RUSSIA'S GROWING STRENGTH.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3233, 27 March 1917, Page 7

RUSSIA'S GROWING STRENGTH.

(JIIKAT ARMIES THAT WTT.L SOON BE HEADY. bv COMMANDER 0. S. LOCKERLAMPSON, M P. (Commander I/xker-Lampson, M.P., m command of the British Armoured Car Squadrons helping our Eastern AU lies, has seen much fighting in Russia, Turkey, Armenia and Persia. Ho is at present in London, but in shortly returning to Russia.)

IHAYE been asked, on my return from Russia, brefly to outline what, Ml my opinion, are her present prospects' and what liar immediate needs. This I do gladly, not only because Rus-. f-ia st ; ll remains (owing to distance) largely an enigma to her \\ estem Allies. but because circumsbances have so placed mo that 1 can perhaps better appreciate her point of view now than many more eminent persons. I and my squadrons know the real Russian now as few foreigners can. Our handful of Britishers have been shut up w'th Russians for weeks in the ice of the White Sea; we have lived for months on the same reindeer meat on the Lapland coast; we have fought in cars with Cossacks in far Persia, n Turkey and in Armenia; our dead and theirs sleep now s'de by side in many an improvised graveyard of the Eastern war; and at this very moment wo are brothers in arms in Rumania, seeking to stem the barbarian rush. The daily round, the common lot of danger and difficulty have revealed to each tli<? other's soul —w© understand one another- and the one dominant emotion in our British hearts is love and admiration for this splendid Ally. To one who returns home after so long comes the desire to explain all that Russia has done and will do yet. For the time being Britain is mesmerised by the West. She is absorbed by the recent offensive against the Somnie, and by a still more recent offensive against the policy of "Walt | and Sec." May I therefore for a time | recall attention to the East, and urge i for a moment 'ts supreme significance : in the mammoth maze of wars now being waged? Do you remember the first months of tlio war, when, with an effrontery never ' equalled, we tossed our handful of 41- ; armed men into the cockpit of Flanders , to help France to arrest the bloody ad- . v;ince of an enemy, enormous in numbers and terrific mi equipment? And do

you remember the retreat, not alone trom Mons, but all along the line, and right away from the Belgian frontier to the gates of Paris?? And then, who can forget the magic turn of the tide —the wondrous rolling up of the German hosts until they outran even their pursuers and halted some ninety miles from Paris, breathless, broken, .beaten? It was the battle of the Marne, which history will probably treat as the decisive action of this vast war, and you must look for the victors, not only amongst tho French and British across the Channel, but among the fur-capped soldiery of tho Tsar, thousands of miles away, who struggled that cruel autumn knecMloep through the Baltic swamps. It was the generous squandering of a superb Russian Army—hurled by way of diversion into East Prussiff— which saved Paris, secured England, and mado the alliance what it is.

Nor does this, the most unselfish act of military self-sacrifice extant, stand alone. At tho t end PSk ;of alone. At al Itimes Russia remains ready in a degree not to be exaggerated to place the interests of the alliance above those of her own. I was not in England at the time, but 1 have had described to me the emotions of the Allies when the first German onslaught upon Verdun was made. It came, as air such attacks must come—unexpectedly. ;.t came, too, with a force not to be foreseen, and exercised an unexampled strain upon the trench. Just prior to this the Italians had been driven back by the Austrians, and seemed threatened with further withdrawal.

Out of the blue swept Brusiloff with an attack covering, not a paltry thirty miles, but an area so extensive that in its development it won back the whole of Bukovina, cost Austria and Germany ever 400,000 men in prisoners alone, and altered the entire disposition of the enemy armies.

This Russian onslaught upon Austria came as the biggest surprise of the war. Tho Germans never dreamed that : t was possible.

People speak as though this titanic effort were a sort of fluke.. It was the most deliberate and reasoned achievement. based ujhmi the mo»t consummate mastery of conditions possible, and speaks volunmeK for Russian organisation. secrecy and power of surprise. What I would urge with all my powers at this juncture is this: not only is Russia the land of such surprises —not only w hat she lias done she can do again—but future effort on her part will far outdo anything she has accomplished up to the present. Hitherto she nas been handicapped as no other member of the alliance. It is not only that she has a line to defend immeasurably larger than our own: it is not only that her size and tlie consequent volume of her armies treb e and quadruple the difficulties ot transport, equipment ana munitioning. It is that up till now Russia has been shut off from Europe. If the Bmisn had taken Gallipoli all would have been well. Instead they leit Russia as she was with no ice-free port, and she remained frozen in solidly for nearly eight months every year, and unable all that t'me to import from outside.

liirollTAXCK OF NKW RAILWAY

All that is altered now. The famous railway from Petrograd to an ice-free port in the north, which lias l>een Russia's dream for years, is a. solid fact at last. The railway is built, aud already the huge artery has started throbbing its vital needs to the great heart beyond and on to the armies in the field. All! Mow many armies havo I seen in RusMa. From Riga to Rumania, from Tiflis to near Teheran, from Moscow to Manchuria —mililons of massive wiwritjra gathering, (countless as the nands of the shore. At first, like ourselve:', they needed equipment. But tln>y are ready now. Soon they will want for nothing. And ever the millions of Muscovy grow. They have no doubts, thoy seo no fear, they talk not of peace, except on German sail. Silently they expand, they move. Once complete, nothing can stop the momentum of their inarch.

Germany knows this. She knows that, given time, Russia might even win tho war alone. She knows, too, that Russia's great need in tho future will not be so much British guns and British shells, as British patience.