In this manner it is easy to see, from the data furnished by Ludendorf himself, that, "hopeful" at the end of October for the success of the attack on Ypres, Falkenhayn found it necessary to dispatch from France 300,000 additional soldiers to the Russian front, aside from the reserves taken from the interior of Germany, which forces would also have been welcome to the Germans during the fateful days at Ypres. While the frontal attacks on Ypres, attended by considerable casualties, demanded the presence of large German reserves, these reserves were the very ones which were swallowed up entirely by the Russian operations in the East, at Warsaw, Galicia and East Prussia. [Illustration: While the Russian troops were persecuting the defeated Austrians in Galicia, General Hindenburg began an advance towards Warsaw. The Russian General Staff transferred from Galicia three armies for the defense of Warsaw, and these armies defeated the two Austro-German armies and persecuted them through Poland up to the border of Germany (October, 1914).] If the firmness of the Allies held back the Germans at Ypres and prevented them from breaking through to Calais, the Russian Army also played an important part in this strategic situation--compelling the Germans to abandon the operation at Ypres much earlier than the Germans and Falkenhayn had figured. But not in this alone was the role of Russia apparent in the trying days of October and November, 1914. Not only did Russia force the Germans to transfer 300,000 soldiers to the East, and to abandon early the operations in France, but she also compelled the Germans, by her operations in 1914, _to abandon for more than a year all large offensives in the West_. This is attested not only by the facts (as is well known, from the end of 1914 up to February, 1916, the Germans did not start any offensive in France), but by Ludendorf himself, notwithstanding all his endeavors to discredit the Russian Army.