The War in Eastern Europe

John Reed (1887 – 1920) was an American journalist, poet, and socialist activist, best remembered for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, "Ten Days That Shook the World."

After World War I began Reed went to Central Europe as a war corresponddent in 1915, a journey on which he was accompanied by Canadian artist and frequent Masses contributor Boardman Robinson. Traveling from Thessaloniki, they met scenes of profound devastation in Serbia and they were arrested, incarcerated for several weeks and liable to be shot for espionage. These wartime experiences led to Reed's book, "The War in Eastern Europe", published in 1916.

With splendid descriptive power, enthusiasm, and sympathetic understanding he takes us back of the scenes and shows us the poignant tragedy of the war in the Balkans, in Russian Poland.

Like so many other promising young American writers. John Reed hastened to Europe at the outbreak of the war. Circumstances altered his plans, for he just grazed the 'front.' Fortunately he made the most of his disappointment. By studying the normal life of the Eastern natives under the strain of long-drawnout warfare, after they had settled down to 'war as a business,' he was able to write a book which is a unique contribution to present-day war history.

Mr Reed takes the reader thru poor typhus-ridden Serbia, into floundering Russia, then back to Rumania and Bulgaria. With fine sympathy and understanding he pictures the abjectness as well as the splendid qualities of patriotism and hospitality of the Serbian peasant. He scalds Russia with burning indignation for her blundering inefficiency and almost unbelievable brutality to the Jews and towards alien races.

Thruout the book one notices a tendency towards the dramatic, which Mr Reed accomplishes with the finesse of an artist. The War in Eastern Europe is decidedly worth reading. In literary quality, for one thing, it is much above the flood of 'war literature' that had deluged the reading public of his time.

Reed writes:

"As I look back on it all, it seems to me that the most important thing to know about the war is how the different peoples live; their environment, tradition, and the revealing things they do and say. In time of peace, many human qualities are covered up which come to the surface in a sharp crisis; but on the other hand, much of personal and racial quality is submerged in time of great public stress. And in this book Robinson and I have simply tried to give our impressions of human beings as we found them in the countries of Eastern Europe, from April to October, 1915."

Contents
I. THE COUNTRY OF DEATH
II. THE WAR CAPITAL
III. TOWARD THE FRONT
IV. BELGRADE UNDER THE AUSTRIAN GUNS
V. ALONG THE BATTLE-LINE
VI. A NATION EXTERMINATED
VII. RUSSIA'S BACK DOOR
VIII. BREAKING INTO BUCOVINA
IX. ZALEZCHIK THE TERRIBLE
X. BEHIND THE RUSSIAN RETREAT
XI. LEMBERG BEFORE THE GERMANS CAME
XII. AN OPTIMISTIC PILGRIMAGE
XIII. THE FACE OF RUSSIA
XIV. PETROGRAD AND MOSCOW
XV. TOWARD THE CITY OF EMPERORS
XVI. CONSTANTINOPLE UNDER THE GERMANS
XVII. THE HEART OF STAMBOUL
XVIII. RUMANIA IN DIFFICULTIES
XIX. BULGERIA GOES TO WAR
XX. SERBIA REVISITED