War and Revolution in Russia, 1914-1917
By . New York: THE MACMILLAN Co. 1919. 8vo, xvi+420 pp. Portrait. $3.00.
AT last, an honest and trustworthy book has come out. of Russia, concerning the heroism, folly, and crime of the last five years.
The author, General Gourko, comes of a family greatly distinguished in Russia for three or four centuries: in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, General Joseph Gourko was the most brilliant Russian commander, victor at the Shipka Pass and at Adrianople. General Basil Gourko, who began the Great War as a general of division, was later Chief of the Russian Imperial Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Western armies. His is the further high distinction of exile because of his unswerving loyalty and untarnished honor
Of high historic worth as this whole record is, nothing it contains is of more value than the portraits of Nicholas II and Alexander Kerensky. General Gourko describes, so well that it need never be done again, the fine organization of the Russian army at the outbreak of the Great War, its spirit of devotion, its heroic sacrifices, beginning with the East Prussian campaign, which drew away from the Marne battlefield from four to eight German divisions, and struck an even more formidable blow at Germany’s morale. He recounts, with admirable vividness and truth, and with the most complete knowledge, the campaigns about Warsaw and the first triumphant invasion of Galicia, with the disastrous retreat following Mackensen’s crushing blow at the Dunayets River, and, finally, the admirably planned and executed withdrawal to the Riga-Dwinsk line, on which Russia stood when the Revolution not only cancelled all her immense sacrifices and services on the side of the Allies, but made her in effect the active ally of Germany.
Not less vital is General Gourko’s history of the Russian Revolution, with strongly drawn and convincing pictures of the leaders of the ‘official’ Duma revolution, and also of the Soviet managers of the real Revolution, which has brought Russia so much shame and misery.
General Gourko owes it to the world to continue his history: to show the Bolshevik descent into the abyss of crime that makes Socialist Russia, an imminent menace to Christian civilization. It is as it the powers of evil, failing to accomplish their purpose through Germany, were carrying on the work through the Bolshevik despotism; through that tyrannous Socialism which has well been called ‘ the devil’s travesty of Christianity.’ J. C.