LAND AND WATER 
October 17, 1914 
setting of her communications— wliilc France was 
bcin<» settled. , 
'in the caf=e of the western halt of tins plan 
Germany had two first-rate pieces of right judgment 
upon her side. She claimed that modern howitzer iii'e 
would dominate modern fortification, and she proved 
rio-ht. She claimed, in other words, that the 1 rench 
rcTiauce unon strongholds would betray them in the 
field of llmr. She claimed that the fortresses ot the 
Mcuse would impose no a]ipreciablc delay. Further 
she calculated that she could put (by the excellence ot 
her organisation, and considering that the strain would 
bo but a momentary one) the vast majority of her 
forces north of the Mense in Belgium and maiutam 
them supplied through the narrow gap of Lidgo 
for the few days necessary to an invasion of France. 
Once they should have broken through thus they 
^y^c. 
■"■iZ' 
woidd have other communications open to them 
through Luxembourg and Treves, and the jn-essurc 
would be relieved. 
Hero again they Avere perfectly right. They 
had brought against the Allied army on the Sarabre 
forces far larger than any commander or critic 
outside Germany had thouglit possible. 
Again, the advance on Paris was as rapid as 
human physical effort and human intelligence com- 
bined could make it. Few finer things liave been 
done in the history of war than that amazing 
advance. 
Up to the last days of August and to the first 
days of September the "rush" strategy Berlin had 
planned Avas triumphant. Then (about the anni- 
versary of Sedan) in the first week of September came 
the failure in both theatres of war. 
In the eastern theatre the Austro-Hungarian 
ally had pushed his main army right up into Eussiau 
Poland, had carried everything before him, had quite 
defeated the troops he had found at Krasnik and had 
piu-sued the road to Lublin. But the Eussian mobili- 
s.ition had proved more rapid and smooth than 
German calculations admitted. The forces Russia 
brought into the field at the end of August destroyed 
the lighting power of the Austrian Hanking army 
r(3und Lemberg, taking from it perhaps 400 guns and 
certainly 60,000 to 70,000 prisoners. The victors 
poiu'cd over and occupied all eastern" G alicia. The 
chief Aiisti'o-Hungarian force which had been so 
successfully moving upon Lublin was compelled to 
retire beyond the San and up the Upper Vistula 
Valley. 
Meanwhile in France the policy of a large 
reserve had vindicated itself, and the fresh masses 
deliberately kept out of the field during the great 
retreat from Mons and Charlcroi appeared from behind 
the screen of Paris and compelled Von Kluck's retreat. 
From that moment in either theatre of war, 
eastern or western, the strategy of " rush " failed. 
But precisely at that moment of failure came in 
another element to produce the " block " or deadlock 
Avhich marlced the rest of the month of September and 
the first days of October. Another modern element 
(which the British service could, perhaps, after the 
experience of South Africa, expect better than any 
other in Em-ope) modified wliat at first looked like the 
progressive defeat of the Germanic allies. This 
element w^as the formidable resisting power of 
entrenched infantry, backed by heavy guns. It was 
in the western field of war that this new element was 
particularly observable. Upon one of the best long 
defensive positions discoverable in Europe from the 
Argonne to Noyon the German army held its own 
day after day. 
Yet another new element appeared. Your 
turning movement, the essence of which is that it 
should be unexpected (in the absence of heavy 
numerical superiority) proved no longer possible in 
modern war. To bring up great forces by railway 
Avas a matter not of hours but of days ; _ and the 
movement could be observed almost sufficiently by 
old-fashioned methods of intelligence— cavalry, spies, 
prisoners — its discovery could be made even more 
certain by the use of air-craft. Finally, the only 
roads by which the work could be done, the railroads, 
limited to precise and known lines the methods of its 
advance. 
Under all these conditions the attempt to turn the 
G erman line by its right north of Noyon failed. E very 
new French body brought up to extend that turning 
movement was met and checked by the arrival of 
a corresponding German body, drawn, as the Allied 
body had them drawn, from the centre and the east. 
Until after the extension of the line northward to the 
Belgian frontier at the end of September the turning 
movement as 'such may be said to have definitely 
failed. It had proved to be nothing but an extension 
of the block already established. 
Something of the same soi-t appears to have 
gone on in the eastern field of war, though there 
certain modifications appeared. Germany lent aid to 
the Austro-Hungarlan forces ; between them tlie 
resistance to the Eussian advance pro\'ed stronger and 
stronger, and the progress of the Eussian hosts 
through G alicia grew less and less pronounced, until 
with the first days of October things were at a 
standstill in southern Poland. Meanwhile in 
northern Poland the very same phenomenon was 
repeated on a small scale as had taken place in 
France upon a gigantic one. 
A rapid German advance to the Niemen failed, 
turned back, Avas pressed to a certain line of defence 
partly behind and partly in front of the frontier of the 
Gcniian lilmpirc, and there, for the moment, at least, 
established a stalemate. 
With this close and stationary grip so unex- 
pectedly prolonged in either theatre of the great war 
ends its first phase. 
Under Avhat conditions does the second phase 
open, and Avhat promises to be its leading charac- 
teristic ? What kind of ilghting are we to expect in 
the immediate future ? 
6* 
