October 17, 1914 
LAND AND WATEE 
1. GERMAN SPEAKINO AXD IIOEALLT ATTACHED. 
2. aSSKAli SPIAXINO OUT OV 6TMPATHT. 
3. KON-OBEMAN SPEAKINO BUT IN STMPATHT. 
4. THB WHITK POETION "VTITHIS BLACK BOUNDAEIES 
BKPBESZNTS BACKS KEITHZR OIBMAN SPEAKINO NOB IN 
STMPATHT. BLACK LINKS BEPBSSBNT BOUNDAUIKS OV 
TKHBITOBT NOW OCCDPIKD BT OBEMANIC FOECKS. 
the areas within this broad black line which are 
German-speakinq^ but opposed to the war and not 
morally attached to the German-speaking core. All 
the rest — not German either in speech or sympathy 
— a larger area, is left white. It is apparent at 
a glance how the war is still being pushed well back 
from what is, for our enemies, their own soil. We shall 
not be bringing pressure upon that soil, we shall not 
have turned them from invaders into beleagured men, 
— nationally speaking, they are still far from it — until 
we have got them back somewhere on to the deeply 
hatched central area. 
Now, what are the conditions, both expected and 
unexpected, which have led to this " block " or dead- 
lock of .opposing lines, east and west, external to the 
Germanic core we are fighting ; and what are the 
prospects of the future, or rather, what alternative 
jirospects do those conditions promise ? 
The " block " to east and to west, in so far as it 
represents a failure in the general German plan, is a 
failure due to the breakdown of what may be vulgarly 
called " the strategy of rush." 
In a minor degree this " strategy of rush " failed 
also on the side of the AUies when the French had to 
give up their premature attempt upon Alsace- 
Lon-aine, and suffered a heavy defeat (in the last 
thii-d of August) south of Metz. In the eastern field 
it failed still more conspicuously when the qtiite 
unexpectedly rapid Russian advance into East Prussia 
broke so disastrously at the same time before 
Tannenberg. 
But these failures in the " rush strategy " of the 
Allies were but of slight effect upon the general 
conduct of the war compared with the failure in the 
" rush strategy " of the Germanic powers. 
For the Allies never intended to " rush " the 
campaign as a whole. The French preliminary work 
in Alsace-Lorraine was that of an advance guard. 
The Russian work in East Prussia was equally 
detached from the general aggregation of later Russian 
forces ten times as numerous. The French, when 
they failed in their preliminary clutch at Lorraine, 
had an army corps cut up and lost the strength of 
perhaps a division, a,«t well as over fifty guns. The 
Russians, in their preliminary clutch at East Prussia, 
had a couple of army corps cut up and lost perhaps 
30,000 men, perhaps 50,000, perhaps more, to the 
enemy. But as regards the vast national anuies and 
the general national plan, neither of the two Allies 
came out perceptibly the weaker from these mischances. 
On the other hand, the failure of the German 
" rush strategy " determined the whole first phase of 
the war, and for this reason — that, in the German 
case, the " rush strategy " was not experimental initial 
work with heavy reserves behind it. It was something 
fundamental in the whole German scheme upon which 
this war was designed, and involved all the German 
power. 
There are in any form of contested human 
efforts — a speculative adventuring in commerce, a 
prize fight, a race, or a war — two alternative avenues 
to success. By the first you concenti-ate effort upon 
immediate mastery over your enemy. You keep little 
reserve. You risk all. If you win you win not only 
thoroughly, but at an expense less probably in 
material and certainly less in time than in the alter- 
native method — which is tliis': — To maintain an 
ample reserve, to expect your enemy, to hold him and 
to master him at last, and slowly, by your power of 
perpetually bringing up fresh strength. 
In a race, for instance, it is the contrast between a 
man who sprints and a man who starts slow but 
counts on his staying power ; in a wrestling match it 
is the conti'ast between a man who lavishly spends his 
energy in the first bout as against a man who merely 
resists until the third or fourth. And in modern war 
it is the prime contrast between the two great schools 
of strategy that dominate modern war. Not that 
each school is not attached to a vigorous offensive, 
but that the one risks initial weakness for the advan- 
tage of a strong reserve, the other risks the upsetting 
of all its plans for the advantage of immediate success 
to be achieved by all its force available in the field. 
It need hardly be added that neither in war nor 
in any other form of contest is the one method 
demonstrably superior to the other. Histoiy is as full 
of success in either case as of disaster, and the whole 
choice in a modern war in Europe depends upon the 
calculation of modern European conditions. 
Germany deliberately decided for the first of 
these two methods. She was to bring her all into the 
field at once. So was Austria. Her best armies were 
to advance upon the west, to overwhelm the numeri- 
cally inferior French forces before the full weight of 
Russia could come into play. Upon the east her 
Austrian Ally was to march immediately and boldly 
into Russian Poland, strike across the Vistula by the 
Krasnik road for Lublin (as along the arrow) and get 
right on the main Russian railway and communications 
in the valley of the Bug. 
.<^t/ 
^Z-lCtA 
lEMBERO ; 
Russia would return. But meanwhile she had 
been held by this rapid Austrian advance — this up- 
