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The southern half of the Austrian province of Bukowina also ought to be part of Roumania, as should the greater part of the Russian state of Bessarabia. Whereas Roumania now has a population of 7,000,000, there are between five and six million of her people who live outside her present boundaries. The shores and islands of the Aegean Sea should belong to Greece.
More German troops held the next sector, and, finally, came Von Pflanzer-Baltin's army groups in the Bukowina and Eastern Galicia. As has already been pointed out, the greatest disparity of strength existed on the Dunajec line, where Dmitrieff stood opposed to about half of the enemy's entire force with only five corps of Russian troops.
Late in February the Teuton forces entered Russian positions in Galicia and also re-took the offensive on the Roumanian front, raiding Russian trenches in the Carpathians and blocking all Russian attempts to force the mountain passes. On February 28 they recaptured most of the peaks in the Bukowina which were lost to the Russians earlier in the year, and took a large number of Russian prisoners.
Over the slushy roads of the valleys and into the snow-laden passes the Germanic armies advanced, each of the widely deployed columns with a definite objective: From Dukla, Lupkow, and Rostoki to relieve Przemysl; from Uzsok through the valley of the Upper San to Sambor; through Beskid and Vereczke northward to Stryj, thence westward also to Sambor; over Wyszkow to Dolina; via Jablonitza to Delatyn; and across Kirlibaba and Dorna Vatra into the Bukowina.
We have seen that the Russian occupation of the Bukowina was more in the nature of a political experiment than a serious military undertaking, and that their forces in the province were not strong enough to indulge in great strategical operations. Hence we may expect the Austrian general's progress to be less difficult than that of his colleagues in the western and central Carpathians.
By September 26, 1914, the Russians had reached the Carpathian Mountains and were flooding the fertile plains of the Bukowina, threatening an imminent invasion of Hungary itself. The first week of October, 1914, brought a third invasion of East Prussia which, however, did not extend as far as the two preceding it, and which was partly repulsed before October was ended.
About the middle of May matters quieted down in the eastern sector; the only fighting of importance consisted of severe artillery combats around Czernowitz and Kolomea. The issue of the conflict hung in the west with Von Mackensen's armies; fighting in the Bukowina at this stage became an unnecessary expenditure of strength and energy.
While the struggle for the passes was raging in the central Carpathians an interesting campaign was being conducted in Eastern Galicia and the Bukowina between Von Pflanzer-Baltin and Lechitsky. There we left the Russians in possession of Stanislawow, which they had reoccupied on March 4, 1915.
At the three other points, in the Riga zone, south of Lake Drisviaty and on the Lassjolda, his attacks broke down under the Russian fire. Lemberg, Galicia's capital, was now threatened from three sides. Czernowitz, the capital of the Bukowina, was even in a more precarious position.
Lechitsky was also compelled to withdraw from the Bukowina between Zaleszczyki, Onut, and Czernowitz, where the Austrians were moving along the Dniester in the north, the Pruth in the south, and over the hills in the center against the village of Szubraniec.
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