Their immense fortifications and the thirteen months' experience on the Russian front taught the general staff and the people of the monarchy to regard any Russian rally with a fatherly kind of smile. This quite unwarranted feeling was due to the constant allusions in the Austro-Hungarian official communiques and in the papers of the monarchy to the defeated hosts of the Czar.
It is evident now how greatly they were mistaken. It also is clear that had the Austro-Hungarian general staff believed that the Russians were in such strength as to afford an offensive on a line of 300 miles, they would not have undertaken an offensive against the Russians only two weeks before, but would have concentrated against the Russians.
SPIRIT OF SOLDIERS HAS BEEN BROKEN
"The greatest miscalculation, nevertheless, lay in the confidence they showed in the spirit of the Austro-Hungarian spirit was not the same as it proved to be last through at Florence and Tarnow was accomplished. Since then many things happened, and thousands of letters written home by these men show that they are not at all satisfied with the position. Taking into account only those letters which appeared in the newspapers, one can deduce that it was not their condition in the trenches which affected them most. What made life unbearable was the fact that they were constantly haunted by the knowledge that their people at home, their wives and children, were suffering practically from starvation, and that they did not see when the war ever would come to a finish.  An end. 