September 12, 1914 
LAND AND WATER 
powers, acting iiuder the direction of Berlin, has been 
in risking the chances of this tremendous war. 
That object is briefly to reduce Prance to such a 
position in Europe that she will in future count 
among the second-rate States, her anny Imiited at 
the will of her conqueror ; and this is to be done 
not by annexing any territory, but by crushing 
military victories followed by crushing financial 
indemnities, and a continuously crushing economic 
treaty enforced perhaps by garrisons. Eussia is 
merely to be checked ; to be pi-evented from invading 
Germany or Austria, and, above all, to be prevented 
from exercismg such pressure as shall compel the 
Germans to return too early from their task of 
crushing the French, before that task is accomplished. 
Finally, against England the detennination is to 
achieve so thorough a victory as shall (1) prevent 
England from ever becoming a military State. 
(2) To compel England to impoverish herself at 
Germany's expense and to share with Germany her 
present control of Colonial areas, of dependent civUisa- 
tious, and of sea-borne trade. In general, England is 
in this plan to be a still commercial and still pro.sperous 
State — for it is not thought possible to prevent this — 
but a State constrained to admit the pretensions of a 
greater rival from which she will always ultimately 
have to receive her orders in Colonial and commercial 
policy throughout the world. It is believed in 
Germany that a sudden attack upon the British fleet 
delivered 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 
enemy, fi-ee at least for a raid. It is believed that 
such a raid would paralyse any British effort abroad. 
Now in the prosecution of this general plan it is 
evident that there can be no thought of " conquering" 
Russia. « The thing is flatly impossible. It will be 
much truer to describe the German conception as an 
ultimate understanding between Russia and the 
Germanic Powers for the control of the world. 
Translated into military tenns, therefore, the 
policy of the Germanic Powers is, upon their western 
frontiers to destroy all French offensive power rapidly, 
to confuse and harry England by some raid ; upon 
their eastern frontier to prove to the Russian General 
Staff its inability to invade Germany or Austria. 
The German General Staff (and the Austrian 
forces at its disposal) are to show the Russian General 
Staff that attempt after attempt to invade the territory 
of the Hohenzoliems or the Hapsburgs is doomed to 
fail until at last the Russian General Staff shall give 
tip tlie game. 
The recent success of Prussia against the two 
Eussiiin army corps near Osterode is an exact model of 
■what the German General Staff have planned through- 
out this war to tjike place upon their eastern frontiers. 
It is this attitude of Berlin (and, therefore, of 
Austria, too) towards what the Germans describe as 
the " Slav peril " which gives to the great victory at 
Lemberg its exceptional immediate importance and 
may give to that action a capital and determinant 
effect upon the whole war. For it is the exact 
opposite of what Berlin hoped for and expected from 
the Austrians. 
They hoped for a " blocking " effect — the defeat 
of a Russian army not followed by victorious pursuit 
and profound invasion, but by similar successive 
defeats of further Russian annies as they advanced. 
Wliat they have received is the destruction of one of 
the two Austrian frontier forces which should have 
imposed that " blocking " effect upon the cnejny, and, 
at the moment of writing, the immediate peril of 
destruction to the other. 
The story of the Austrian disaster is as follows : — 
Two Austi-ian Annies were organised upon the 
noi-them slopes of the Carpathians, facing north-ea,st, 
across Galicia, and it was from GaHcia into the Polish 
Government of Lublin that the advance was directed. 
BRCST 
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riEST POSITION OF TH« TTVO ACSTKIAN ARMUJS PEBTIOUS TO 
THB ADVAXCB. 
Thefrst Austrian Army (I.) reposed its right upon the 
Vistula, at the place where this stream forms a frontier 
between Galicia 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 Przemysl. TTie front along which it was thus 
di-awn up was about eighty miles in length, and it 
will give some idea of the magnitude of these eastern 
operations (Avhich the distance of the field tends to 
dwarf in our western eyes) that this one Austrian 
front was more than the whole front recently occnpied 
by the German Army in France, between Amiens and 
the Belffian frontier. 
This first Army then (I.), the exact composition 
and magnitude of which we cannot yet determine, but 
which can hardly have numbered 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 Lublin, much at the same 
time as the German Army in the west was advancing 
across the Belgian frontier upon the line Le Cateau- 
Cambrai — that is about ten days ago. They estab- 
lished contact with the Russian forces in this region 
upon a Hne passing through the town of Krasnik, 
some fifteen miles within the frontier, and rather less 
than thii-ty from Lublin itself. Wlien they had thus 
established contact they completed, against the 
Russians opposed to them, operations 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 the 
much more numerous wounded which the enemy's 
retreat leaves in the hands of the advancing army. 
Indeed, the official Austrian description which spoke 
of tlie Russians as hastily retiring towards the Valley 
of the Bug could only coiTespond to some such 
movement, and, in general, the Austrian forces in this 
field had met their opponents a couple of days' march 
before Lublin in a line passing through Krasnik and, 
in a series of actions which take their common name 
«• 
