CHAPTER XXIX LEMBERG A T the moment when the Germans were still ■^^ sweeping all before them in Northwestern France, and Paris itself seemed within their grasp, the news of the Austrian disaster about Lemberg, concerning which vague rumors had been afloat for several days, suddenly filled the newspapers and com- pelled the attention of German commanders at the most inopportune of moments, when all their efforts and their resources were required in the west. To understand this Russian campaign, which had culminated about September i in the great vic- tory of Lemberg, the first considerable triumph of the Allied cause, it is necessary at the outset to grasp certain elementary facts, geographical, military, po- litical, about the vast region, in which struggles waged by several millions of men, Russians, Ger- mans and Austrians, were now taking place. These once grasped much of the complexity disappears. To take the geographical first. If a line be drawn from Czernowitz, where the Russian, Rumanian and Austrian frontiers meet, to Berlin it will mark pretty accurately the point where the great Russian plain meets the first considerable mountain barrier west I5S