AUSTRIA'S NEW ARMIES

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2447, 28 April 1915, Page 9

AUSTRIA'S NEW ARMIES

A CORRESPONDENT'S ANALYSIS POOR PHYSIQUE AND SHORT TRAINING Budapest, February 17. The achievements of the Anstro-Hun-garian Army during the seven months of the war—for they began military , operations on July 23—have been, as wo know, of a very medioore character, for although it has been on the defensive' most of the time and fighting on its own. territory, it has not fulfilled the most • meagre _ expectations. This unprecedented disappointment came as a surprise not only to the people of the Monarchy itself, but also to the opposing forces, - Who e'xpeoted a much more developed and complete war machine in the great Army 'of Austria-Hungary.' _ Leaving aside the reversed suffered in Serbia, We find that never before has an army of. this size achieved so little and suffered such defeats. ; ~ . The modern Austro-Hungarian 'Army has not 'been called upon to act on the battlefield since 1878, when Herzegovina was oroupied. It -was said at that time in .Vienna that ail expedition would suffice to heat the Bosnians, but experience showed 1 that 60,000 men were not enough to complete the operations. That was a warning, but still not sufficient to establish the fact that the Austrian Army, with its mixed races and non-enthus-iastic people, needs twice as great a 'strength as any other nation to perform a given task. Th© i present war is positive proof of '«this, , for we see that ,an army of four million men equipped with almost everything necessary to modern warfare, could do no more than check the invasion here and there and' embark on an effective offensive once during this long period, and then only when assisted, by Germany. The present great offensive,movement in the Carpathians and Bukowina has been brought ahout with an immense force against a comparatively weak enemy, ! and •. onequarter of this force 'consisted of Germans. ,'

The Constitution of the Army. In order, to give an idea of the Strength and formation of tie AustroHungarian Army, may I in brief give an estimate 'of its constitution as it was when the war began and as it is now,_ some months later? Originally the Arm;' was composed of sixteen army corps. The Austrian and the. Hungarian Landwehr corps ar© incorporated . within these sixteen, and thus an Austro-Hungarian army corps is larger numerically than a German or Russian one.' An Austro-Hungarian army corps consists of eight, nine, or ten infantry regiments, one or two of .which are Landwehr troops, one regiment of Jaegers, a battalion of Engi- . users. Every brigade' haß its Field Artillery, Army Medical Service, and train;, every corps its heavy Haubitzer regi--Ment, besides ■ the/light and ■ heavy : cavalry regiments, so that a liberal estimate would put the number of men in an Austro-Hungari&n corps at fifty ' thousand on war footing The newlyformed Landwehr and Honved Artillery' and the infantry bring up this olass to thirty-six complete regiments, thus making the entire infantry force of the . Monarchy '148 regiments As; every regiment has its complete reserve (Reserve and Ersatz Reserve), . the number of these ' being generally twice'.the numerical strength of the first line regiment on war footing, we may take it that the complete number of an regiment",'with all its first line reserves, is something like-twelve thousand men. The 148 infantry . regiments, with their first line ps'erves of trained men, thus give a number, of trained- infantry—something like one million and eight, hundred thou- , , sand. Among these there are more than four hundred thousand educated taen, who served as one-year volunteers, and' are officer aspirants; thus no shortage of offioerß is possible. The ages of these 1,800.000 men are between 21 and 34, As they mobilised the trained men at the beginning of the .war up to the age of 377 another 150,000 can be added'to the number above,

making tie infantry total two complete millions. Another 600,000 completed. the cavalry, artillery, supply, engineer, etc., uruts. ■ Since the beginning of the war the trained men up to forty-five years of age, and the untrained between the ages of sevonteen-thirtiv-two were called to the colours, and nave been partly under training for the last six months, making a total of another million and a half, a part of these having been gradually replacing the enormous losses suffered during the autumn and winter campaign. • Thus at the present' day the Army of Austria-Hungary with tho forces in the field and under training consists of between three and a half and four million men. That is tho .limit of her military, power#.

War Corraspondents. As in everj; other State institution, line . Armj is _ exceedingly corrupt, liverywhere you can see what bribery fcnd influence, can do in exempting the Boh and tbe aristocrats from military Service. In Budapest young, ablebodied men enjoy life on the Corso' or travel as the newspaper correspondents Of favoured Government organs—zich bankers' sons, whose fathers subscribed to the War Loan on the condition that their sons would not be called upon to servo, and thousands of other parasites. A new business developed on a great scale whea the war ' broke out. For instance, those whom the newspapers appointed as" war correspondents were exempted from military service, arid thus rich youths have been offering Jarge sums of money to the Austrophil rress for a nomination. Some poor papers indeed have done good business oufc or this, and have hali-a-dozen war correspondents working for nothing, or even paying a montiily salary to the proprietors for their position. Under such circumstances naturally tho third and fourth levy, boys of seventeen and men of forty-five, are a pitiable sight, for tlio medical examination is confined to 'two questions, one regarding consumption and the/other as to lameness. The question as to eyesight, physical weakness, general fitness, or mental powers never arise at these examinations. The men are ushered ■ in before the doctor m groups of twonty, and under the pretext, that there is no time for a thorough examination a man is at once parsed over to the rccruitingrcom for enlistment. He gets twentyfour hours to settle his civilian affairs and make his will] and then is taken to the other end of the country for training. Before the town halls and public schools, where thoee things go on, women and children aro standing, v/Kh anxious and weeping eyes, awl tho 6cenes are ind<*cnboblo.

The period of training thcifi boys and middle-aged men is in some cases not --more than three to four weekn, for tiigy go on the principle that th<; soldier learns more at the front in a rmk's time than in' six months at tlio h:irr;i/:ks, 'At least that it what tho military s<rthorities ask them to believe, The »'<'?! reason is, of course, quite dilforfi/il, 'Rift reinforcement of tho troopa at the froni was a terrible problem for tho military authorities during the war. The hues were so great and the German (ififiern! Staff so impatient that they bs4 m choice but to send the men as they got them, very often after a iniuing of three weeks, Seven Weeks' Training. The new Levy,,which was called to ihl CWoutb on February 15, and which i« ta

serve for the contemplated spring campaign in March or April, will receive a training of six or seven weeks, ind is expected to oppose the great Russian new army of two millions, who are supposed to have been trained from the begjnning of the war. Sixty per cent, of these men, which number something like 800,000 men, mere boys from tho schools, are composed of Slovacks, Rumanians, Rutheniaus, etc., for they, being much inferior in physique than the Gorman and Hungarian element, contributed a considerable percentage of the men who had been rejected as unfit in previous years. Those people, 65 per cent, of whom are illiterate, have ttflearn military drill, tho German word of command, shooting, and all kinds of military exercises within six weeks. They are weak and- half-starved; they are to do the work of a trained and physically fit man: their moral is bad, their intelligence low, and they are' incapable of Understanding tho issues and the reason why they are called upon to fight. The original first line army of two millions with which Austria-Hungairy began the war is almost non-existent by now. ' These seven months have cost' the Monarchy four times as many men as they are willing to admit officially. We have lost not 400,000, but men, in killed, wounded, and Of these 200,000 wounded are gradually being sent back to the front, some of them, however, not having properly recovered. Accordingly we can safely say that the first line army of the first two millions is entirely broken up a}-, ready, and only a small fragment of it is still capable of resisting the hardships of warfare. The new reinforoements have comparatively small military value. The spirit of the army, however, is on no account broken, and one may expect some very good work from it yet, for the machine itself « Sound and perfect, only its man power is beginning to give way. The only hope is that the Russians are no better off. How much truth there is in' that hope we shall see in April.—"Morning Post."