What Russia is and Was

Taihape Daily Times, 12 April 1918, Page 6

What Russia is and Was

TH EXTENT OF HER DECADENCE,

. In our cable messages on Tuesday last there, appeared a statement that Germany had occupied Ekenas on the north and Reval on the south side of of the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, thereby securing control of the naval defences of Petrograd. Treachery of the most flagrant kind had played a leading part in the destruction of the Russian fleet as a fighting unit, German gold having been used to bribe the Russians to betray their country. The depths to which Russia has sunk can only be adequately realised by glancing over her performances in the field of battle in the earlier stages of the present war. Today, Russia in military value is the veriest cipher. To march on Petrograd is for Germany a mere pleasure excursion, the principal difficulty is to sweep together and carry off the piles of ammunition, the trains loaded with food, the hundreds of guns, and thousands of motor cars Russian troops have abandoned. What explanation is possible of an event so unprecedented? As instruments of destruction Lenin and Trotsky and their group have no parallel in history. To realise the extent of their destruction of a once great nation we have to remember what Russia was and fuS less than two years ago.

On April 28, 1915, Mackensen began his great drive against Russia; this three phalanx-shaped armies, moving on converging lines, seemed irresistible. It was a human torrent, rather than a human invasion. The four months which followed are described by Buchan as “the most tempestuous months that ever mortal armies endured;” and yet theogreat-armies of Russia emerged from it half;destroyed, perhaps, but arimes still, with courage unbroken and fighting qualities unlessened.

In the months which followed, they held three great German armies at bay; von Hindenburg’s: plans*'' miscarried, and the great prize wag missed— Hindenburg himself,- ifc'.'may be suspected, hardly realises why; ■ The reason, of course, ;eMraordinary tenacity and - skilivbf ,tfi® Russian resistance. 11l armedp-illnequipped ill fed, the Russian armies rcercT indestructible. In 1916 Russian revenge, in the shape .of Brusiloff’s famous raid, an expression- of fighting energy on the part of the- Russian aank and file, and to tactical skill in the Russian command, unsurpassed in the present war. Its first stage ended on June 23, and is described by Buchan as “one of the most spectacular; ’’ and rapid advances in the history of the war.” In three weeks,.a whole province had been reconquered, great cities had been taken, the Austrian line had been pierced, and ; some 200,000 prisoners made. In the astonishing weeks which followed, the strength of Austria was broken, more--than. .300,000 prisoners taken, and twice that number killed and wounded. Those ten weeks welded the Russian armies into a superb weapon. The new thing, the tremendous fact, which emerged, from that great adventure, was that Russia had shown she could adapt herself to modern warfare, and create a war-machine equal to that which Germany took forty years to shape and make perfect. Russian commanders had shown the highest military qualities; the Russian soldier had proved himself, not for the first time a fighter of the finest quality. And all this was true only eighteen months ago!