T

HE week of February 10 to February 17 was a week of many words and few deeds, except in East Prussia, where the crumpling of the Russian advance by General von Hindenburg was the occasion for the declaration of another holiday in the German schools. On the sea and in the western war zone ashore it was as if the contending forces, like the nations supporting them, were too much engaged in speculating upon the probable results of the projected establishment of the German maritime war zone to give their whole attention to the matters immediately before them.

Hindenburg, however, was not to be diverted from his own plans. Thanks to his thorough knowledge of the whole terrain in East Prussia and Poland and to the splendid German railway system, he was able to balk the Russian attempt to catch him unawares in East Prussia, turning the tables on the invaders, from whom, it is reported, he took twenty-six thousand prisoners and quantities of supplies. The Russians were forced to fall back into their own territory, being swept cleanly from the vicinity of those Masurian Lakes which Hindenburg had. predicted to his scoffing German colleagues before the war would some day be "of more value to Germany than a wall two hundred feet high."

The latest claims of the Germans as we go to press are that in their pursuit of the fleeing Muscovites they have captured the town of Plock, on the Vistula, about fifty miles northwest of Warsaw, and the town of Bielsk, some ninety-five miles northeast of the capital of Russian Poland and seventy miles from the border. As far as can be determined from the always rather unreliable despatches, the Russian front has been pretty well caved in between Plock and Bielsk north of Warsaw and north of the Bug River. Between these points the Russian lines seem to have dropped back distances varying from twenty to seventy miles.

NO "DECISIVE BATTLE" YET From Bielsk up to a point on the border near Lyck the Russian line now. bends

sharply toward the enemy's territory, and between this point and the Niemen the still practically intact northern army of the Czar menaces Hindenburg's flank. Thus Hindenburg's triumph cannot be greeted as the longawaited "decisive battle" of the eastern campaign, although it was certainly cleancut, and as spectacular a feat as has been seen on land since the "old man of the Lakes" took Lodz in December.

The strategy of this grizzled hero was so beautifully simple as to delight even the lay observer. If I may be allowed a football analogy, he had vainly bucked the Russian center before Warsaw for weeks, with losses so frightful that even the Kaiser was beginning to grumble to his headstrong commander; so now he decided to try to skirt one of his opponents' ends. The East Prussian extremity seemed the one to attack, not only because there were better facilities for concentrating troops in that neighborhood than on the Carpathian flank, but because the Russians on the German left were seriously menacing several valuable towns in East Prussia. Making a strong diversion in the Carpathians with reinforcements despatched there, he gathered together some 200,000 men from the snow-banked trenches near Lodz, from the reserve armies in the Fatherland, and perhaps from the lines in France and Flanders, and by a sudden lunge from a wellmasked position turned the Russian advance into a retreat-almost a rout.

HINDENBURG NOT A NAPOLEON

Although Hindenburg stands out head and shoulders above any other leader upon whom the spot-light of the war has yet fallen, and although he has earned the thanks of every German by his brilliant generalship in Poland and Prussia, these successes in the eastern arena are not attributable solely to one man's genius, as the victories of Napoleon were attributable to the genius of the Little Corporal alone. It is the German talent for organization and preparation which has permitted Hindenburg's strategic genius to have full play in these Polish and East Prussian maneuvers. These battles were half won before

this war was declared by the wisdom of the German General Staff in perfecting the machinery which enables Germany to create armies overnight and get them to the right spot long before the armies of any other nation in Europe can get there.

The Russians are disposed to be philosophical about these defeats. They say that it is not miles but men that separate them from Berlin, and that the number of these men may best be reduced by sitting back in trenches and mowing down the Germans as they attack.

In short, the Russians know

that in a military chess game, where piece is swapped for piece, they must win. Therein is the consideration which makes calamity of such German successes as these about the Masurian Lakes. They only postpone the collapse which is almost inevitable if Russia continues willing to swap man for man.

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY AT ITS BEST

The simultaneous communication by our State Department of protests to Germany and Great Britain against the establishment of.a maritime war zone dangerous to American shipping by German submarines, and the use of the American flag by British merchant vessels, is the most important development in "The Story of the War" this week, so far as America is concerned.

The note to Germany conveniently falls into four divisions. After recapitulating the German warning that, in view of the misuse of neutral flags alleged to have been ordered by the British Government, it may not always be possible for the Germans to exempt neutral vessels within the war zone from attacks intended to strike enemy ships, the American note, in the first place, points out to Germany that any such molestation of neutral vessels would be flatly contrary to international law, which grants the right of visit and search on the high seas for the specific purpose of enabling a belligerent vessel to determine the nationality of ambiguous craft.

In the second place, our Department of State takes occasion to "remind the Imperial German Government very respectfully that the Government of the United States is open to none of the criticisms for unneutral action to which the German Government believes the governments of certain other neutral nations have laid themselves open, .. and that it, therefore, regards itself as free in the present instance to take with a clear con

science and upon accepted principles the position indicated in this note."

The third consideration handled is the backbone of the entire communication. If by the act of the commander of any German war-vessel an American ship or the lives of American citizens should be lost on the high seas, the United States "would be constrained to hold the Imperial Government of Germany to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities, and to take any steps it might be necessary to take to safeguard American lives and property, and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyment of their acknowledged rights on the high seas.' An admonition from one friendly nation to another could hardly be firmer than this.

In conclusion, the American Government, "with the greatest respect, expresses the confident hope and expectation that the Imperial Government can, and will, give assurance that American citizens and their vessels will not be molested by the naval forces of Germany otherwise than by visit and search, though their vessels may be traversing the sea area delimited in the proclamation of the German Admiralty."

In the note to the British Government the State Department, "assuming that the reports are true" of the use and intended use of the American flag by British merchantmen, reserves "for future consideration the legality and propriety of the deceptive use of the flag of a neutral Power in any case for the purpose of avoiding capture."

The Department, however, sees a distinction between the occasional use of a neutral flag for such a purpose and "an explicit sanction by a belligerent government for its merchant ships generally to fly the flag of a neutral Power within certain portions of the high seas, which are presumed to be frequented with hostile war-ships." In this regard it is said that "the United States would view with anxious solicitude any general use of the flag of the United States by British vessels traversing those waters."

Therefore, in conclusion, the American Government "trusts that his Majesty's Government will do all in their power to restrain vessels of British nationality in the deceptive use of the United States flag in the sea area defined by the German declaration, since such practice would greatly endanger the vessels of a friendly Power navigating those waters, and would even seem to impose upon the Government of Great Britain a measure

of responsibility for the loss of American lives and vessels in case of an attack by a German naval force."

These notes are courteous, dignified, restrained, and to the point. Their language and tone is almost identical, the only difference being such as is inevitable from the fact that the note to Germany treats of a matter of more seriousness than the subject handled in the protest to England. These notes constitute the most aggressive piece of diplomatic correspondence that has emanated from Washington since President Cleveland's Venezuelan message.

INDICATIONS OF A BITTER STRUGGLE

That the end of the war is to come only by the wearing down of the belligerents is indicated more and more every day. One such indication was the tone of the speech of Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the British House of Commons the other day. Estimating that during the present calendar year the aggregate war expenses of the Allies will be about $10,000,000,000, he said:

"We could pay for our huge expenditure on the war for five years, allowing a substantial sum for depreciation out of the proceeds of our investments abroad. France could carry on the war for two or three years at least out of the proceeds of her investments abroad, and both countries would still have something to spare to advance to their allies." There was no hint of a speedy termination of the war in the words of this astute statesman.

THE FATE OF LODZ

To go back to the castern war arena for a moment, the claim of Petrograd that the Germans have evacuated Lodz, which they have held since December 6, is unconfirmed as this is written. It is certain, however, that they have withdrawn from many of their strong positions about Lodz and Lowicz in order to strengthen themselves in East Prussia and the Carpathians. The loss of Lodz would be but a slight blow, anyway, since it has been found impossible to take Warsaw by frontal attacks with Lodz as a base.

In the Carpathians the week seems to have gone against the Czar, as it has gone against him at the other tip of his far-flung line. The Russians, it is true, in the important Dukla Pass and along the upper reaches of the San River, in Galicia, have stood as

firm as the hills about them, but east of this point, particularly in Bukowina, they have fallen back everywhere along a front of nearly one hundred miles, by Petrograd's admission. An Austrian army, leavened by some Bavarians, and no doubt German-controlled, has begun the execution of a large-scale turning movement against the Russians about Czernowitz, the capital of the province, which threatens the Slavs as the Allies' turning movement threatened General von Kluck on the Marne in September. Tne Teutons have crossed the Sereth River about Czernowitz to cut off the retreat of the Slavs from that stronghold, which is still being strongly defended. The recapture of Czernowitz would be an event of great psychological importance, as it would be calculated to put new loyalty into the wavering Bukowinians.

ALBANIA VS. SERVIA

The Albanian leader who took a force of fellow-countrymen into Servia merely "walked right in, turned around, and walked right out again," according to a humorous correspondent interpreting the official statement to that effect from Nish. The Servian border defenders fell back until reinforced, it is said, and then fell upon the Albanians with slaughterous results. Apparently this abortive attempt was incited by Mohammedans preaching the Holy War.

AIR-SHIPS AND SUBMARINES

If the British reports of their large-scale aeroplane raid on German naval and military bases on the Belgian coast are to be believed, the value of the aeroplane as an instrument of destruction has at last been amply demonstrated. The British aver that their aircraft damaged the railway stations at Ostend and Blankenberghe as well as several small naval vessels at Zeebrugge. It is well to take these claims with a grain of salt, however.

An American citizen, Alfred Edwards by name, who arrived at the port of New York recently, gave a vivid account of the merciless efficiency of the German submarine. Edwards was an oiler on the British freight steamer Icaria, which was torpedoed fifteen miles off Havre on January 31. According to Edwards, as the submarine came toward the steamer with her metal back swashing in the green seas the freighter's captain ran up the British ensign. The intrepid U 21, for she it was, gave no hail or signal, but immediately torpedoed the larger vessel twice. The

Icaria's crew took to their boats and were picked up by French destroyers. According to the newspapers, Edwards expressed his · opinion that if the Icaria's captain had run up

the Stars and Stripes instead of the Union Jack, his vessel would not now be resting on the bed of the English Channel. New York City, February 17, 1915.

EVER, perhaps, in the world's history has a nation been called upon to bear a heavier burden of relief work than that which the Russians have had to carry during the last six months. They have been waging war on three frontiers; they have put into the field four or five million men; and they have been compelled not only to take care of five hundred thousand prisoners and five or six hundred thousand wounded, but to succor immense hordes of destitute fugitives, and to aid in one way or another two or three million families left without adequate support when their breadwinners were called to the colors. In bearing this 'burden and doing this work th Russians have shown a capacity for self-sacrifice and a spirit of patriotic devotion which have seldom been equaled and never, perhaps, surpassed.

It is too soon, as yet, to give anything like a full or accurate account of Russian endeavors and achievements in this field; but even from the fragmentary data now available it may be possible to sketch the relief work of the nation in outline, and to describe briefly some of its methods and results.

The most important, and at the same time the most difficult, problem set before the Russian people by the war was the transpor tation and care of the wounded. They came back from the Caucasus in tens of thousands, and from Prussia, Poland, and Austria in hundreds of thousands; and to provide them all with food, fresh clothing, hospital accommodations, and surgical care was a colossal task. A large part of this work-particularly at first-was done by the Red Cross, which in the early part of the war was the only organized body, outside of the army, which had been trained and equipped for such service. In the first four months of the war it spent nearly fifteen million rubles,1 and established at or near the front

1 The Russian ruble is equivalent to about fifty cents in American coin.-G. K.

70 base hospitals, 64 stationary lazarets, 40 movable lazarets, and 22 field hospitals, with an aggregate capacity of 50,000 beds. It also put into the field six automobile divisions, a sanitary division, an epidemic division, a disinfecting division, and two sanitary trains; and established back of the fighting lines 78 bandaging and feeding stations, every one of which was capable of giving food and first aid to 2,000 men a day. Its total working force numbered more than 18,000 persons, and included 696 surgeons, 8,000 stretcher-bearers and sanitarians, and more than 10,000 nurses.1

The

But the care of the wounded was not left to the Red Cross alone, great though its means and facilities were. The whole Empire mobilized its helpful forces, and thousands of governmental and social organizations co-operated in the work of relief. city councils of more than one hundred cities and towns formed a great municipal union, and established two hundred and thirty hospitals or lazarets in Petrograd alone. The zemstvos (provincial and district assemblies) also formed a great union, and not only established hundreds of hospitals in different parts of the country, but raised and spent immense sums of money in caring for soldiers' families, establishing labor bureaus, succoring destitute refugees, providing asylums for soldiers' orphans, and doing many other kinds of relief work.

The railway men of the Empire combined,. under the Ministry of Ways and Communications, and, after raising 850,000 rubles as a first subscription, pledged themselves to give 270,000 rubles a month from their wages during the whole period of the war. With this money the Ministry equipped eleven sanitary trains, each capable of transporting four hundred wounded men, and organized seventy-seven lazarets with an aggregate capacity of 4,300 beds. It also established

1 Statement of the Grand Duchess Ksenia Alexandrovna, Petrograd "Reitch," November 22, 1914.

more than a hundred feeding and relief stations along the routes by which the wounded were brought back from the front.

Most of the other Ministries, with the aid of their employees, organized hospitals or lazarets, in Petrograd or at the front, and the Ministry of Justice (in combination with the Supreme Court) was authorized to increase its relief fund by issuing and selling to the public postal stamps of distinctive design for letters, newspapers, and packages.

The Polytechnic Institute of Petrograd established a war hospital of one thousand beds, and the Imperial Geographical Society created another in its own building. The Free Economic Society opened two hospitals in Petrograd and one in the Caucasus, and established a number of feeding and relief stations for destitute refugees driven out of Turkish Armenia by the Turks and the Kurds. Hospitals or lazarets with a capacity of from three hundred to one thousand beds were also created by the FrancoRussian Bank, by the higher schools of Petrograd, and by the colleges for women ("Beztuzhevski Higher Courses") in Petrograd, Moscow, and Odessa.

Even in the cities where there was no established organization to take the lead, or where the existing facilities for relief work were inadequate, citizens formed committees and organized hospitals, with very little money or with none at all. In Kiev, for example, a committee of women raised a few thousand rubles; secured the use of a large empty four-story building; cleaned and disinfected it themselves with the aid of peasant women and the older scholars from the public schools; collected cots, beds, and bedding from patriotic dealers or private families; and established a hospital large enough to accommodate 3,500 wounded men. All this was done by the co-operative work of the people, upon the initiative of a few women, and with only a few thousand rubles in actual cash.

In Ekaterinoslav the citizens got together and formed what was known as the "Count Keller Committee "1 for social relief in general and the care of the wounded in particular. Great interest was taken by the common

Named in honor of Count Keller, who was Governor at Ekaterinoslav in the last decade of the last century, and who was afterward killed in the battle of Mo-tien-ling in Manchuria. He was not only honored by his countrymen at home, but was highly esteemed by his enemies the Japanese. There was sincere mourning, I remember, in Tokyo when the news of his death was received there. -G. K.

people in the work of this Committee, and large sums of money were raised for it by means of concerts, lotteries, and amateur theatricals in the peasant villages. In many. of the large Russian settlements there is a good deal of musical and histrionic talent, and in order to raise money for relief work the peasant choirs and troupes went to the nearest cities, where, under the management of the Committee, they gave public concerts and plays. On the 14th of last November the Count Keller Committee had one hundred and seven local branches, and was maintaining more than fifty lazarets as well as giving aid to a large number of soldiers' families throughout the province.

Hundreds of peasant villages offered to establish and support lazarets of from five to ten beds each, but the impossibility of finding medical attendants for them and the great practical difficulties involved in the transportation and distribution of wounded men in small lots forced the Government to decline these propositions. Then the peasants asked to have "lightly wounded" soldiers sent to their houses, and promised to feed them and take care of them until they should recover. Eighty-eight peasant families, for example, in the canton of Nechaief, province of Riazan, offered to take one hundred and fifty lightly wounded soldiers, to be cared for as long as necessary in their village homes; and scores of similar applications came from as many different cantons in half a dozen different provinces.1

It is a noteworthy fact that, with all their own burdens to bear, the Russians did not neglect the suffering people and the destitute refugees in Belgium, Servia, Poland, and the Caucasus. Even the peasant communes remembered the Belgians; and for the relief of the Servians, the Poles, and the Armenian refugees in the Caucasus committees were formed and collections of food and clothing were made in most of the larger cities and towns. The Servian Relief Committee in Petrograd was organized by the Grand Duchess Helen, and received not only generous gifts of money, clothing, and food from private individuals, but a contribution of fifty thousand rubles from the Petrograd City Council. Large sums of money and quantities of food and clothing were sent also to Poland and the Caucasus by relief committees in Petrograd and Moscow.