November 28, 1914, 
LAND AND WATER 
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There are only three real passages over the 
obstacle Nieuport-Dixmude. Tliese are (1) the 
great main coast road at 5 in the sketch, (2) the 
smaller road from Pervjse at 3, on the map (I do 
not know if this is still intact or not), and (3) the 
road from Dixmude Bridge (now destroyed) at 1 on 
the map. So far from holding the further ends 
of these passages, the two main ones at 5 and 
at 1 right up to the Yser River itself are held 
by the French, and the middle one from Pervyse is 
also commanded by the French guns for a good way 
east of Pervyse village. I also believe, though I 
find no full evidence, that this causeway is partly 
flooded. The crossing at 4 can be shelled from 
Nieuport. The temporary crossing at 2 is, I 
believe, destroyed ; while the points a, b, c, which 
are the real " bridgeheads " over the obstacle, are 
all thoroughly held by the French. 
In other words, any attempt to get over the 
obstacle of the Yser with its flooded fields will 
have worse difiiculties to meet than it had to meet 
a month ago, when that same attempt was broken 
to pieces even before the sluices were opened and 
the inundation allowed. 
I have been asked whether the heavy frost 
tfhich has set in all over Flanders will not make 
a difference here. 
Certainly it would if it were so heavy as to 
freeze the canal and water meadow strongly 
enough for the passage of heavy guns and motor- 
lorries. But the frost is nothing like that in 
character. The water for the most part is 
brackish, especially at the northern end of the in- 
undations, and it is unknown that so early in the 
year a frost of such severity should set in perma- 
nently. The first beginnings of a thaw fl hear 
there are signs of it already as I write) would make 
the position of an army which had attempted to use 
the frozen land worse than ever, and the attempt to 
use the flooded area before it was thoroughly 
frozen would be more difficult even than it was 
before the frost set in. It is bad enough to get a 
gun out of the mud ; but to try and get a gun out 
when it has broken through thick ice and fallen 
through some inches of very cold water into the 
dense slime below is a still more unhappy task. 
If anything, I should say that this frost, when it 
came upon Flanders, made the German effort more 
difficult and not less ; and that the attempted pas- 
sage of the obstacle Dixmude-Nieuport will still 
depend upon numbers and upon whether the en- 
gineers, under the cover of those numbers and upon 
the sacrifice of them, can build a Avhole series of 
bridges and causeways. It is not at all a hopeful 
prospect for those who have to make the attempt. 
THE CAMPAIGN IN POLAND. 
Ever since the French pinned the Germans 
down to their line between the Vosges and the sea, 
and thus destroyed their enemies' initiative in the 
West, and ever since the main German forces of 
the West have maintained their violent and un- 
successful attempts to break through the line op- 
posed to them — that is, for the last two months 
and more— the decision of the campaign has really 
lain in Poland. 
That is a point which has been reiterated so 
regularly in these pages that I am almost ashamed 
to bring it forward again ; but I do so because it is 
all-important to a comprehension of the fate of 
Europe in this great struggle. 
We saw last week what the Germans had done 
to counter the great Russian combined movement 
against their country. 
On Plan X is the outline of the whole busi- 
ness. From the Vistula to the German frontier 
the Russians had driven the Austro-German 
forces back, the Russians perpetually increasing 
in number, the Austro-Germans remaining (save 
for losses) about two million of men. This went on 
for four weeks, from about October 20 to about 
November 16. The Russian cavalry crossed the 
River Warta, and some of their advanced raiders 
even crossed the frontier itself. The threat upon 
the all-important wealthy and industrial corner of 
Upper Silesia (marked " A " upon the sketch map 
and shaded) was becoming acute when General Von 
Hindenburg, using the railways behind the German 
frontier to transport his men, swung a great mass 
of them right round to the north (as along the 
arrow) and appeared upon the weak Russian 
right between the Vistula and the Warta Rivers. 
In other words, while the great mass of the Rus- 
sians was at B, B, B, in the South — beginning the 
investment of Cracow, threatening the important 
corner of Upper Silesia, where the three Empires 
meet and approaching the passes of the Carpa- 
thians for a raid on Hungary — while it was leaving 
only weaker bodies at C^ and especially at the 
extreme end at C^ on the north, Von Hindenburg 
came out suddenly in very great force (about ten 
army corps) at D, between the River Vistula and 
the River Warta, and was, of course, wholly 
superior in that region to the small Russian forces 
opposed to him. 
Von Hindenburg, then, had got that great mass 
up to D by using the railways and bringing tliem 
up from the south behind the German frontier. His 
object in this surprise was to push back the Rus- 
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