The Story of the Great War (Vol. 1-8). Various Authors
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grandeur except by the Himalayas and offers many a virgin peak to the ambitious mountain climber. Here may be found the ibex, the stag, the wild boar, the wild bull and an infinite variety of feathered game. The animal life of the mountains has, in fact, become more abundant of late years on account of the high charges for hunting licenses fixed by the Russian Government. Wolves are so plentiful that in severe winters they descend to the lowlands in great packs and rob the flocks before the very eyes of the shepherds.
The most important mineral resources of the region are the oil wells; here, in fact, around Batum, are situated some of the most important oil fields in the world. Of manganese ore, an essential of the steel industry, the Caucasus furnishes half of the world's supply, which is exported from the two ports of Poti and Batum. Its mineral wealth seems to be practically unlimited, copper, zinc, iron, tin, and many other metals being found throughout the region, in most cases in exceedingly rich deposits. The agricultural resources are not so important, especially from a military point of view, though vast quantities of sheep are raised in the highlands in the spring and summer, the flocks being driven down into the plains to the south in winter.
One of the outstanding features of Russian occupation is the great Georgian military road which has been built across the mountains of recent years and maintained by the Government. Its engineering is masterly; here and there it passes close to or under vast overhanging lumps of mountainside. Everywhere the greatest care has been taken of this most important military highway, Russia's avenue into that country she coveted and fought for so long. Beginning at Vladikavkaz, it runs through Balta, Lars, thence through the famous Gorge of Dariel, the "Circassian Gates," the dark and awful defile between Europe and Asia. The gorge is what the geologists call a "fault," for it is not really a pass over the mountain chain, but a rent clear across it. Seventy years ago it was almost impassable for avalanches or the sudden outbursts of pent-up glacial streams swept it from end to end, but the Russians have spent over $20,000,000 on it and made it safe. In 1877, during the Russo-Turkish War, nearly all the troops and stores for carrying the war into Turkey and Asia came by this road.
Its importance has since been lessened to a certain degree, for there is now direct railway communication from Moscow to Baku, at one end of the Trans-Caucasian Railway, and therefore to Kars itself, via Tiflis; and equally from Batum to Kars at the other end to which military steamers can bring troops and supplies from Odessa and Novorossik in the Black Sea.
The most important city in this region is Tiflis, the "city of seventy languages." It may, indeed, be called the modern Babel. As seen from the mountains, it lies at the bottom of a brown, treeless valley, between steep hills, on either side of the River Kura.
It is a point of great importance to modern Russia. It forms, to begin with, the end of the great military road across the mountains which, in spite of the railways, is still the quickest way to Europe for an army as well as for travelers, and all the mails come over it by express coaches. From Tiflis a railway runs to Kars, a strong frontier on the Persian frontier.
Tiflis has been much developed under the Russian Government. In the modern section of the city the streets are wide and paved and lighted by electricity and the stores are large and handsome while electric railways run in all directions. In the older parts of the city, however, the houses remain as they were built centuries ago, divided out into the many quarters devoted to the residences of the many races and nationalities that compose the population of Tiflis. Between most of them is bitter enmity and prejudice, even among those of the two great religious faiths, Christians and Mohammedans. It is this diversity of interests, which extends throughout all the section down into Persia, which has so complicated the situation on this front. For not only are the two military forces fighting here, but wherever governmental authority is momentarily relaxed, there these mutual animosities flare up into active expression and the most barbarous features of warfare take place, such as the massacres of the Armenians by the Mohammedans. Neither Turkey nor Russia has been especially eager to suppress these bitter feuds, even in time of peace. In time of war there is nothing to restrain them, and the whole region is swept by carnage infinitely more hideous than legitimate warfare.
We have now passed over the entire theatre of the battles on the Eastern frontiers of the war in Europe. The battle grounds are familiar to us. In the succeeding chapters we will follow the armies over this war-ridden dominion and watch the battle lines as they move through the war to its decisive conclusion.
PART IV—THE AUSTRO-SERBIAN CAMPAIGN
CHAPTER XLVI
SERBIA'S SITUATION AND RESOURCES
The first great campaign on the southeastern battle grounds of the Great War began on July 27, 1914, when the Austrian troops undertook their first invasion of Serbia. They crossed the Serbian border at Mitrovitza, about fifty miles northwest of Belgrade, driving the Serbians before them. The first real hostilities of the war opened with the bombardment of Belgrade by the Austrians on July 29, 1914—six days before the beginning of the campaigns on the western battle fields.
We are now familiar with the theatre of war as described in the preceding chapters, and will now follow the first Austrian armies into Serbia.
A stubborn fight excites the admiration of all observers, regardless of the moral qualities of the combatants. So, wherever our sympathies may lie, considering the war as a whole, there can be no doubt that the defense which the Serbians made against the first efforts of the Austrians to invade their country will stand out in the early history of the war as one of the most brilliant episodes of that period of the general struggle. Like a mighty tidal wave from the ocean the Austrian hosts swept over the Serbian frontier in three furious successive onslaughts, only to be beaten back each time. Naturally, there were material and moral causes, aside from the mere valor of the Serbians, which combined to create this disaster for the Austrian forces, but enough of the human element enters into the military activities of these campaigns to make them easily the most picturesque of the early period of the war.
Before entering into a description of the actual events in 1914, it is well to consider the forces engaged. From a material point of view the Serbians entered into these campaigns greatly handicapped. They had lately been through two wars. In the First Balkan War they had not, it is true, been severely tested; the weight of the fighting had been borne by the Bulgarians in Thrace. The real test, and the great losses, came only with the second war, when the Serbian army threw every fiber of its strength against the Bulgarians in the Battle of the Bregalnitza, one of the most stubborn struggles in military history. The result was a Serbian victory, but it was very far from being a decisive and conclusive victory. The Bulgarians were forced back some fifteen miles into their own territory, but had it not been for the intervention of Rumania there can be no doubt that the Serbs would have entered Sofia. Here it was that the Serbians lost 7,000 killed and 30,000 wounded of their best men, as against 5,000 killed and 18,000 wounded in the whole war with Turkey; a total loss that was bound to be felt a few months later when the struggle was to be against so powerful an adversary as Austria-Hungary. The two previous wars had, without exaggeration, deprived the Serbian fighting forces of one-tenth their number—a tenth that was of the very best of first-line troops.
Pictorial Map of the Balkans.
Added to this was another serious handicap, possibly even more serious. Serbia had, indeed, emerged victorious from the two wars, with a large stretch of conquered territory at her backdoor. But this acquired territory, practically all of Macedonia that had not gone to Greece, was peopled by Serbs. For twenty-five years these Macedonians had been organized into revolutionary fighting bands, the "Macedonian Committee" for the liberation of Macedonia and Albania from the Turks, and had struggled, not only against the Turks, but against foreign armed bands of propagandists. Some eight