SECRET OF RUSSIAN VICTORIES

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2333, 15 December 1914, Page 7

SECRET OF RUSSIAN VICTORIES

>. AN AUSTRIAN GENERAL'S TRIBUTE. A well-known Russian Admiral on active service who was some time ago summoned to the headquarters of the Grand Duke Nicholas, met an Austrian general there who had recently been taken prisoner. According to . the "Horning Post's" correspondent, ho states that the Austrian, whom he mot under very different circumstances in former years, was extremely anxious to exculpate his chiefs for the disastrous Galician campaign. "We do not claim," he said, "to have studied the science of war all our lives. or to have read all the history ana literature of wars in all ages, but you Russians know nothing of,the rides of military science. We know, you could only bo ready the fourteenth, day after mobilisation, and wo should.have beaten you, but you were at us the.'ninth, day. That is not in the.rides..,,. "Then every military export knows that the limits of human endurance forbid the covering of more thaii sixteen or eighteen miles a day, but.your men. did thirty and even forty. How could wo know that? How did you, do it? By all the rules of war we ought to have beaten you, the blame is. yours, not ours. You may have won,' ■ but by all the rules woliavo not lost.'!. The splendid compliment, conveyed l in this bantering tone by the captured general to bis old friend reveals, the secret of all Russian successes. There is only one rule in war—beat, the All the rest is an art which creates its own rales, and neither the Germans nor the Austrian? arc artists in war, but aro merely pedants, useful as teachers perhaps, like signposts which show the way but never get there. That is Russian opinion, from the Commander-ill-. Chief's _'Staff down to the Reservist after his first battle, and runaway boys who scout for the regiment and bring water to the helpless wounded wheii the light is over.