THE RUSSIAN WINTER.

Wanganui Herald, Volume L, Issue 14744, 25 October 1915, Page 4

THE RUSSIAN WINTER.

The Petrograd cable we published on Saturday, to the effect that the Russian port of Archangel in the Arctic Ocean is icebound, is a reminder that the long northern winter has commenced. There are comparatively mild Octobers in northern Russia, and there are also severe Octobers, like that which brought in the terrible cold of 1708, when the soldiers of the invader, Charles XII. of Sweden, perished by thousands. The Grand Army of Napoleon experienced by the ninth of October nine degrees of frost. In normal years the first freezing of the waters in lakes, marshes, and rivers begins, and traffic begins to bo suspended. In the Baltic legions rains, sleet, and mists prove worse enemies than these early frosts, and though fighting has not yet become impossible there, foreign commanders are faced with the necessity of at once preparing for the coming season in a hostile country. No man can say how soon winter may begin after the end of October, nor how severe it may be. And there is an intensity of cold about the Russian winter which is quite different from that of other European countries in the same latitude, and which makes it intolerable to foreigners who are for Ihe first time exposed to its rigours. By November or December, winter holds not only the Northern regions, but the vast plains that stretch, with few breaks, from the Baltic to the Pamirs, on the borders of India, and from Odessa to the ice-bound waters of the White Sea. But it is January and February that bring the intensest cold, and no engine of destruction that modern science has invented can do such deadly mischief to an army as frost and snow, and cutting blasts, together with their inseparable companions, disease and famine. Russian commanders have always counted upon winter more than upon the strongest fortresses to annihilate armies of invasion. Their traditional policy has been to luro the enemy some distance into their vast territories, laying waste country and town before them, until the season is too late for them to avoid the backward march over snow and ice. A knowledge of these facta explains the desperate efforts now being put forth by von Ilindenburg to capture Riga, which ho hopes to secure as a base for future operations against Petrograd. In his despatch to the Daily Telegraph, written last October, Mr GranvillejFortesoue said: “Tire Russians look oni Nature as their first and strongest ally. With the elements on their side batteries of 17-inch howitzers dwindle into insignificance.” The threatened approach of winter last year aided Rennenkampf in bringing about the collapse of the German ncursiou across the frontiers. The weather fought against them in marshy forests and bad roads, where the guns often sank in mire, and where stragglers were made prisoners in large numbers. Had they not retreated a great disaster might have befallen them. Von Hindenhurg has shown himself more cautious or better informed than Napoleon, but it Is hard for even a wary commander not to yield to the temptation if over-running an enemy country that tffers no effective resistance to its vicorious arms. He has now only a few weeks before him in which it will be possible to advance or to retreat with safety.