LAND AND AVATER September 5, 1914 
kocp up anIlIi a pressed marcli fall out aucl are taken prisoner. The losses count to the full iii a 
iiiilitiuT sense ; thej are complete losses to the effectives of the fighting force ; but they do not spell 
death or even wounds nccess;arily ; their numbers are in excess of the total number of killed and 
A\oimded. 
(3) The descriptions given of a force in retreat (descriptions which never ought to be given unless 
fuU ncAvs from the ^var is permitted) are utterly misleading to the civilian mind, and confuse it. 
They veil from it the true iiature of that operation. A retreat is disheartening, it is jiainful, and all 
the rest of it ; but in mere strategy it is an operation like any other. It only differs from an advance 
in this— that jou abandon to the enemy that wastage from your organisation which you A\oidd, in 
an advance, send back out of the way and well cared for to your base. 
There are certain simple mottoes in the reading of warfare, whether historical or contemporary, 
which everybody should have before him as immutable guides to judgment. They may almost be 
reduced to three. At any rate, three such epigrams arc the basis of all sound judgment in the matter, 
and the cure for all panic. 
I will put them thus and emphasize them by italics : — • 
(1) Any armed force adcances or retires in columns. Itft/hfs deployed in a line. 
(.2) Until an army has been rendered materially tceaker in numbers or equipment to its opponent, fio 
decision lias been reached : that is, there has been no victory and no defeat. 
(3) Save in the excejyiional case of an army caught in column before it can dejiloy, there is no render- 
ing of an army materially weaker, still less is there any destruction of an armed force, until its deployed line 
is either («) turned, or {b) pierced. 
The army of the Allies, though it repose, as it may repose before these lines aj^pear, on an 
invested Paris, though it retire south from an occupied Paris, is not, to the houi* of my "WTitiug this, 
turued or pierced. It is in full being. 
THE EASTERN FIELD OF WAR. 
•ALLENSTEIW-- Q ^ 
BERLINo t fJ^?^^^ '" — ' 'c^ ^ 
WARSAW 
•lublin 
St A, 
;2 
CO 
O lOO 200 
I 1 I 
SCALE OF MILES 
^'•ajV -, LEMBERG' 
m 
SKITCH OP THE FIELD OF OPEEATIOXS IN THB EAST, BETWEEN THE EU3SIA.N, AKD THE AUSTKO-iltTN-OAISIAX A^.•D GKliJIAN AEMIES. 
I said last week, and it will have to be said frequently in the coui-se of comment.s upon these 
campaigns, that to deijond upon immediate pressure exercised by the liussian armies upon the Germanic 
powers, and particularly upon Berlin, is to depend upon a vain thing. 
The pressure cannot come — I am willing to wager that it A\iil not come — before the close of 
October. And it cannot be an immediate pret^sure from the very nature of the operations to which 
Hussian Armies in the eastern field of A\ar are condemned. This is due to three quite evident 
factors : (1) the great distances involved, (.2) the paucity of communications to the east of the Eussian 
C* 
