The Russian campaigns, like the Belgian, were won by bluff and good marching. In August, 1914, East Prussia was held by only a thin screen of troops, mostly Landsturm. But in order to deceive the enemy, trenches were dug and filled with dummy machine-guns and with scarecrows wearing the spiked helmets of the German infantry. In another district a division was employed for some time simply in marching between two points. In the daytime it marched from A to B, at night it entrained and was sent back to A, changed the numbers on its helmets and shoulder-straps and marched to B again. The Russians were thus led to believe that certain parts of the line were strongly held and that at other points a great concentration of troops was taking place. But for this they would have attempted a breakthrough and might really have reached Berlin. They were still more elaborately fooled at the winter battle of the Masurian Lakes. Here the Germans wanted to lure the Russians a second time into this dangerous territory. One would have thought it impossible, but the trap was set with masterly cunning. Reports appeared, not so much in the German as in the neutral papers, that East Prussia was being evacuated and that the peasants were leaving their homesteads and villages and fleeing westwards in a wild panic. The Germans, it was hinted, were so occupied in France that they could not spare any troops for the Russian front. Meanwhile, whatever forces the Germans had, seemed to be concentrated opposite Warsaw. The Russians fell headlong into the trap and lost the flower of what was left of their old army. Neither battle of the Masurian Lakes could have been won except for the marching powers of the German infantry. While the enemy was held in front, it was necessary to march round with extreme swiftness and take him in the rear before he could begin to move his armies out of the trap. The soldiers who took part in this battle told me that the forced marches tried them beyond anything they had experienced in the war. On the whole, the German training found its best justification in Russia. Here the conditions were exactly those for which it had been devised. The enemy was superior in numbers, and he was to be overawed by German dash, enterprise, and mobility. The principle in Russia was to go for the enemy wherever you found him, and to count neither his numbers nor your losses. The Russian _morale_ was badly shaken. Our servant at Irkutsk, who had fought against the Germans, used to wake us by shouting in his dreams, “The Germans are coming. Run! Run!” In time the Germans came to despise the Russians so much that they neglected the most obvious precautions. Our regiment once advanced to the attack without even reconnoitring the ground. When halfway across to the enemy’s positions, they were suddenly held up by a sunken ditch. They had to go forward as best they could, and the leading company alone lost eighty killed.