LAND AND WATER 
November 21, 1914. 
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capital importance. It is especially important from 
the fact that alone of the Eastern border Silesia 
presents this highly vulnerable character. It is 
even true to say that if the Russian Armies can 
be kept out of Silesia their admission into Posen 
further north, and even into East and West Prus- 
sia east of the Vistula would not affect the cam- 
paign in as many months as it will be affected in 
weeks if Silesia is broken into. For what these 
things are worth in a campaign (and they are not 
to be despised) the historical meaning of the place 
is also to be considered. Germany regarded her- 
self, so long as Europe was united, as the bulwark 
of civilised Christendom against the heathen Slav, 
and nowhere did the Eastern advances of the Ger- 
man tongue and of those habits of civilisation, 
especially in religion, which the Germans had been 
taught under the arms of France, take firmer root 
than in this borderland. The great towns along 
the Oder, notably Breslau, are historically bastions 
of German speech and more or less Western ciil- 
ture thrust forward into Slavonic land, and we can 
trace the dates, especially in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, when, though the Slavs vv^ere long since 
Christian, German colonists were invited by the 
independent rulers of Silesia into their waste 
lands. Now, the success of a Russian invasion 
does not mean, of course, any immediate recovery 
of Slay influence over territories three-quarters 
of which has for now 600 years received 
a German tone, and probably a preponderat- 
ing admixture of German blood. But it does 
mean an immediate setting back of an established 
tradition. It is a little as though in the Eng- 
lish sixteenth century a Gaelic-speaking Highland 
invading army had reached to and thoroughly 
occupied the Lowlands of Scotland. Further, 
should the campaign go ultimately in favour of the 
Allies it is quite certain that Polish-speaking 
Silesia will cease to be German, and equally cer- 
tain that no barrier of German fortresses will re- 
main upon this frontier. Of such a conclusion 
mvasion by the Russian hosts would be a sort of 
foretaste. 
XL— THE ECONOMIC VALUE. 
Silesia is not only a typical industrialised and 
therefore densely populated and urban piece of 
modern Prussia, but it is also a province upon 
which the economic strength of Prussia largely 
reposes and, for reasons to be discovered in a 
moment, reposes in fashion peculiarly important 
to this campaign and deeply interwoven with the 
strategics of this campaign. 
That this is so may be appreciated from the 
following table: — 
(a) The products of Silesia do not indeed 
directly concern the conduct of the war to the 
same extent as do those of the Westphalian coal- 
field and of Saxony. The main industries are the 
metallurgy of zinc, glass-rnakiug and other forms 
of production not immediately affecting the army; 
but the coal mining does directly affect the 
army. Prussia has considerable stocks of coal, 
but one effect of the war has been of course 
to reduce the output enormously, and the number 
of men who can be retained for the work and 
thereby lost to the armies is strictly thought out 
and as strictly limited. With a blockade to most 
that can enter from the sea, with the great dis- 
tance from coal centres from which East Prussia 
and the Polish border suffers, the coal produce of 
Silesia is, if not essential, still of very high value 
to the conduct of the campaign east of Berlin. 
(h) Of the manufacturing centres of Silesia 
much the most important is the dense block 
actually situated upon the most vulnerable point 
of the frontier just where the two empires meet 
and surrounding in a complex of Black Country 
towns the central town of Konigshutte, by the 
name of which the whole district is sometimes 
known. You have here for its economic import- 
ance, and to some extent for its aspect, something 
not unlike the English group Birmingham, Wol- 
verhampton, Dudley, etc. It lies on the top of the 
chief coalfield of the province, and is industrially 
the heart of the province. There is no line of 
defence between it and the advance of a Russian 
army from Western Poland; no fortress defends 
it ; no river line ; no clean range of heights (though 
the district as a whole is hilly). It even overlaps 
the border, and a part of it is situated xxndor 
Russian dominion. In other words, this vital 
corner of Silesian, and therefore Prussian, indus- 
try can only be defended by a battle or by tho 
establishment immediately to the cast of it of such 
a " deadlock " as has been established for now two 
