Part 20

[Sidenote: Northumberland Fusiliers capture Nevolien.]

"On September 10, 1916, detachments crossed the river above Lake Tachinos at five places between Bajraktar Mah and Dragos, while a sixth detachment crossed lower down at Neohori. The villages of Oraoman and Kato Gudeli were occupied, and Northumberland Fusiliers gallantly captured Nevolien, taking thirty prisoners and driving the enemy out of the village. The latter lost heavily during their retirement and in their subsequent counterattack. They also suffered severely from our artillery fire in attempting to follow our prearranged movements to regain the right bank of the river.

[Sidenote: Rise in the Struma River hinders operations.]

"On the 15th similar operations were undertaken, six small columns crossing the river between Lake Tachinos and Orljak bridge. The villages of Kato Gudeli, Dzami Mah, Agomah, and Komarjan were burned and twenty-seven prisoners were taken. The enemy's counterattacks completely broke down under the accurate fire of our guns on the right bank of the river. On the 23d a similar scheme was put into action, but a sudden rise of three feet in the Struma interfered with the bridging operations. Nevertheless, the enemy's trenches at Yenimah were captured, fourteen prisoners taken, and three other villages raided. Considerable help was given on each occasion by the French detachment under Colonel Bescoins, and much information was obtained which proved to be of considerable value during subsequent operations.

[Sidenote: British attack Matzikovo salient.]

[Sidenote: Heavy artillery fire from the enemy.]

[Sidenote: British carry out bombing raids.]

"On the Doiran-River Vardar front there remained as before the whole of the Bulgarian Ninth Division, less one regiment; a brigade of the Second Division and at least two-thirds of the German 101st Division, which had intrenched the salient north of Matzikovo on the usual German system. To assist the general offensive by the Allies I ordered this salient to be attacked at the same time as the allied operations in the Florina area commenced. With this object in view the whole of the enemy's intrenched position was subjected to a heavy bombardment from Septem. 11 to 13, 1916, the southwest corner of the salient known as the Piton des Mitrailleuses being specially selected for destruction. The enemy's position was occupied during the night 13th-14th, after a skillfully planned and gallant assault, in which the King's Liverpool Regiment and Lancashire Fusiliers specially distinguished themselves. Over 200 Germans were killed in the work, chiefly by bombing, and seventy-one prisoners were brought in. During the 14th the enemy concentrated from three directions a very heavy artillery fire, and delivered several counterattacks, which were for the most part broken up under the fire of our guns. Some of the enemy, however, succeeded in forcing an entrance into the work, and severe fighting followed. As hostile reinforcements were increasing in numbers, and as the rocky nature of the ground rendered rapid consolidation difficult, the troops were withdrawn in the evening to their original line, the object of the attack having been accomplished. This withdrawal was conducted with little loss, thanks to the very effective fire of the artillery. During the bombardment and subsequent counterattack the enemy's losses must have been considerable. On the same front on the night of the 20th-21st, after bombarding the hostile positions on the Crête des Tentes, a strong detachment raided and bombed the trenches and dugouts, retiring quickly with little loss. A similar raid was carried out northeast of Doldzeli.

"In addition to these operations and raids, constant combats took place between patrols, many prisoners being captured, and several bombing raids were carried out by the Royal Flying Corps.

[Sidenote: Operations on a more extensive scale.]

[Sidenote: Bridging the Struma River.]

"In order further to assist the progress of our allies toward Monastir by maintaining such a continuous offensive as would insure no transference of Bulgarian troops from the Struma front to the west, I now issued instructions for operations on a more extensive scale than those already reported. In accordance with these the General Officer Commanding on that front commenced operations by seizing and holding certain villages on the left bank of the river with a view to enlarging the bridgehead opposite Orljak, whence he would be in a position to threaten a further movement either on Seres or on Demir Hissar. The high ground on the right bank of the river enabled full use to be made of our superiority in artillery, which contributed greatly to the success of these operations. The river itself formed a potential danger, owing to the rapidity with which its waters rise after heavy rain in the mountains, but on the night of September 29, 1916, sufficient bridges had been constructed by the Royal Engineers for the passage of all arms. During the night of September 29-30 the attacking infantry crossed below Orljak bridge and formed up on the left bank.

[Sidenote: Scotch troops take several villages.]

"At dawn on the following morning the Gloucesters and the Cameron Highlanders advanced under cover of an artillery bombardment, and by 8 a.m. had seized the village of Karadjakoi Bala. Shortly after the occupation of the village the enemy opened a heavy and accurate artillery fire, but the remaining two battalions of the brigade, the Royal Scots and Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, though suffering severely from enfilade fire, pushed on against Karadjakoi Zir. By 5.30 p. m. that village also was occupied, in spite of the stubborn resistance of the enemy. Attempts to bring forward hostile reinforcements were frustrated during the day by our artillery, but during the night the Bulgarians launched several strong counterattacks, which were repulsed with heavy loss.

[Sidenote: Capture of Yenikoi.]

[Sidenote: Enemy counterattacks.]

[Sidenote: British consolidate new line.]

[Sidenote: Enemy casualties heavy.]

"During the following night determined counterattacks of the enemy were again repulsed, and by the evening of October 2, 1916, the position had been fully consolidated. Preparations were at once made to extend the position by the capture of Yenikoi, an important village on the main Seres road. This operation was successfully carried out by an infantry brigade, composed of the Royal Munster and Royal Dublin Fusiliers, on the morning of October 3, 1916, after bombardment by our artillery. By 7 a. m. the village was in our hands. During the day the enemy launched three heavy counterattacks. The first two were stopped by artillery fire, which caused severe loss. At 4 p. m. the village, the ground in the rear, and the bridges were subjected to an unexpectedly heavy bombardment from several heavy batteries which had hitherto not disclosed their positions. Following on the bombardment was the heaviest counterattack of the day, six or seven battalions advancing from the direction of Homondos, Kalendra, and Topalova with a view to enveloping our positions. This attack was carried forward with great determination, and some detachments succeeded in entering the northern portion of Yenikoi, where hard fighting continued all night, until fresh reinforcements succeeded in clearing out such enemy as survived. During the following day the consolidation of our new line was continued under artillery fire. On the 5th, after a bombardment, the village of Nevolien was occupied, the Bulgarian garrison retiring on the approach of our infantry. By the following evening the front extended from Komarjan on the right via Yenikoi to Elisan on the left. On the 7th a strong reconnoissance by mounted troops located the enemy on the Demir Hissar-Seres railway, with advanced posts approximately on the line of the Belica stream and a strong garrison in Barakli Djuma. On October 8, 1916, our troops had reached the line Agomah-Homondos-Elisan-Ormanli, with the mounted troops on the line Kispeki-Kalendra. The enemy's casualties during these few days were heavy.

[Sidenote: Assistance of the Royal Flying Corps.]

"I consider that the success of these operations was due to the skill and decision with which they were conducted by Lieutenant General C. J. Briggs, C. B., and to the excellent cooperation of all arms, which was greatly assisted by the exceptional facilities for observation of artillery fire. The Royal Flying Corps, in spite of the difficulties which they had to overcome and the great strain on their resources, rendered valuable assistance. Armored motor cars were used with effect. * * *

"On the enforcement of martial law the management of the three lines of railway radiating from Saloniki had to be undertaken by the Allies; one line, the Junction-Saloniki-Constantinople, is now entirely administered by the British Army; this, together with the additional railway traffic involved by the arrival of the Serbian Army, as well as the Russian and Italian troops, has thrown a considerable strain on the railway directorate."

* * * * *

Russia, after three years of warfare against Austria and Germany, during which millions of her soldiers were killed and wounded, startled the world suddenly, in February, 1917, by casting out the Czar and establishing a provisional government, which purported to be a government by the people and not by the bureaucracy. The dramatic events of the first days of the revolution are described in the following chapter.

IN PETROGRAD DURING THE SEVEN DAYS

ARNO DOSCH-FLEUROT

Copyright, World's Work, July, 1917.

[Sidenote: Cossacks trotting through the Nevsky in Petrograd.]

A crowd of ordinary citizens were passing in front of the Singer Building on the Nevsky in Petrograd at noon February 25th, Russian time (March 10th), stopping occasionally to watch a company of Cossacks amiably roughing some students with a miscellaneous following who insisted on assembling across the street before the wide, sweeping colonnades of Kasan Cathedral. As the Cossacks trotted through, hands empty, rifles slung on shoulders, the crowds cheered, the Cossacks laughed.

A few trolley cars had stopped, though not stalled, and groups of curious on-lookers had crowded in for a grandstand view. The only people who did not seem interested in the spectacle were hundreds of women with shawls over their heads who had been standing in line for many hours before the bread-shops along the Catherine Canal.

[Sidenote: Some Cossacks and infantry in side streets.]

[Sidenote: People charged by police.]

People were going about their affairs up and down the Nevsky without being stopped, and sleighs were passing constantly. Cossacks and a few companies of infantrymen were beginning to appear on the side streets in considerable numbers, but, as a demonstration over the lack of bread in the Russian capital had been going on at intervals for two days with very little violence, people were beginning to get used to it. I arrived from the direction of the Moika Canal just as the cannon boomed midday and I felt sufficiently unhurried to correct my watch. Then I hailed a British general in uniform who had arrived, also unimpeded, from the opposite direction, and we had just stopped to comment on the unusual attitude of populace and Cossacks, when there was a sudden rush of people around the corner from the Catherine Canal and before we could even reach the doubtful protection of a doorway a company of mounted police charged around the corner and started up the Nevsky on the sidewalk. We were obviously harmless onlookers, fur-clad bourgeois, but the police plunged through at a hard trot, bare sabres flashing in the cold sunshine. The British general and I were knocked down together and escaped trampling only because the police were splendidly mounted, and a well-bred horse will not step on a man if he can help it.

[Sidenote: Display of stupid physical force.]

This was a display of that well-known stupid physical force which used to be the basis of strength of the Russian Empire. Its ruthlessness, its carelessness of life, however innocent, terrorized, and, we used to think, won respect. We know better now, especially those of us who were eye-witnesses of the Russian revolution, and saw how the police provoked a quarrel they could not handle.

[Sidenote: Crowds begin to be dangerously large.]

I watched the growth of the revolt with wonder. Knowing something of the dissatisfaction in the country, I marveled at the stupidity of the Government in permitting the police to handle its inception as they did. Any hundred New York or London policemen, or any hundred Petrograd policemen, could have prevented the demonstrations by the simple process of closing the streets. But they let people crowd in from the side streets to see what was going on even when the crowds were beginning to be dangerously large, and, having permitted them to come, charged among them at random as if expressly making them angry.

[Sidenote: Ease with which Czar was overthrown.]

I look back now at the time before the Revolution. The life of Petrograd is much as it was to outward appearances except that the new republican soldiers are now policing the streets, occasional citizens are wearing brassarts showing they are deputies of some sort or members of law-and-order committees, and there is a certain joyous freedom in the walk of every one. Here, in one corner of this vast empire, a revolt lacking all signs of terrorism, growing out of nothing into a sudden burst of indignation, knocked over the most absolute of autocracies. Just to look, it is hard to believe it true. As a Socialist said to me to-day: "The empire was rotten ready. One kick of a soldier's boot, and the throne with all its panoplies disappeared, leaving nothing but dust."

I asked President Rodzianko of the Duma the other day:

[Sidenote: Revolution inevitable after Duma was dissolved.]

"From what date was the revolution inevitable?"

I expected him to name one of the days immediately before the revolt, but he replied:

"When the Duma was dissolved in December without being granted a responsible ministry."

"How late might the Emperor have saved his throne?"

"New Year's. If he had granted a responsible ministry then, it would not have been too late."

[Sidenote: The Government brought Cossacks to Petrograd.]

The Government was either blind or too arrogant to take precautions. It had fears of an uprising at the reconvening of the Duma and brought 13,000 Cossacks to Petrograd to put fear into the hearts of the people, but it permitted a shortage of flour which had been noticeable for several weeks to become really serious just at this moment. There were large districts of working people practically without bread from the time the Duma reconvened up to the moment of the revolution.

[Sidenote: Situation needed a great ruler.]

In the palace at Tsarskoe-Selo the seriousness of the situation was not ignored, but the preventive measures were lamentable. The Emperor, also, went to the front. If he had been a big enough man to be an emperor he would certainly never have done so. That left the neurasthenic Empress and the crafty, small-minded Protopopoff to handle a problem that needed a real man as great as Emperor Peter or Alexander III.

[Sidenote: The author on the point of leaving Russia.]

[Sidenote: The appearance of Cossacks.]

When the Duma reconvened without disorders it never occurred to me that the Government would be foolish enough to let the flour situation get worse. I was so used by this time to see the Duma keep a calm front in the face of imperial rebuffs that I thought Russia was going to continue to muddle on to the end of the war and, though I thought I was rather well-posted, I confess I was on the point of leaving Russia to return to the western front, where the spring campaign was about to begin with vigor. As late as the Wednesday before the revolution I was preparing to leave. That day I learned that several small strikes which had occurred in scattered factories could not be settled and that several other factories were forced to close because workmen, having no bread, refused to report. Still I remember I was not too preoccupied by these reports to discuss the possibility of a German offensive against Italy with our military attaché, Lieutenant Francis B. Riggs, as we strolled down the Nevsky in the middle of the afternoon. We had reached the Fontanka Canal when we passed three Cossacks riding abreast at a walk up the street. They were the first Cossacks to make a public appearance, and they brought to the mind of every Petrograd citizen the recollection of the barbarities of the revolution of 1905. Their appearance was a challenge to the people of Petrograd. They seemed to say, "Yes, we are here." If any one had said to me that afternoon, "These Cossacks are going to start a revolution which will set Russia free within a week," I should have regarded him as a lunatic with an original twist.

[Sidenote: Petrograd life normal.]

The life of Petrograd was still normal as late as Thursday morning February 23d, Russian style (March 8th). The bread lines were very long, but Russians are patient and would have submitted to standing four or five hours in the cold if in the end they had always been rewarded, but shops were being closed with long lines still before them, and the disappointed were turning away with bitter remarks.

[Sidenote: The historic spot for protests.]

[Sidenote: Cossacks merely keep the crowd on sidewalks.]

The open ground before Kasan Cathedral is the historic spot for protests and, true to tradition, the first demonstration against the bread shortage began there Thursday morning toward noon. There were not more than a dozen men speaking to groups of passing citizens. Each gathered a constantly changing audience, like an orator in Union Square, New York. But the Nevsky is always a busy street and it does not take much to give the appearance of a crowd. Examining that crowd, I could see it had not more than a hundred or two intent listeners. A company of Cossacks appeared to disperse it, but they confined themselves to riding up and down the curbs keeping the people on the sidewalks. The wide street was, as usual, full of passing sleighs and automobiles. Even then, at the beginning, it must have occurred to the military commander, General Khabaloff, that the Cossacks were taking it easy, or perhaps the police acted on their own initiative; at any rate the scene did not become exciting until mounted police arrived, riding on the sidewalk and scattering the curious onlookers pell-mell. By one o'clock the Nevsky was calm again, and the street cars, which had been blocked for an hour, started once more.

[Sidenote: Duma discusses food situation.]

[Sidenote: The first snarl of the mob.]

That afternoon I went to the Duma, where the mismanagement of the food situation throughout Russia was being discussed. I had a glass of tea with a member of the liberal Cadet Party, and he seemed more concerned with the victualing of the country than with the particular situation in Petrograd. Toward evening I drove back along the Nevsky and my 'ishvoshik was blocked for a few minutes while a wave of working people, in unusual numbers for that part of town, passed. They were being urged on by Cossacks, but they were mostly smiling, women were hanging to their husbands' arms, and they were decidedly unhurried. It was not a crowd that could be in any sense called a mob, and was perfectly orderly, but it did not go fast enough to suit the police and a dozen of them came trotting up. Their appearance wiped the smile away, and when they began really roughing I heard the first murmurings of the snarl which only an infuriated mob can produce. I wondered what the police were up to. They were obviously provoking trouble. I felt then we might be in for serious difficulties--and the attitude of the police gave me the fear.

[Sidenote: Watching for the Cossacks to act.]

[Sidenote: A red flag.]

Friday morning only a few street cars were running, but the city was quiet enough until after ten in the morning. Then the agitators, their small following, and the onlookers, sure now of having a spectacle, began gathering in considerable numbers. I was still expecting the rough work to commence with the Cossacks, but after watching them from the colonnades of the cathedral for half an hour I walked out through the crowd and, shifted but slightly out of my route by the sway of the crowd as Cossacks trotted up and down the street, crossed the thick of it. Green student caps were conspicuous, and one of the students told me the universities had gone on strike in sympathy with the bread demonstration. As a company of Cossacks swung by, lances in rest, rifles slung on their shoulders, I scanned their faces without finding anything ferocious there. Some one waved a red flag, the first I had seen, before them, but they passed, unnoticing.

[Sidenote: Crowd not yet dangerous.]

This time the crowd did not break up but began to bunch here and there as far as the Fontanka Canal. All afternoon the Cossacks kept them stirring, and occasionally the police gave them a real roughing. Each time the police appeared, I heard that menacing murmur, but by Friday evening, when the day's crowd disappeared, the increase in discontent and anger had not developed sufficiently in twenty-four hours to be really dangerous. I felt the Government still had plenty of time to remove the discontent, and an announcement pasted up conspicuously everywhere saying there would be no lack of bread seemed like an assurance that the Government would somehow overnight provide all bakers with sufficient flour. That was the one obvious thing to do.

[Sidenote: A tour of the Wiborg factory district.]

During the afternoon I made a long tour through the Wiborg factory district, which was thickly policed by infantrymen. Occasional street cars were still running, but otherwise the district was ominously silent. The bread-lines were very long here, and on the corners were groups of workmen. Their silent gravity struck me as being something to reckon with. Still the lack of real trouble on the Nevsky as I came back in a measure reassured me.

[Sidenote: Crowd friendly with Cossacks.]

Saturday morning the crowd on the Nevsky gathered at the early Petrograd hour of ten, but they seemed to be there to encourage the Cossacks. Wherever the Cossacks passed, individuals called out to them cheerfully and, even though they crowded in so close to the trotting horsemen as to be occasionally knocked about, they took it good-humoredly and went on cheering. I went away for an hour or so and when I returned the fraternizing of the crowd and the Cossacks was increasingly evident. By this time all sorts of ordinary citizens, catching the sense of events, were joining in the general acclamation. I was just beginning to get a glimmering of the meaning of all this when I was bowled over by the mounted police in front of the Singer Building.

[Sidenote: Crowd beginning to challenge police.]

[Sidenote: Soldiers fire but wound few.]

[Sidenote: Police inviting quarrel.]