Sq)teiiiT)or 1.:?, I'JM 
LAND AND WATER 
powers, acting uiulcr the clircctiou of Berlin, has been 
in risking the eliances of this tremendous war. 
That object is briefly to reduce France to such a 
positiou in Euroj^c that she will in future count 
among the second-rate States, her anny limited at 
the will of her conqueror ; and this is to be done 
not by ariuexing any territory, but by crushing 
military victories followed by crushing iiiuincial 
indemnities, and a c(mtinuously crushing economic 
treaty enforced perhaps by garrisons. Eussia is 
merely to be checked ; to be prevented from iii\'ading 
Germany or Austria, and, above all, to be prevented 
from exercising such pressure as shall compel the 
(j'ennans to return too early from their task of 
crushing the French, before that task is accomplished. 
Finallv, anfainst Eno;land the determination is to 
achieve so thorough a victory as shall (I) prevent 
England from ever becoming a military State. 
(2) To compel England to impoverish herself at 
(Jcrinany's expense and to share with Germany her 
2)resent control of Colonial areas, of dependent civilisa- 
tions, and of sea-borne trade. In general, England is 
in this plan to be a still commercial and still pros]>erous 
State — for it is not thought possible to prevent this — 
but a State constrained to admit the pretensions of a 
greater rival from Avhich she will always ultimately 
have to receive her oixlcrs iu Colonial and connnercial 
])olicy throughout the world. It is lielieved in 
(Jennany that a sudden attack upon the British fleet 
<lelivered at a chosen moment of calm, and perhaps 
at the end of the dark, very heavily supported by 
aircraft, and striking at the inner blockading line, 
will at least so cripple that line as to leave the 
North Sea, already mined in regions known to the 
fiiemv, free at least for a raid. It is believed that 
sueh a mid wo'.dd paralyse any British effort abroad. 
Xow iu the prosecution of this general plan it is 
evident that there can be no thought of " concpiering" 
liussia. The thing Is llatly impossible. It will be 
much truer to describe the German conception as an 
ultimate underetjinding between Kussia and the 
Uermanic Powers for the control of the world. 
Ti-an.slated into militarv terms, therefore, the 
policy of the Germanic Powei-s is, upon their western 
frontiers to destroy all French offensive pou er rapidly, 
to confuse and hairy England by some raid ; uj)on 
their eastern frontier to prove to the Ilusslan (Jeneral 
Staff its inability to invade (icrmany or Austria. 
The German General Staff (and the Austrian 
forces at its disposal) are to show the Russian (ieneral 
Staff that attempt after attempt to invade the territory 
of the Hohcnzollerns or the Hapsburgs is doomed to 
fail until at last the iiussiau General Staff shall give 
up the game. 
The recent success of Prussia against ^\c two 
Russian army cor])s near Osterode is an exact model of 
what the Gennan Gencrsd Staff have planned through- 
out this war to tak'j place upon their eastern frontiers. 
It is this attitude of Berlin (and, therefore, of 
Austria, too) towards what the Germans describe as 
the " Slav pcrU. " which gives to the great victory at 
Lcmbci-g its exceptional immediate impoi-tance and 
may give to that action a capital and deterininant 
olfect upon the whole war. For it is the exact 
oj)posite of what B«'rliu hoped for and expected from 
the Austrians. 
lliey hoj^ed for a " blocking" effect— the defeat 
of a Russian army not followed by victoi-ious pursuit 
and i>rofound invasion, but by simihir successive 
defeats of further Russian armies as they advanced. 
What they have received is the destruction of one of 
the two Austrian frontier forces which should have 
imposed that " blocking " effect upon the enemy, and, 
at the moiuent of writing, the immediate peril of 
destruction to the other. 
The story of the Austrian disaster is as follows :— 
Two Austrian .Armies were organised upon the 
northern slopes of the Carpathians, facing nortii-cast, 
across Galicia, and it was from Galicia into the Polish 
Government of I^uIjHu that the advance was directed. 
BRtST 
Vrentitp 
HALICZ 
iiusT rosiTiON or titk two Austrian armiks previous to 
TlIK ADVANCf. 
'^\\(i first Austrian Army (I.) reposed its right ujion the 
Vistula, at the place where this stream forms a frontier 
between CJalicia and Russian Poland. Its right 
stretched to the town of Tomazov, its left was on the 
Vistula itself at Sandomir, its supplies were drawn 
from Przeraysl. The front along which it was tlnis 
drawn uj) was about eighty miles in length, and it 
will give some idea of the magnitude of these eastern 
oj^erations (which the distance of the field tends to 
dwarf in our western ejes) that this one Austrian 
front was more i/inii tin; whole front recentlij occupied 
III/ the German Armij in France, between Amiens and 
the Bdgiun frontier. 
This first Anny then (I.), the exact composition 
and niagnitude of which we cannot yet determine, but 
which can hardly have numbei'cd less than five, and 
may have numbered seven, Army Corps, with their 
full reserves and independent cavalry, or anything 
from :300,000 to 400,000 men, advanced directly north 
by east upon the town of Ijublln, much at the same 
time as the German Anny in the west was advancing 
across the Belgian frontier upon the line Le Cateau- 
Cambrai — that is al)out ten days ago. They estab- 
lished contact with the Russian forces in this region 
upon a line passing through the town of Krasnik, 
some fifteen miles within the frontier, and rather less 
than thirty from Lublin itself. When they had thus 
established contact they completed, against the 
Russians opposed to them, o^^erations which they 
claimed in their official report of the action as a 
complete victory — a victory including the capture of 
many guns and of many prisoners. 
Now when a victory is thus claimed without any 
proof of the enemy's line having been turned or 
pierced, it nearly always means that the side claiming 
it has succeeded in merely continuing its advance ; the 
guns taken are the guns abandoned in the enemy's 
retreat ; the men captured are the stragglers and tlio 
much more numerous Avounded Avliich the enemy's 
retreat leaves in tlio hands of the advancing army. 
Indeed, the official Austrian descrijition which spoke 
of the Russians as hastily retiring towards the Valley 
of the Bug could only coiTCspond to some such 
movement, and, in general, the Austrian forces in this 
fielil h;ul met their opponents a couple of days' march 
before ijublin in a line passing through Krasnik and, 
in a series of actions which take their common name 
3* 
