PREFACE
OF the multitude of war books, few have dealt with the struggle in the Eastern theatre. Yet it is certainly the second theatre in importance, and probably the most interesting of all to the military reader. The German General Staff, it is true, has produced valuable studies of certain episodes of the fighting in Russia, but from the point of view of our Ally there has been little or nothing.
Until the day, which all lovers of Russia hope is not far distant when the Russian General Staff will be able to publish to the world an official account of the work of the Russian Army in the Great War, it is thought that these extracts from the Diary of a British officer may prove of interest. The writer can at any rate claim to have enjoyed greater opportunities for observation of the Russian army than any other foreign observer, both previous to the war as Military Attaché to the British Embassy at Petrograd, and during the war as liaison officer at the front.
If some of his Russian friends find his comments occasionally overfrank, he asks their forgiveness. He wrote things down as they seemed to him at the time.
These twenty-five chapters give the writer's experiences during three and a half years of war and revolution. Passing through Germany on the eve of the declaration of war, he spent a few days at the Headquarters of the Grand Duke Nikolas. He then visited the 3rd Army just before its invasion of Galicia (Chapter I.), and the 2nd Army during the battle of Tannenberg (Chapter II.). In September he accompanied a cavalry division in a raid in South-West Poland, and retired with it before Hindenburg's first offensive against Warsaw (Chapter III.). In the following months he was with the Guard Corps at the battle of Ivangorod, and in the subsequent Russian counter-offensive towards Krakau (Chapter IV.). Some account derived from eye-witnesses is given of the operation of Lodz (Chapter V.), of the disaster to the Russian 10th Army in February, 1915, and of the operations on the Narev in the winter of that year (Chapter VI.) .
In the great Russian retreat from Poland in 1915, due to lack of
