toward the powerful Turkish fortress of Erzerum. The country is rough and mountainous, and almost without railroad facilities, but the grand-duke, one of the most brilliant of the Russian leaders, attained a great success. Within a few weeks he laid siege to Erzerum, and captured it in five days. This astonishing result may be appreciated when it is realized that the city was protected by eighteen powerful forts, mounting over a thousand guns, many of them of the latest Krupp pattern. The Turks lost close to twenty thousand prisoners, and the Russian forces swept rapidly along the shores of the Black Sea toward Trebizond. Here, however, the Turks made a strong stand, and prevented any further Russian advance.

Toward the southwest, also, the armies of the grand-duke made rapid advances, forces of considerable size being sent into northern Persia. As the map will show, the direction of these advances was toward the Tigris River and Bagdad, against which the British-Indian forces were also moving northward,.up the river from Basra. We have referred in a previous chapter to this advance in Mesopotamia.

Had the British advance succeeded, there is no doubt that British forces would have been able to effect a junction with the Russians, and probably have driven the Turks out of both Mesopotamia and Armenia. But the British suffered a severe reverse. General Townshend, driving the Turks

before him, had worked his way, after the severest kind of fighting, to the town of Kut-el-Amara, situated on the Tigris not far south of Bagdad. Capturing this place, he advanced to Cetisphon, only eighteen miles below the city. Here the British were defeated, owing, it is said, to lack of a supply of water. The more probable reason is that the Turkish forces greatly outnumbered them. General Townshend, retreating to Kut-el-Amara, was surrounded there, and the Turks laid siege to the place. The siege began early in December, 1915, and lasted for many months.

The British sent new forces up the Tigris under command of General Aylmer. They reached the vicinity of Kut-el-Amara, after hard fighting, early in March, 1916, but although only seven miles from General Townshend's position, were unable to relieve him. Until the end of April desperate attempts were made to reach the now starving English forces bottled up in Kut, but all failed, and the coming of the hot and rainy season soon put an end to operations. On the twenty-ninth of April General Townshend surrendered with nine thousand men. Many had died from fever, starvation, or the constant bombardment of the Turks. This defeat, small in a material way, greatly damaged the military reputation of the British among the native population of the country.

The advance of the Russians through northern Persia had meanwhile progressed through Hama

dan to Kermanshah, not much over a hundred miles from Bagdad. Some Cossack cavalry managed to get through the mountain passes and established communications with the British forces on the Tigris, but their number was too small to have any military significance, and the project of linking up the British and Russian forces in Mesopotamia was for the time being abandoned.

In France the close of the year 1916 saw some brilliant work on the part of the French under General Petain at Verdun. In a series of sharp advances they retook, between October and December, nearly all the ground they had lost to the armies of the German crown-prince earlier in the year. Their losses were very small, and they captured many prisoners. These attacks by General Petain threw the Germans once more back to the positions from which they had made their first attack, and placed Verdun out of all danger.

In another part of the world the Allies were gaining successes of great importance. In Africa Germany had lost the Cameroons to combined French and British forces; German Southwest Africa had surrendered to British South African forces under General Botha, who had fought against England in the Boer War; while German East Africa was almost entirely in Allied hands. The great colonial empire of Germany had disappeared.

In November, 1916, the Emperor of Austria,

Francis Joseph, died, but his death had no effect upon the situation. His successor, the Emperor Karl, young and weak, was entirely under the domination of the kaiser and the military party in Germany, and it appeared to outside observers that after the death of the aged emperor Austria was more completely under the control of Germany than before.

The closing days of the year 1916 found Germany if anything more powerful, more confident of victory, than she had been at any time since the beginning of the war. This confidence was based not alone upon her conquests in Russia and the Balkan States, but upon a sure knowledge of what was soon to happen in the empire of the czar.

CHAPTER XIX

UNCIVILIZED WARFARE

HE horrors which had characterized the car

TH

rying on of the war during 1914 and 1915 were increased in the year 1916. Not only did the Armenian massacres continue, but the air raids over London and Paris, and particularly over the former city, began to assume serious proportions. Night after night giant Zeppelins or the swifter airplanes flew over the city, dropping bombs and killing many hundreds of persons. The English, however, grimly set their teeth and determined to "carry on." The sinking of hospital ships continued, and the cruelties visited upon the crews of torpedoed merchant vessels became more atrocious. In more than one case submarine commanders ordered the victims to leave their boats and assemble on the U-boat's deck, and then, after having rendered the life-boats useless, submerged, leaving the unfortunates on deck struggling in the

sea. Of the crew of the Belgian Prince but two survived to tell the tale. Rafts and boats containing the survivors of torpedoed ships were run down and sunk without the slightest reason, and the losses to non-combatant seamen soon ran into the thousands.