To End All Wars_ A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 - Adam Hochschild [67]
Antiwar beliefs were severely tested by the mass patriotic hysteria of the war's first months. "One by one, the people with whom one had been in the habit of agreeing politically went over to the side of the war," as Russell put it, "and as yet the exceptional people ... had not yet found each other." How hard it was, he wrote, to resist "when the whole nation is in a state of violent collective excitement. As much effort was required to avoid sharing this excitement as would have been needed to stand out against the extreme of hunger or sexual passion, and there was the same feeling of going against instinct."
While dissenters like him tried to make their voices heard against the torrent, generals and cabinet ministers feverishly debated strategy, and men thronged recruiting stations, messages from the War Office were reaching thousands of British homes. On September 8, 1914, Violet Cecil received the news that, following an infantry battle in a French forest, her son George was reported wounded and missing.
9. THE GOD OF RIGHT WILL WATCH THE FIGHT
WHILE BLOODIED BRITISH and French forces retreated, filling the roads of northern France with haggard troops and ambulances and open wagons full of wounded men, their commanders could at least take comfort that, unlike them, the Germans had to battle on two fronts. For Russia, with its bottomless reserves of manpower, was attacking Germany from the east. Russian armies were already well across the border, heading for the medieval Teutonic city of Königsberg on the Baltic, and had won a battle with German troops on the way. Since so many Germans had been sent west, the advancing Russian forces outnumbered their adversaries by three to one, and, in cavalry, by eight to one. On August 23, 1914, the same day as the battle at Mons, a titanic clash began on the Eastern Front.
Unfortunately for the Allies, though Russia's army was the largest on earth, it was also one of the most inept. There were, for example, little more than half as many rifles available as soldiers who needed them, a matter to which no one seemed to have given much thought. The army had only one battery of antiaircraft guns—which were protecting the Tsar's summer palace. Many Russian generals were elderly and overweight; the nerves of one corps commander proved incapable of withstanding the sound of rifle fire. Higher-ranking officers had been promoted largely by seniority and connections at court; the main claim to renown of the army's chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, was being the Tsar's cousin. His most visible asset, along with royal blood, was commanding height. At six feet six inches, he towered impressively above all others; in his headquarters, aides pinned pieces of white paper over door frames built for ordinary mortals, to warn him to duck. He had no battlefield experience, and upon being appointed commander in chief he wept, believing himself not up to the job. Furthermore, he and the minister of war were barely on speaking terms, and he was also out of favor with the Tsarina, who connived ceaselessly to weaken his position in the eyes of her husband.
In the Russian military supply services, corruption was the norm. When a major general led a purchasing mission to buy war materiel in the United States, according to a New York businessman, "He and his officers quickly became notorious in the metal trade as grafters. The General himself was