World War

A slight lull followed, and during it the Allies of France made efforts to relieve the pressure on her. The British took over the Arras front from the French loth Army, their front becoming now continuous from the Yser to the Somme, the Italians made their fifth attack, though in vain, on the Isonzo front, and the Russians hurled untrained masses on the German front at Lake Narocz, near Vilna, once more striking prematurely and gal lantly sacrificing themselves to help their Allies. The slight gains were soon lost through a counter-stroke. These efforts did not prevent Falkenhayn pursuing his attrition offensive at Ver dun. (See further VERDUN, BATTLES OF.) The advances were slight but they were cumulative in effect, and the balance of loss turned definitely against the defenders. On June 7 Fort Vaux fell, and the German tide crept ever closer to Verdun, seeming to the anxious watchers to resemble the forces of nature rather than of men. And in the Asiago (q.v.) region, Conrad had launched his offensive against Italy's Trentino flank.

Brusilov's Offensive.

Again Russia came to the rescue. In the spring of 1916 she had 13o divisions, but was woefully short of equipment, facing 46 German and 4o Austrian divisions. The preparation and reorganization for her intended share in the year's Allied offensive were cut short by the emergency at Verdun and in relief of her French allies she had launched a costly and obstinately prolonged attack at Lake Narocz in March. When it was at last broken off, the preparations for the main offensive were resumed. This was to begin in July, coincidently with the Somme offensive and Brusilov, commanding the south-western front, was ordered to prepare such attacks as he could stage from his own resources as a distraction of the enemy's attention from the main offensive. But the distraction was released prematurely, on June 4, in response to Italy's appeal to Russia to prevent the Austrians reinforcing their Trentino attack. Without warning, because without any special concentration of troops, Brusilov's troops advanced against the Austrian 4th Army near Luck (q.v.) and the Austrian 7th Army in the Bukovina, whose resistance collapsed at the first shock. In three days Brusilov took 200,000 prisoners. This last vital effort of the Russian army in the war had important consequences. It stopped the Austrian attack on Italy, already impaired by an Italian riposte. It compelled Falk enhayn to withdraw troops from the Western front, and so aban don his plan for a counter-stroke against the British offensive pre paring on the Somme, as well as the hope of nourishing his Verdun attrition process. It led Rumania to take her fateful decision to enter the war on the Entente side, and caused the supersession of Falkenhayn in the supreme command and his replacement by Hindenburg—with Ludendorff, officially styled First Quarter master-General, as the directing brain.

Although Rumania's entry was the ostensible reason, the under lying one was the fact that Falkenhayn's "limited" strategy in 1915 had made possible the Russian recovery which stultified the strategy of 1916. Falkenhayn was history's latest example of the folly of half-measures, the ablest and most scientific general —"penny wise, pound foolish"—who ever ruined his country by a refusal to take calculated risks. In 1916 he had turned back westwards to pursue his long cherished goal, and his strategy had faithfully fulfilled the canons of military orthodoxy by taking for its objective the enemy's strongest army and the strongest point of that army's position. It certainly achieved the object of compelling the French to pour their reserves into the Verdun "blood-bath," but did not effect any decisive strategic result. Falkenhayn had rejected Conrad's proposal for a concentration against Italy such as had previously overthrown Serbia. Con rad's reasons had been that • such a blow against the "hereditary enemy" would act as a tonic to the Austro-Hungarian forces and that the theatre of war lent itself to decisive results by a thrust southwards from the Trentino against the rear of the Italian armies engaged on the Isonzo. The success attained by the rela tively light blow of I917—Caporetto—lends historical support to his contention. But Falkenhayn was dubious both of the feasibility and value of the plan and was unwilling even to lend the nine German divisions which Conrad asked for to relieve Austrian divisions in Galicia. In default of this aid Conrad per sisted in attempting his design single-handed, taking some of his best divisions from Galicia, and thereby exposing their front to Brusilov's advance without obtaining adequate force to achieve his Italian front plan. Falkenhayn's smouldering resentment at this disregard of his views was fanned into flame by the Galician disaster, and he intervened in Vienna to procure the deposition of Conrad. His own fall followed hard on Conrad's heels.

Brusilov's offensive continued for three months with fair suc cess, but reserves were not at hand for immediate exploitation, and before they could be moved down from the north the Ger mans were patching up the holes. His later efforts were never so dangerous, but they absorbed all the available Russian re serves, and their ultimate loss of i,000,000 casualties completed the virtual ruin of Russia's military power.