled a shower of bombs at the enemy, cutting up his ranks,
and secured a free pass.

[Illustration: The Battlefield in Servia.]

At the first break of day, when Tankositch counted his men, only
forty-six answered the call. They surrounded more than a hundred
prisoners.

It will be realized that in the course of such sharp fighting the
Servian losses must have been considerable, although they were much
smaller than those of the enemy.

The most pitiful and heartrending aspect of these scenes was presented
by the long procession of Servian survivors from the neighboring
villages, consisting of old men, women, and children, bringing in the
heavy toll of mutilated human beings. At Valievo, the nearest town to
the field of battle, large masses of Servian and Austrian wounded kept
pouring in incessantly. About 10,000 have already arrived. All had to be
examined, all had to have their wounds dressed, and at Valievo there are
only six doctors.

In spite of this appalling shortage of medical aid, I witnessed
yesterday a most touching spectacle. A car drawn by oxen brought to the
hospital at Valievo its load of mutilated soldiers. In the first portion
of the car were three wounded Austrians and in the second two wounded
Servians and two more Austrians. The convoys wanted to carry the
Austrian wounded to the dressing room before their own wounded. A
Servian doctor stopped them.

"Bring the wounded in in the order in which they come," he commanded,
and, without any regard for the nationality of his patients, the doctor
and his colleagues commenced their humanitarian work.

What are the Red Crosses of the neutral countries waiting for? Why do
they not come here? In the name of gallant little Servia, in the name of
a humane and pitiful people, I make urgent appeal to the Red Crosses to
send a portion of their staff here. There are thousands of lives to be
saved.

Now I must begin a chapter of sorrows. I wanted to witness the
Austro-Hungarian excesses a second time before speaking of them, so that
I could give an exact and genuine account of actual facts. Courage
failed me to see all, but what I have seen can be summed up in one
phrase. In the environs of Shabatz the vanquished put the finishing
touch to their acts of fearful savagery by butchering their Servian
prisoners, whose corpses were found heaped up in the town.

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