The Drama of Three Hundred and Sixty Five Days/The Part Played by Russia
THE PART PLAYED BY RUSSIA
And then Russia! Distance from the scene
of action, the great length of the line of operations
and the vast area behind it have made it
difficult or impossible for us to see the drama
of the Russian campaign as we have seen that
of France, Belgium, and our own Empire. But
we have seen something, and it has been enough
to give the lie to certain of the emphatic protestations
with which Germany made war. We
had heard it said by the German Chancellor
that the fact that Russia was mobilizing in those
last days of July 1914 made it impossible for
Germany to ask Austria to extend the time-limit
imposed upon Serbia—a time-limit which
would have been indecent among civilized
people if it had concerned nothing more serious
than the destruction of a kennel of dogs suspected
of rabies. But all the world knows now
that Russian mobilization was a process inevitably
so slow that the German armies had
flung themselves upon Belgium twelve days before
the Russian advance began.
Then we had heard it said by the German Churchmen that in taking the side of Russia we, British and French people, leaders among the enlightened races, were helping Muscovite barbarians to oppose the cause of civilization. But since Louvain, Termonde, and Rheims, not to speak of the unnameable iniquities of Liège, the world knows where the barbaric spirit of Europe had its central home—in Berlin, not in Petrograd; in the proud hearts of the German over-lords, not the meek ones of the Russian peasantry.