In the spring of 1918, the Austrians, at Germany's command, renewed their attack and succeeded in crossing the Piave, which in its upper reaches towards the mountains was almost a dry river bed. They waited until, as they supposed, the mountain snows had melted. After many of them were across and after they had been checked on the western bank by the Italians, they attempted to recross the river. In the meantime floods had poured down from the mountains changing the dry bed into a rushing river, deep and broad, in which thousands of the Austrians were lost. Austria was able to make no further effort.
Russia was the first of the Great Powers among the Allies to enter the war, but Germany did not count upon her remaining in it long. German influence, especially that of the German Socialists with the uneducated Russians, was so strong that the Kaiser expected a revolution long before it happened. The Russian leaders were self-seeking, and the Tsar and his advisers were lacking in ability and force. The Germans thought Russia would collapse very soon, and thus leave Germany free to turn and conquer France; after which they could settle with England, and then with the United States.
Until the close of 1916, the Russian armies gave the Germans fierce opposition except when, through treachery of the officers of the government, supplies and ammunition were withheld and the soldiers had to fight cannon, machine guns, and rifles with the butts of their muskets. Of course the Russians were driven back, but not until they had come within one hundred and eighty-five miles of Berlin, which was the nearest approach of an enemy army during the first four years of the war.
In the fall of 1914, the Russian armies suffered through treachery a terrible defeat near Tannenberg in the Masurian Lake region of East Prussia, but the great leader of their armies farther south, Grand Duke Nicholas, invaded Austria, capturing stronghold after stronghold until treachery of Russian officials forced him to retreat. The retreat of his armies was conducted in so masterly a manner that it has ranked him as one of the great generals of the World War.
As soon as German money and German lies had undermined the directing forces at the Russian capital, it was an easy matter for German armies to overrun Russian Poland, to capture Warsaw and the great Russian fortresses, and to advance as far north as Riga.