Part 10

The scattered units of the German navy in other seas were gradually bottled up or destroyed. The Dreadnought _Goeben_, and the light cruiser _Breslau_, which were in the Mediterranean on the outbreak of hostilities, succeeded in evading the British fleet and reached the Dardanelles, where they played no small part in persuading the pro-German Turks, a few months later, openly to side with the Central Powers. Other German warships caught by the war in more distant waters included the light cruiser _Emden_, on the China station. The _Emden_ disappeared for six weeks and then turned up in the Bay of Bengal, bombarding Madras on 22nd Sept., and capturing some twenty British steamers in the same month. On 28th Oct. she sank a Russian cruiser in Penang Roads, as well as a French destroyer, but twelve days later (9th Nov.) ended her eventful cruise off Cocos (Keeling) Islands, where she called to destroy the cable and wireless station. The telegraphists on the island sent out a warning message which reached the _Sydney_, a British cruiser of the Australian squadron then escorting Australian and New Zealand troops to the war. Within three hours the _Sydney_ arrived on the scene, and having the range of the _Emden_ with 6-inch guns to 4.1-inch guns, forced the German cruiser ashore. After losing 7 officers and 104 men the _Emden_, burning and half-sunk, surrendered.

[Illustration: Map to illustrate the BATTLE OF THE FALKLAND IS.

Map illustrating approximately--from Admiral Sturdee's Dispatch--the Battle of the Falkland Islands from start to finish. The map must not be regarded as showing the proper scale of distances, &c.]

More dangerous than the _Emden_ was the German cruiser squadron under Admiral Graf von Spee, which concentrated in the South Pacific from Kiao-Chau and elsewhere. The squadron consisted of the twin cruisers _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, each of 11,400 tons, 22 knots speed, and an armament which included eight 8.2-inch guns; and three smaller cruisers, _Dresden_, _Nuernberg_, and _Leipzig_, each of 3500 tons, and carrying ten 4.1-inch guns. On 1st Nov. von Spee fell in with the weak British squadron under Admiral Cradock, who had been sent in August to protect the South Pacific trade, and was expecting reinforcements to cope with the German concentration. Cradock's squadron consisted of old ships like the cruisers _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_; the light cruiser _Glasgow_, and the armed liner _Otranto_; the pre-Dreadnought battleship _Canopus_, which had been left behind for repairs, being some twelve hours away. Outsteamed and outranged--though the _Good Hope_ (14,000 tons) had two 9.2-inch guns on board--with the setting sun silhouetting their surfaces against the sky, they were no match for the Germans, who made the most of the added advantage which their inshore position gave them, obscuring their outlines when, as the light began to fail, they drew nearer to Cradock's ships and opened fire. The _Good Hope's_ two 9.2-inch guns could not find their target in the fading light, and were soon put out of action by von Spee's flagship, the _Scharnhorst_, whose eight 8.2-inch guns, like those of the _Gneisenau_, which meantime was engaged in a similar duel with the _Monmouth_, now had the British at their mercy. The 6-inch guns of Cradock's ships, almost awash in the rolling seas, were useless. At 7.50 p.m. the _Good Hope_ blew up, but not before Cradock had ordered the _Glasgow_ to get away with all speed and warn the _Canopus_. The useless _Otranto_ had been ordered away before the battle opened. The _Monmouth_, after being silenced and set on fire by the 8.2-inch guns of the _Gneisenau_, was finally sunk by the _Nuernberg_. No survivors were picked up by the Germans, either from the _Good Hope_ or the _Monmouth_. With Cradock perished in this naval disaster off Coronel some 1500 officers and men.

Meanwhile the _Glasgow_, making full use of her 25-knot speed, had warned the slow old _Canopus_, and together they made their way back to the Falkland Islands to await developments. Four days later Lord Fisher, who had just succeeded Prince Louis of Battenberg as First Lord of the Admiralty (20th Oct.), dispatched Admiral Sturdee with a squadron bent on avenging Cradock, and protecting the valuable base and coaling-station of the Falklands. Sturdee's squadron included the two first battle-cruisers built--the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_, each of 17,250 tonnage, with a speed of 27 knots, and eight 12-inch guns, besides sixteen 4-inch guns and five torpedo tubes. There were also four lighter cruisers--_Carnarvon_, _Kent_, _Cornwall_, and _Bristol_; and to these were added the _Canopus_ when Sturdee reached the Falklands on 7th December. The _Glasgow_ had already been picked up in the South Atlantic. The superiority both in number and weight of guns was now overwhelmingly on the side of the British.

Von Spee, who claimed to have suffered little loss in his victory off Coronel, had returned in the meanwhile to Valparaiso to refit, leaving again for the Falklands on 15th Nov. His programme apparently was to do as much damage as possible to the British base and coaling-station at Port Stanley; account for the _Canopus_ and _Glasgow_, which he expected to find defending the port; and thence make for South Africa in support of the rebellion there. Only some twenty-four hours before he approached Port Stanley Admiral Sturdee had arrived, and the news sent by the signallers on the island at 8 a.m., that the unsuspecting enemy was approaching, found the crews grimy from coaling, but alert and ready. Von Spee sent the _Gneisenau_ and _Nuernberg_ ahead to shell the wireless station, but a salvo of 12-inch shells from the _Canopus_ in the harbour at 9.20 a.m. caused them to change their course. It was not, however, until 9.45 a.m., when the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ put out to sea with the _Glasgow_ and _Kent_, that the presence of the battle-cruisers was revealed to them. It was then too late to escape. The German ships were no match for the British battle-cruisers either in speed or gun-power. With the conditions of Coronel thus reversed, Von Spee, abandoning the attempt to run as hopeless, decided to die fighting, and met his death as gallantly as Cradock had done some five short weeks before. Both the _Scharnhorst_ and her sister the _Gneisenau_, battered by the two British battle-cruisers, who were later joined by the _Carnarvon_, until they were mere helpless hulks, fought to the last before they capsized, the first at 4.15 p.m., the second just after six. Boats were ordered out to save survivors, and some 200 Germans were picked up from these and other ships that were sunk. The _Leipzig_, pursued by the _Glasgow_ and _Cornwall_, kept up a running fight for three hours, and then, hammered to pieces, hauled her flag, but afterwards sank. The _Nuernberg_, after a longer chase, suffered a similar fate at the hands of the _Kent_, sinking an hour after surrendering. Only the _Dresden_ escaped, seeking refuge at Juan Fernandez, but three months later she was called to account there by the _Kent_ and _Glasgow_ (14th March, 1915), when, after a five minutes' action, she was blown up by her commander.

With no enemy fleet at sea the task of the British navy was reduced to guarding British commerce from submarines and raiders, keeping watch and ward in the North Sea, and conveying troops to and from the widely scattered theatres of war. Every month added to Britain's commitments in various parts of the globe. All hope of an early peace had vanished by the end of 1914.

_Mobilizing the Empire_

Happily for the British Empire, Lord Kitchener had from the first anticipated a long-drawn struggle. His call for volunteers "for three years, or the duration of the war", showed how clearly he realized the gravity of the situation. One of his first demands had been for another half-million men to go on with, and history has recorded how nobly the young manhood of the nation responded to his call. All the Dominions and Overseas possessions rallied to the Motherland with equal enthusiasm. We have shown how Indian troops--fighting for the first time on European soil--had already stepped into the breach on the Western front. The Canadians, nearest at hand, were the first of the Dominions to follow suit, but Australia and New Zealand, before their campaigns in Egypt and Gallipoli--and subsequently in France and Flanders--had already occupied Samoa, the Bismarck Archipelago, and other German islands in the Pacific.

_South Africa, 1914_

South Africa, on the outbreak of hostilities, had offered to carry the war into the German territory of South-West Africa, but General Botha had first to crush a revolt of Colonel Maritz's force; and this was succeeded by a more formidable rising in the Orange River Colony under De Wet, and in the Transvaal under Beyers. The response to Botha's call to arms proved the striking loyalty of the rest of the Union, and with the force thus mustered the South African Prime Minister completely defeated the rebels before the end of November. De Wet was captured, and Beyers was drowned in attempting to escape. The colonial campaign which followed will be dealt with subsequently.

_1915 on the European Fronts_

_The Russian Campaign._--The heaviest burden of the war on the main fronts was now borne by Russia. Having failed to force a decision in the West, Germany looked to the Eastern front for compensating triumphs, confident that she could maintain her defensive positions against the Franco-British armies until such time as, with Austria-Hungary's help, she had brought Russia to her knees. It was also necessary to overawe Roumania and any other hesitating Balkan state that might be disposed to throw in its lot with Russia and her allies. Russia herself was provoking this reversal of German strategy by her renewed advances both on the Carpathian and East Prussian fronts. Hindenburg made two attacks on Warsaw early in the year (February and March), one by way of the Narew and the other by that of the Niemen, but both failed, thanks chiefly to the indomitable spirit of the Russian infantrymen, ill-equipped though they were. It was not until Mackensen's great 'drive' began on the southern flank in Galicia that Germany's new strategy revealed itself. Russia had then reached the culminating point in her military career. Besides holding up the German offensive in Poland, she had made herself mistress of all East Galicia, Przemysl having fallen to General Selivanoff on 22nd March after an investment of five months, thus releasing 100,000 men to reinforce the armies under Ivanoff, Dmitrieff, and Brussiloff--then battling for the passes which led through the Carpathians into the Plain of Hungary. Przemysl alone yielded 126,000 Austrian prisoners, including the commander, General von Kusmanek, and 1000 guns. Between that period and the middle of April, when the Russians claimed possession of all the Carpathian heights along a front of 70 miles from south of the Dukla Pass to north of the Uszok Pass, another 70,000 Austrian prisoners were taken.

It was a dazzling, but an illusory triumph. The Russians had been deliberately led by the Austrians--under instructions from the German Higher Command--into their hazardous Carpathian adventure as part of the secret preparations for Mackensen's mighty blow elsewhere. Von Falkenhayn, then Chief of Staff, afterwards gave the credit for the plan to the German General Head-quarters. Germany, with all her factories turning out munitions of war far in excess of anything that the Allies could then muster, had been accumulating guns and ammunition for this purpose for months past, together with poison-gas and liquid fire, and a total force of some 2,000,000 well-armed men. Russia, on the other hand, though she might oppose this force with fully as many men, was coming to the end of her resources, and her troops were ill-equipped to meet the massed guns of the artillery brought against them when the German phalanx, after minor thrusts to left and right to cloak the real designs of the German Higher Command, began its overpowering advance on 1st May against the Dunajec lines, where Dmitrieff's Russian army believed itself securely entrenched. Mackensen's guns, opening up a way for the strongest army yet mustered under one general, blew the Dunajec lines to fragments. The Russian infantry clung to their positions to the last moment, but their rifles, often empty, were useless against high-explosive shells, or the waves of poison-gas which preceded the advance of Mackensen's shock troops.

[Illustration: Map to illustrate the German Attack north of Warsaw in February, 1915]

On 5th May, with its front wholly turned, Dmitrieff's shattered army withdrew as best it could from the Dunajec lines to the San River. All Russia's gains in Galicia were destined to be sacrificed in similar fashion. Brussiloff's advance through the Carpathians was at once arrested; by 14th May, when Everts' army on the Nida had also fallen back, all the passes had been evacuated, though not without appalling losses. In the Bukovina, however, the Russian army under General Lechitsky maintained a stubborn resistance south of the Dniester until 27th June, when it fell back to the Gnila Lipa. It was high time to retreat. Przemysl had again fallen into Austro-German hands (2nd June) as the first outstanding result of Mackensen's advance; Lemberg followed suit on 22nd June; and Halicz, abandoned by Brussiloff, fell on the day on which Lechitsky's army retreated from the Dniester to the Gnila Lipa. The end of June saw these positions abandoned and a further retreat in progress towards the line of the Lublin-Cholm railway.

Not cheaply were these spectacular triumphs won by the advancing armies of Mackensen and the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand. Their troops had been twice thrown back on the Dniester before that river had been finally won--a passage which cost them, all told, some 150,000 men; and in the successive retreats which followed, the Russian infantrymen turned repeatedly on their pursuers to prove that they were still capable of enforcing a price for every yard of ceded territory.

Mackensen's 'drive' was only part of the German Higher Command's plan for destroying the Russian armies in 1915. While the Austro-German phalanx was thus thrusting its way towards the Lublin-Cholm railway line, a simultaneous movement was in progress in the north, which had for its first objectives the great fortresses of the Polish salient, and Warsaw itself. Here Hindenburg, who was still in supreme command of the Austro-German forces on the Eastern front, had no longer General Ruzsky opposing him, Ruzsky having handed over the Russian northern command to Alexieff owing to ill-health. No matter how bravely the Russian infantrymen fought, or how ably they were led, they could not stand up against the hurricane of shot and shell which now blasted a path for the fully-equipped armies of von Below, von Eichhorn, von Gallwitz, von Scholtz, Leopold of Bavaria, and von Woyrsch. Prasnysz was won by von Gallwitz after a fierce battle in the middle of July, the Russians retiring to the shelter of the Narew fortresses guarding Warsaw from the north-east. Mackensen's advance to the south was resumed the next day, and the Grand Duke Nicholas, foreseeing the peril of this double threat, realized that his only hope lay in flattening the Warsaw salient and thus shortening his line. This sealed the fate of Warsaw, which was entered by Prince Leopold of Bavaria on 4th Aug. Ivangorod fell on the following day; Kovno on the 17th; Novo Georgievsk on the 19th. These losses, though deplorable, were not vital while the Russian armies still retained power to retaliate and recoup. Hindenburg strained every nerve to crush them once and for all. Ossowiec fell on 22nd Aug., the Russians resuming their retreat from the Niemen and Bobhr. Brest-Litovsk had already been threatened by the converging movement of Mackensen and Prince Leopold of Bavaria. Seeing no hope of saving it in the face of the continued pressure, the Grand Duke Nicholas evacuated this most easterly of the Polish quadrilateral of forts on the 25th, having previously stripped it, as in the case of the other evacuated fortresses, of all war material.

Hindenburg strove to complete the discomfiture of the main Russian armies by a fresh advance on his extreme left, where von Below was ordered to push through Courland towards Riga, with Petrograd as the ultimate goal in the following year. On this front the Russians had already been forced to relinquish Memel, just across the German frontier, as well as Libau. German naval forces had shared in the operations on the Riga coast-line, and when von Below, after carrying Mitau, some 30 miles from Riga itself, met with prolonged resistance, they made an ill-fated attempt to capture the port from the sea. This was on 18th Aug., when the Russian fleet appeared on the scene while the German naval contingents were attempting to land in flat-bottomed barges at Pernau. The landing forces were annihilated, and the German ships beaten off with a loss of two cruisers and eight torpedo-boats. The Russians only lost an old gunboat in this one-sided

## action.

The naval operations, however, had little effect on the main issue. Russian fortresses continued for another month to fall like ninepins before the Austro-German armies. Grodno was evacuated at the beginning of September, and though General Everts escaped from Brest-Litovsk with his supplies and guns, he could not hold up Mackensen's irresistible march on Pinsk, even in the Pripet marshes, which were dry at that season of the year. Pinsk was occupied on 16th Sept. Nowhere was the pressure relaxed. In the south, where the flood-tide of the Teutonic advance had never set so strongly, the attack on the Volhynian fortresses had been vigorously opposed by Ivanoff; but Boehm-Ermolli entered Lutsk on 1st Sept., and the Austrians recaptured Brody on the same day.

The vital blow at this stage was being delivered in the north, where von Below, bent on reaching Riga for his winter quarters, was marching on the Dvina lines with the immediate object of crossing that river and turning the whole Russian front as far as Dvinsk. The extreme left flank of the Germans fought desperately for the Dvina crossing at Friedrichstadt, but failed to make it good, and the danger-point shifted towards Vilna, the ten days' battle for which was decided at Meiszagowla on 12th Sept. Though two Russian divisions of the Imperial Guard were brought up to defend this key position, they were powerless to hold it against the great weight of German artillery. With its capture on 12th Sept., Vilna's fall became merely a matter of days. Before the Vilna armies could make good their escape, Hindenburg endeavoured to crown his triumph by outflanking them on both sides, von Eichhorn's cavalry sweeping round from Vilkomir in the north, and von Scholtz pressing forward, though less rapidly, on the southern side of the salient.

[Illustration: The Germanic Slice out of Russian Territory at the end of the Summer Campaign of 1915.]

In this supreme crisis on the Eastern front, Ruzsky, recovered from his illness, returned to his command of the northern battlefields, and signalized his reappearance--not for the first time--by changing the whole complexion of affairs. Reinforcements enabled him in the first place methodically to evacuate the Vilna salient under their protection. Hindenburg endeavoured to counter this by rushing up cavalry reinforcements, with 140 guns, to support his outflanking thrust in the north, which, reaching Vidzy on the 16th and Vileika on the following day--this being well to the rear of the Vilna armies--threatened irremediable disaster to the retreating Russians. They were saved by the series of flank-guard battles securing their one avenue of retreat, and Ruzsky's counter-offensive from Dvinsk--a stroke so effective that the long German cavalry arm was in itself now in danger of being cut off. Vidzy was recaptured on the 20th; Smorgon, south of Novo Grodek, on the 21st; and Vileika before the end of the month.

On 15th Sept. Lord Kitchener had publicly declared that the Germans had "shot their bolt" on the Eastern front; and, so far as the immediate destruction of the Russian army as a force in being was concerned, this was true, though it was hard to believe while the wide sweep of the German advance was in full force. Ivanoff's reaction was equally marked in the south, where Brussiloff and Lechitsky took von Bothmer and Pflanzer-Baltin by surprise. Before the end of September the Austro-Germans had not only been pushed back to the Strypa, but had also lost both Dubno and Lutsk (23rd).

Germany's great summer offensive was over, but Hindenburg tried hard to secure good winter quarters in the north by a renewed advance on Dvinsk and Riga. A frontal attack was launched on Dvinsk on 3rd Oct. and was a costly failure. Ruzsky had defended Dvinsk with a semicircle of far-flung trenches on the Verdun model, against which the German shock-troops and guns could make practically no progress. After three weeks of vain endeavour Hindenburg shifted the attack to Riga, with no better success and heavy additional casualties. Thrust and counter-thrust succeeded one another with little change in the general situation until the end of November, when, after temporarily securing a crossing at Dahlend Island, south-east of Riga, in the River Dvina, Hindenburg was forced to abandon the attempt as futile. With the help of their fleet the Russians won their way back to Kemmern; and in their counter-offensive from Dvinsk in the same month recaptured Illutsk. All hope was then abandoned by the Germans of taking either Riga or Dvinsk that year. The German effort in the south, below the Pripet marshes, also slackened. Ivanoff not only maintained the ground he had won, but scored several notable victories in the Strypa sector; but both here and along the Styr, where Lechitsky was opposing Bothmer, there was both give and take and nothing decisive--apart from the fact that Roumania was saved by this evidence of Russia's recuperative powers from choosing the wrong side.

In order further to influence the dubious attitude of Roumania, a fresh Russian offensive in the Bukovina was begun in the last days of the year, with Czernowitz as the objective; but as this rightly belongs to 1916 it will be dealt with in our summary of the operations for that year. Though Russia had not succumbed as a military power under the staggering blows she had received in 1915, she had lost 2,000,000 of her best fighting men, and the _moral_ of her army was never so high again. Falkenhayn has hinted in his _Memoirs_ that the Germans knew that the blind faith of the Russians in their rulers was already shaken before they started Mackensen's 'drive'. It could not be expected to endure in face of the criminal neglect and corruption which every day added to their hardships and losses at the front. The Russian court at that period has been described as a mixture of folly and intrigue, with 'dark forces' at work under pro-German influence, led by the impostor Rasputin. The Grand Duke Nicholas, who was above the treacherous influences now undermining all departments of the Russian system, had been transferred to the command in the Caucasus in the most critical hours of the Austro-Germanic advance, the supreme command of the Russian armies being taken over by the Tsar himself (5th Sept.), with Alexieff as Chief of Staff. The Tsar's motives were above suspicion; but he lacked the efficiency and generalship of the Grand Duke, and stood for a system which, under the searching test of war, was proving itself unworthy of the continued sacrifices of his subjects. The sacrifices were repeated in 1916, but the seeds were already sown of the red harvest which was to lead to Russia's downfall and the end of the Romanoffs.

_The Balkans, 1915_