This marked the end of a remarkable campaign, fought between improvised armies of limited size in a vast theatre of war. It was a campaign of mobility and surprise, totally different from most of those fought during the World War. It was a contest between armies led mostly by young generals, and in which cavalry played an important part and field trenches no part at all, and above all, it was a war in which men were more important than matériel, and generals more important than their staffs.
The influence of this decisive battle on history was fully appreciated by Tukhachevski, who lost it, and by Lord D'Abernon, who watched it. Yet, strange to say, its importance was little grasped by western Europe, and since has remained little noticed. Soon after his defeat Tukhachevski wrote :
. . . "There is not the slightest doubt that, had we been victorious on the Vistula, the revolution would have set light to the entire continent of Europe. . . . Like an overwhelming torrent it would have swept into Western Europe, etc."1
Later, in an article published in the Gazeta Polska of August 17, 1930, Lord D'Abernon set down his judgment as follows :
"The history of contemporary civilization knows no event of greater importance than the Battle of Warsaw, 1920, and none of which the significance is less appreciated. The danger menacing Europe at that moment was parried, and the whole episode forgotten. Had the battle been a Bolshevik victory, it would have been a turning point in European history, for there is no doubt at all that the whole of Central Europe would at that moment have been opened to the influence of Communist propaganda and a Soviet invasion, which it could with difficulty have resisted. . . . The events of 1920 also deserve attention for another reason : victory was attained, above all, thanks to the strategical genius of one man and thanks to the carrying through of a manœvre so dangerous as to necessitate not only genius, but heroism. . . . It should be the task of political writers to explain to European opinion that Poland saved Europe in 1920, and that it is necessary to keep Poland powerful and in harmonious relations with Western European civilization, for Poland is the barrier to the everlasting peril of an Asiatic invasion."2
1 L'Année 1920, p. 255.
2 Quoted from The Poland of Pilsudski, Machray, p. 118.