Septemlxn- 19, 1911 
LAND A X D W A T E R 
These operntinrs, viLidi wore tal<iiig place on the 
Belgiiin Phiin wliilo all the above was happennig in 
France, thongli in no Avay decisive last week, nor even 
as yet affecting the result, are well worth our notice. 
It was apparent upon September Sth that the 
able but hazardous attempt of the great German Army 
under Kluck to get past the unexpected hirge forces 
in front of him had failed. lie was still heavily 
defending the line of the Ourcq, but he was being 
pressed in from the soutli and he must reti*eat. The 
news was jiresumably conveyed at once to Antwerp, 
and on the 9th the Belgian Army, which the fortifi- 
cations of that town maintained intact, resumed 
operations. Those operations were continued throngli- 
out the 9th, the 10th, and the 11th of tlie month, 
that is, the Wednesday, the Thursday, and the Friday 
of last week, and during those days they took the 
. fonn oi a gi"eat sortie of the beleaguered ganison of 
Antwerp towards the south, the Geraians in the 
North of Belgium falling back before this ad\ance. 
On Saturday, the 12th, German reinforcements had 
come up from the South of Belgium in sufficient 
numbers to check the Belgian movement. On Sunday 
last, September 13th, the Belgians retired again 
behind the guns of Antwerp. 
Let us see, first, what was the natm-e of those five- 
day operations ; secondly, what was their object ; and, 
thirdh', how far that object was achieved. 
The nature of the operations was as follows : — 
The Belgian troops, issuing out of Antwei-p, worked 
round to the south and east, driving the Germans out 
of Aerschot, and ultimately, by the Wednesday night 
or the Thursday moniing, lying along a line from 
Malines to Louvain. From Malines to Louvain 
runs a canal. The Belgian line lay just to the 
east of that canal, and there was actually some 
fighting within the ruins of Louvain itself. More 
than this, certain patrols of cavalry, and, perhaps, 
small bodies of infantry as well, had got round 
to the i-ailway line between Louvain and Brussels, 
cutting the same near the station of Cortenberg, 
which is almost exactly between the two towns, 
but slightly nearer LouA-ain. The line seems to 
have been cut somewhere betv/eeu the two X's which 
I have marked upon the sketch. 
Meanwhile, during the whole of that Tuesday, 
"Wednesday, and Thursday the Gennans were hurrying 
up reinforcements from the south. On the Saturday, 
they took the counter-offensive, and the Belgian line 
retreated northward, ag-ain pivoting upon Malines ; 
on the Sunday morning or the Saturday evening they 
repassed and evacuated Aerschot (the inhabitants of 
Avliich they put behind their lines to save them from 
the outrages which would follow), and by Sunday 
evening they were shut up again behind the 
guns of Antwei-p. 
The whole of this little manoemTe, therefore 
(little only on account of the vast scale of the present 
•wars — f(jr the numbers engaged cannot have been far 
short of 40,000 men), was acted upon an in-eguhir 
field (marked upon the sketch as a shaded area) the 
longest jueasurement of which is less than thirty miles. 
Xow what was its object ? Its object was two- 
fold. First to harass the line of German communica- 
tiou through Belgium, and, secondly, to draw back 
again towards the north certain of the reinforcements, 
small as they woi-e, which the Gennans were sending 
down to stiffen their retiring line in France and 
probabl\', as I have said, to guaixl their extreme i-iglit 
from envelopment. 
We should be equally in error if we regarded this 
little sortie from Ant\verp, ending so shoi-tly after its 
first effort in a retirement, as either presenting a 
seriitiis menace to the Gennan communications or as 
futile. It did not present a serious menace to the 
German communications for the moment, but it put a 
fear into the German commanders for the safety of 
those communications, and a fear that will less 
constantly be renewed. 
The object of such an operation as this is to 
make the enemy just at the moment when he is most 
bewildered in the crush of a retreat tlnviugh too 
narrow an issue, feel insecure cccrj/irZ/rrc. The object 
is not to cut his communications — [there is, unfortu- 
nately, nothing like the strength in Belgium to do 
that, and a terrilde pity it is : a couple of extra Army 
Corps put into Antwerp at the beginning of the war 
would have decided it in its present phase !] — but only 
to harass its communications. The object is to prevent 
the commanders of the Gennan retirement from being 
able to say to themselves : — " ]My lines of supply 
through Belgium are, now that I have burnt and 
han-ied and killed ci\iHans, as safe as my lines of 
supply through Luxemburg, and I can count upon 
them absolutely." 
Now this harassing of the Germans in Belgium 
happens to be of particular value in the present cam- 
paign, because evei'ything goes to show that the 
German commanders risked their whole strength in 
the advance on Paris and left then- communications 
through Belgium guarded less strongly than has ever 
been the case with any other amiy advancing through 
hostile temtory. They haA'e already evacuated Ter- 
monde (after destroying it) and have only threatened 
Ghent. They have deliberately refused to occupy the 
sea coast at Ostend ai;d Dunkirk, which they had 
ample opportunity of doing. They have put ujjon 
those conununications their very last resen^es in quite 
insufficient numbers, relying upon two things for their 
security : the establishment of a terror along those 
lines, and the absence of a highly trained army, with 
its full complement of all arms, in Antwerp. 
In other words, they have run this great risk of 
leaving the root of their communications ill-guarded, 
relying upon the terror created by the murder of 
civilians and piiests and the burning of villages and 
churches to make up for a lack of troops. Now this 
policy of terror has been successfvd only up to a certain 
point. The repetition day after day of new outrages 
proves that. The inferior troops of the last Gennan 
reserve left in Belgium are not wholly seom-e from the 
vengeance of those whose country they have ravaged 
as no European country was ravaged before in modern 
times, and Avhose temtory they first guaranteed to be 
neutral and then invaded. And while their securi.V 
is thus shaken it must be equally evident to thmn 
that they have under-estimated the offensive power of 
the mitrained and half-ti'ained forces added to the 
I'egular forces upon their flank in Antwerp. 
That is jwecisely the effect Avhich sorties of this 
kind have ; they distract. 
The Belgians only got as far as the line Brussels 
— Louvain, and they only did that at a great expense 
of energy and under the necessity of an immediate 
retreat. But they compelled the withdrawing of 
German forces from the south. They checked to 
some extent the dribble of the remaining reinforce- 
ments into France, and, most important of all, they 
rendered the wholly insufficient guardians of the 
Gennan communications in Belgium uncertain whether 
the next blow Avould not be more serious. 
On the other hand avo must not exaggerate the 
effects which a sortie such as this has had, and here I 
■would beg the reader to look at the scheme of the 
11* 
