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i9I4] RUSSIAN REVERSES
3i9
Stockholm amongst the Swedes as well as amongst the
foreigners.
1 was not surprised at the first news of victories
which reached us from East Prussia. I knew that part
of the Imperial Guard and other picked troops were to
attack there to cover our necessarily slow mobilisation,
and to free France a little, as enormous German forces
were hurling themselves upon her. The glorious battles
in East Prussia cost us considerable sacrifices. The
flower of the "gilded youth" of St. Petersburg, full of
undaunted courage, fell there to prove that the privileged
and petted regiments of the Guard could sacrifice
themselves as much and better than any other. Each day
news reached us of the glorious death of young men
we had known, whom we had witnessed leading a
worldly and careless life midst pleasures and palaces
in the capital. But I fully realised that these battles
and these victories were but the beginning of the
"dance."
Indeed, very soon after terrible news reached us from
East Prussia. General Samsonoff’s army, sent to
support and complete the operations of General
Rennen-kampf’s, had been completely beaten, annihilated by
General Hindenburg. Nearly 80,000 men had perished,
the others had surrendered in a mass with all their
artillery and supplies. It was all very well to minimise
the extent of the disaster in our official bulletins, I could
read between the lines, and I promptly realised the
extent of this terrible defeat, all the more because, since
the Manchuria campaign, every one agreed in describing
General Samsonoff to me as one of the best and most
congenial of our commanders. Then how had the disaster
come about? Was it through the flagrant inferiority of
our regiments, our men, our officers, and our generals
compared with the German Army ? Was it on account
of the mania for skilful manoeuvres by which the heads
of our General Staff were possessed, and which inspired
them with the mad hope of cutting through, of
surrounding their German foes by their grand strategical
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