November 21, 1914. 
LAND AND WATER 
months in North-Eastcrn France. Tlie -way in 
which industry crowds into this corner may best 
be appreciated from looking at the map B, 
POSEN ^ ,..• 
GfO^P 
^^^ Areas oF dense population in St'Iesja 
where the density of population is shown. But 
from this sketch it cannot be fully grasped how 
important is this corner of Silesia, for the full 
pressure of population here is masked by the com- 
paratively small areas occupied upon the map by 
the towns. 
Lastly, it must be remembered that this great 
economic value which Silesia represents for 
Prussia, is accentuated by the fact that of all the 
industrial districts of modern Germany, Silesia 
during the course of the present campaign has been 
least affected by English sea-power, and by the 
blockade which this sea-power has imposed against 
the importation of raw material into the enemy's 
country. It is an aspect of capital importance 
to our jud^ent of the part Silesia is to play in 
this campaign, that the shutting down of mills 
and nianufactories and of the mines supplying 
them in the west of the German Empire would not 
affect the continued prosperity and activity of 
Silesia if the latter could be protected from inva- 
sion by land. It lies furthest from the ocean of 
all the German provinces, and more than any other 
relies upon materials discoverable within its own 
boundaries; its veins of ore, its coal, and the rest, 
are its own. - 
With these two points, the large population 
of Silesia, its industrial and urban character and 
consequent effect upon the opinion morally sup- 
porting the war in Germany, we conclude the in- 
direct factors of Silesia's 'strategic importance. 
The direct factors to which wc come next are of 
greater moment. 
III.— SILESIA AS THE FLANK OF 
EASTERN GERMANY. 
There are in defence of the heart of modern 
Germany, its capital at Berlin, its central indus- 
trial district of Saxony, and communications be- 
tween its centre and its outlying province of East 
Prussia, two lines discoverable. 
The first of these lines is an irregular group 
of fortresses which roughly follow the boundary 
not of the political Empire, but of the German and 
Slavonic races. These fortresses are those of 
Dantzig, Graudenz, and Thorn upon the Lower 
Vistula ; Posen facing the middle of the frontier ; 
Glogau, Breslau, Oppeln (a minor piece of work), 
to which may be added as an extreme southern 
point, the great Austrian fortress of Cracow, 
which reposes upon the Carpathian Mountains. 
The second line of defence trends much more 
easterly, and consists in the River Oder, but the 
Oder is a shallow stream (though with lateral 
canals). It is fordable in much of its course, and 
if it be true (as it is) that no river, not even a deep 
one, has ever been used in modern military history 
for a permanent line of defence, then the Oder can 
hardly be regarded as a very serious line. 
Still, such as it is, it is the only line behind 
that of the fortresses. Of course, trenches can 
always be prepared under modern conditions to 
hold almost any line limited only by the number 
of troops set to defend it, and the soil of the 
northern part of the basin of the Oder, dry, sandy 
and waste, lends itself well enough to this form 
of defence. But when inferior numbers are meet- 
ing superior numbers, as will inevitably be the 
case during this fighting upon the frontier between 
Germany and Russia, a natural line must surely 
be discovered to strengthen a mere system of 
trenches. 
Now both these lines, the irregular line of 
large, permanent garrison fortresses and the 
divergent line of the Oder behind it, are turned if 
Upper Silesia be occupied. Silesia is no more than 
the upper valley of the Oder, and an invader occu- 
pying Silesia and marching north-westward from 
it has turned the barrier fortresses, and is already 
upon the left bank of that second line represented 
by the Oder River itself. 
All this, it must be remembered, would not 
have the importance we attach to it were the Rus- 
sians fighting, as the French and English are fight- 
ing in France, that is, with inferior numbers 
^J.9r.^'^ 
■" QUe Tortmss Line 
"Zine cftixe Oder 
cx^aw 
SKETCH SnOWTNG <1TEATE01C BrKKCT OF OCCCrATION 01' t'PPEE EILESIA 
IN rVENIJiO THE TWO LINES OP DiSiEJiCB IN 
EASTEKN GJSRMAHy. 
against superior numbers, or at best with number^ 
now approaching an equality. 
Under such conditions it would be impossible 
to leave behind one merely by turning them the 
great fortresses of modern Germany. But the 
Russians, possessing as they do a vast potential 
superiority in numbers, a superiority already 
realised and continually inercasmg, are in a posi- 
tion to mask the fortresses— such of them as lie 
close to the line of invasion — as they may choose, 
and to move with their main forces eastward into 
the heart of Germany if once they establish them- 
selves in this Silesian province firmly., 
n 
