n almost
unopposed, he caught the Warsaw army in the swamps about the
frontier in the last days of August and, thanks to his generalship
and heavy artillery, destroyed a Russian army. Tannenberg was a
great victory and it saved East Prussia. The Niemen army had to
retreat rapidly to escape destruction. At the time, it was asserted
that the Russian invasion had compelled the Germans to draw upon
their western front to meet the thrust and thus to weaken their
armies in advance of the decisive battle. This is not now believed
to be true, but there is no doubt that it drew reserves who might
otherwise have gone to the west or to the south.

Tannenberg was a victory which filled the world with its splendor,
but it merely disguised for the moment the far more considerable
Austrian disaster to the south. One Austrian army had crossed the
frontier and approached Lublin, another had advanced east from
Lemberg. Upon the Lemberg army the full weight of the Russian thrust
now fell and the army was promptly routed, driven through Lemberg
and west of the San or across the Carpathians. The force that had
approached Lublin was thus left in the air and succumbed to a series
of disasters, which culminated in the terrible defeat of Rawa-Ruska.
Meantime the Austrian troops, which had invaded Serbia were routed
in the Battle of the Jedar, which preceded the other Austrian
disasters and was, in fact, the first considerable triumph for the
Allies in the whole war.

AUSTRIAN PERIL

Austria was now in dire straits and her whole military structure
seemed on the point of crumbling. Russian armies flowed west through
Galicia and approached Tarnow, Przemysl was isolated, tens of
thousands of prisoners, innumerable guns and vast quantities of
stores fell to the victors. While the great German attack upon
France was failing, Russia seemed on the point of achieving against
Germany's ally what Germany had failed to achieve against France.

Germany was now compelled to intervene. At the moment when she was
organizing her final effort in the west and sending her best troops
to hack their way to Calais, she had to divert other troops to the
east. Hindenburg undertook a new offensive, this time from the
Silesian frontier, and pushed with great rapidity to the very
suburbs of Warsaw. He only failed by a narrow margin, Siberian
troops coming up just in time to save the Polish capital, and
Hindenburg, now outnumbered, conducted a swift and orderly ret