f cutting a way
through to relieve Przemysl. Army B, under the German General van
Linsingen, who also had some German troops with him, was to assail
the next section eastward, from the Uzsog to the Wyszkow Pass; and
Army C, under the Austrian General von Pflanzer-Baltin, likewise
supplied with a good "stiffening" of German soldiers, was accredited
to the far-eastern section--the Pruth Valley and the Bukowina.
These three armies represented the fighting machine with which
Austria hoped to retrieve the misfortunes of war and recover at
the same time her military prestige and her invaded territories.
We have no reliable information to enable us to estimate the exact
strength of these armies, but there is every reason to believe that
it was considerable, having regard to the urgency of the situation
and the bitter experience of the recent past. Hence the figure of
400,000 men is probably approximately correct. Somewhere about
January 23, 1914, after a period of thaw and mud the weather settled
down to snow and hard frost. Then the machine began to move. A
snow-clad mountain rampart lay spread before; over 200 miles of
its length embraced the area of the projected operations. Here
we may leave this army for a while in order to review some of the
political and strategic considerations underlying the campaign,
which is the scope of this chapter.

The Russian occupation of the Bukowina, which was undertaken and
accomplished by a force far too small to oppose any serious resistance,
appears to have been carried out with the definite political object
of favorably impressing Rumania, and to guide her into the arms
of the Allies. From her geographical position Rumania commands
nearly the whole western frontier of the Dual Monarchy. Her fertile
soil supplied the Central Powers with grain, dairy produce, and
oil. Furthermore, Rumania's foreign policy leaned to the side of
Italy, and the general European impression was, after the death
of King Carol, October 10, 1914, that if one of the two countries
entered the war, the other would follow suit. As subsequent events
have shown, however, that expectation was not realized. Rumania, too,
had aspirations in the direction of recovering lost territories, but
her grievance in this respect was equally divided between Russia
and Austria, for, while the one had despoiled her of Bessarabia, the
other had annexed Transylvania (Siebenbuergen). Hence the Russian
tentative conquest and occupation