command of Conta, from Kirlibaba toward the N. into the Suczawa valley. In this operation, which did not follow the old army road Jakobeny-Gurahumora, but took the main forces into impassable country without a through line of communications, the risk of failure was inherent. On Aug. 3 Conta's attack was launched. An initial success was recorded in the capture of the Ludowa massif. But the rest of the advance, which culminated in the taking of Jablonica in the Bilyj Czeremos valley, was made with great difficulty; for the Russians, who were now at home in the hill country, fought with a religious fanaticism such as they had not yet been known to display. The Krauss group began their attack on Aug. 5, and advanced as far as Worochta. The 4Oth Honved Div. could only with difficulty overcome the Rus- sian resistance, in spite of gallant efforts, and only won a few heights N. of Mt. Capul. As the struggles for these mountain positions, so skilfully defended by the Russians, necessitated long preparation, the Russians had always time to bring up new forces. Above all, bad weather began in the middle of Aug., making artillery operations difficult.
On Aug. 10 the German ist Inf. Div. arrived at Kirlibaba, to reinforce the 4oth Honved Division. The 3rd Cav. Div. was then transferred from Dornawatra to Krauss's group, to increase that group's power of attack. But already the Russians were launch- ing their counter-attacks, having brought up 4 new inf. divs. against the Carpathian front. On Aug. 14 Krauss's group was overthrown at Worochta, and was forced to retire to the heights of the pass. An attack begun by their right wing, which was to have been assisted by the German and Cyclist Bde., with the object of recapturing the Kukul height, was never carried out. For the cyclist brigade had to be hurriedly dispatched to Borsa, to hold a crossing momentarily threatened in consequence of a Russian inroad S. of the Tomnatik height. Meanwhile the Rus- sians were also pushing forward against the Pantyr Pass, and half of the 3rd Cav. Div. was accordingly sent there. To ensure unity of command in the Pantyr- Jablonica Pass section, the I. Corps headquarters was transferred from the III. to the VII. Army. Further, the German nyth Inf. Div., which had now arrived just in time to ward off the violent Russian attacks on the Jablonica Pass, was placed under the I. Corps command. The 2nd Cyclist Bde. was finally transferred to the 3rd Cav. Div. at the Pantyr Pass where the Russians had pushed through up to the Hungarian frontier. At the end of Aug., in order to enable reserves to be formed, the Carpathian Corps also was withdrawn to a shorter line near the Hungarian frontier.
Pflanzer-Baltin's offensive had not got beyond the initial stages though from no fault of this experienced commander, for his well-considered counter-proposals had been ignored. The threat of Rumania's entry into the war made it necessary at the end of Aug. to put in the nth Honved Cav. Div. on the right army wing at the junction point of three frontiers. The loth Bavarian Inf. Div. and sth Honved Cav. Div. were also brought up into this area.
On the Galician-Volhynian fronts no fighting actions of more than local importance took place during the second half of August. The Russians succeeded in penetrating the IV. and V. Corps of Bohm-Ermolli's Army, N.W. of Zaknce, but, after several days of counter-attack, everything, down to the last bit of trench, was recovered. On the Stochod, all that remained to the Russians as the prize of their persistent efforts and costly attacks was one small bridgehead S. of Tobol on the W. bank. From this they could not be dislodged, owing to the impossi- bility of bringing up heavy artillery.
In the second half of Aug. it became obvious that the Russians' summer offensive had lost its driving power. Brussilov had, it is true, recaptured nearly the whole of Bukovina and large portions of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, at the cost of heavy sacrifices and of practically doubling the number of his divisions between the beginning of June and the end of Aug. But his main object, the total destruction of the Austro-Hungarian eastern front, had not been achieved. The structure of the Dual Monarchy's army had, however, shown dangerous signs of disruption. The difficul- ties that arose in fighting with an army that was full of Slavs, against the Russians, their brothers, were plain to all the world, being most clearly shown by the fact that more than 200,000 prisoners were taken from the Austro-Hungarian eastern front in the months of June, July and August.
The allies, in particular the Germans, had been obliged to take strong forces from the other fronts, where they could ill be spared, and put them into the battle S. of Polyesie without coming a step nearer to their war-aim, the final overthrow of the enemy. On the contrary a new enemy, the one-time ally, Rumania, had been enticed on to the stage by the Russian suc- cesses. On the evening of Aug. 27, simultaneously with the decla- ration of war, Rumanian troops crossed the Hungarian-Rumanian frontier. Gladly did exhausted Russia resign the role of attacker to her new ally, in the vain hope that this ally would succeed where the utmost efforts of the Russian Empire had failed.
(R. K.)
LUCY, SIR HENRY (1845- ), English journalist, was born at Crosby near Liverpool Dec. 5 1845. Educated in Liverpool, he began life in a Liverpool merchant's office, but soon became a reporter for a Shrewsbury periodical. In 1870 he joined the staff of the Pall Mall Gazette, London, and in 1873 became Parliamentary reporter to the Daily News, with which paper he had a long connexion in various capacities. In 1881 he also joined the staff of Punch as contributor of its Parliamentary sketch over the signature of " Toby M.P." He was knighted in 1909 and retired from Parliamentary work in 1916. He published his autobiography, Sixty Years in the Wilderness, in 1909, and The Diary of a Journalist in 1920.
LUDENDORFF, ERICH (1865- ), Prussian general, who was associated with Hindenburg in the Higher Command of the German armies, first on the eastern front and afterwards throughout the whole theatre of the World War, was born at Kruszevnia near Posen on April 9 1865. He was for a long period employed in the work of the general staff, and from 1904-13 he was in what was called the Aufmarschabteilung, the department which drew up the plans for the transport, disposition and advance of the troops to be employed in a prospective campaign. In 1908 he was appointed chief of this department. It was he who worked out the last great German Army bill, passed by the Reichstag in 1913. Almost all the proposals he had recommended were adopted without question, but three new army corps for which he had pressed were not even proposed by the War Minister. He believed that it was his insistence upon this particular proposal that led to his being removed from the general staff and sent to Diisseldorf to command the 39th Fusilier Regiment. (It may be noted here that, when he resigned on Oct. 26 1918, he was made hon. colonel of this regiment, which, until its dissolution by the republican Government, bore his name.) In April 1914 he was promoted to the command of a brigade at Strassburg and was there at the outbreak of the World War. He was at once made chief quartermaster of the II. Army under Gen. von Emmich, and proceeded to the western front, where he took part in the assault upon Liege. He accompanied the advance of the 14th Bde. of infantry, as a spectator, but, when its commander fell, he took command of it as the senior officer present and led it in a night march (Aug. 5-6) past the forts to the heights of La Chartreuse outside Liege. On Aug. 7, while the forts were still untaken, he entered the town of Liege with his troops and himself knocked at the door of the citadel, which was surrendered to him without a blow by its garrison of several hundred Belgians. For this feat he received the Prussian Ordrc Pour le Merite. He afterwards advanced with the II. Army as far as the Somme until Aug. 22, when he was sent to the eastern front as chief of the general staff of the VIII. Army in East Prussia, with Hindenburg in command. His first meeting with Hindenburg was when the latter joined him in the train at Hanover on his way to East Prussia. The battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, which cleared East Prussia of the Russian invaders, at once placed Hindenburg and Ludendorff on a pinnacle by themselves in the estimation of the German people. In Nov. 1914 Hindenburg was appointed chief in command over the armies of the East (Oberost), with Ludendorff as his chief-of -staff.
