LAND AND WATER 
November 23, 1914. 
of troops and proposed the invasion of Scrvia in 
force. To-day that invasion has taken a consider- 
able extension; the Servian march is everywhere 
strongly held, and the invaders are still apparently 
pushing forward. As to why this 1 as been done 
we will turn in a moment, but let lu first appre- 
ciate exactly what it means upon the map. 
Scrvia, like all the Balkan region, is a mass of 
mountains all tangled together in extraordinary 
confusion, but a certain plan is discoverable in this 
chaos, and may be expressed upon the accompany- 
ing map. It will there be seen that to the general 
mountain mass there are three exceptions; first, 
tlie merely hilly and in places flat country along 
the Danube and Lower Drina to the north-west of 
the State, of which district Belgrade, the capital, 
is the chief town at one end, Sabatz the chief tovvn 
at the other, while, up at the foot of the mountains 
themselves, at the end of the less wild country, and 
forming a fairly equilateral triangle with two other 
towns, is the highland town of V aljevo. Such is 
the first and largest " open " district of Servia. 
Next you have the long and fertile valley of the 
Morava, which is the backbone of the State, and 
round which historic Servia has grown up. It 
cuts its trench through the mountains from Avhat 
used to be, before the late Balkan war, the extreme 
southern limits of independent Servia. On its 
course, in one of the upper river flats, but a little 
off the main river and upon an eastern tributary, 
lies the old capital of Nish; and it is by this same 
valley of Nish that the great international railway 
goes, and the international road which preceded it. 
Up that tributary upon which Nish stands, a 
tributary bearing the same name as the town, goes 
not only the railway to Sofia, the capital of Bul- 
garia, just over the water-shed, but also the road 
by which access has alwavs been given from the 
middle Danube valley to Constantinople. Finallv 
there is a narrow but still open valley, tributarv 
to the Morava from the west, which is the valley of 
the " second " or " Galicza " Morava. This dis- 
trict has no considerable town, but at its head, iust 
in the chiei knot of the northern mountains, staiids 
Cucak or Tchatchak, separated by the water-shed 
and a mountain ridge from Valjevo. There are 40 
or 50 miles of mountains between the two towns. 
Now. it is the immediate Austrian object to 
occupy that north-eastern open and hilly district re- 
presented bv the triangle Sabatz, Valjevo, Belo-rade 
and in this first object they have largely succeeded.' 
There has been heavy fighting, but no decisive action 
Ihe Austrians have pushed in bodies of men far 
superior in numbers to those which the Servians could 
put against them, and the Servians have withdrawn 
before Uns invasion to a limit represented rouo-hly 
by the dot ed line of the water-she^l upon the sketch 
"'^^ What the invaders propose now to do we 
map. 
cannot of course tell ; but I suggest that tliey will 
endeavour to seize the passes between the northern 
hilly and open country of which Yaljevo is the head 
town and the sources of the Galicza Morava, and so 
push down the valley of that tributary towards the 
main Morava 'X'alley, Nish, and the heart of tha 
State. It is obvious tlxat the Servian resistance to 
be opposed to such a plan v.ill be most severe and 
most efficacious in those same passes over the rido-e 
and in the upper gorges of the Galicza. 
If, then, this is what the Austrians have dono 
in their new move, what does that move mean ? 
What is their object strategically and politically iu 
making it ? 
Here we must remember that Turkey has come 
into the game, and we must further remember that 
Austria's actions are dictated from Berlin. If there 
is one thing strategically clearer than another in all 
these Eastern movements, it is that the armies of 
the dual monarchies not only have no independent 
plan, but are not even working on a combined i:)laii 
with the Germans. They are acting under a plan 
directly German in composition and changed to suit 
the convenience, or to follow the conclusions, of 
Berlin. Well, it is a feature in the present phase 
of the universal war that Berlin counts very heavily 
upon its new Turkisli support. 
It has probably exaggerated the value of that 
support in every department.- It has probably 
exaggerated it upon the Egyptian frontier, and it ha? 
probably exaggerated it in the Balkans— but this is 
only conjecture, and conjecture which the future may 
prove wrong. _ What is certain is that the Austrian 
movement against Servia in such force — and, what 
is more, at such an expense to her strength 
elsewhere against Bussia — particularly at the 
expense of her defensi\e power in the Carpathians 
and her policy to save the Hungarian plain from 
raids— is a Prussian conception ; ordered in com- 
bination with expected help from Turkey. There 
is here some idea — probably too large a one and too 
vague a one— of ultimately controlling the Balkans 
before the end of the campaign, by jjiercing and 
holding a way right down to the vEgeau Sea. 'J'ho 
main railway thither from the Danube also follows 
the Morava Valley, branching off from the Con- 
stantinople railway just below "Nish. It is just one 
of those great vague pohtical schemes, suited to the 
map rather than to the true landscape of reality, 
that Prussia has formed for a generation past. 
To sum up, one may conclude, I think, that the 
advance into Servia, strategically bad, is essentially 
political ; and that its political plan Is basad upon 
an exaggeration of ^^■hat the new Turkish ally- 
perhaps also on what Bulgaria— can do in the south. 
Meanwhile, we have only to watch the next 
phase of the Invasion of Servia and to see whether 
the new Austrian armies are held up upon the first 
ridge of the mountains or succeed In crosslnof it. 
THE CONTRAST IN STRENGTH. 
THE AUSTROHUNGARIAN 
, I will conclude my notes this vreek bv continu- 
\IVZT"\T.I^ '^' ^VPP^^ ^^ ^'-' «nd Seal ng 
nVs^y. ^'''' '^' '"^^^"^^^ ^"r^pi>- ^^ -^"^tria^ 
. If we' turn to the total available supply of men 
in Austria-Hungary and use the sameVrocedTre 
which we apply to Germany, we shall discover thlt 
SUPPLY OF MEN. 
the severity of the Austrian losses is even greater 
than that of the Germans, and that the propor- 
tionate reserve which the Dual Monarchy can brinf» 
against us for the future is less. ° 
We foun'd for Germany, the birth-rate of 
which and the rate of increase in which are not 
sensibly different from that of her Ally, a maxi- 
8» 
