LAND AND WATER 
December 5, 1914. 
the war mainlv depends. On this account it is well 
worth our while to attempt a comprehension of 
the great business, uncertain as the event still 
remains. 
II.— THE ELEMENTS. 
To the understanding of any military situa- 
tion the first thing required is the statement of 
what are called the elements. 
For instance : I am holding a W-ne from London 
to Oxford, which is rowglily the line of the Thames, 
and an enemy is marching upon me fromth« Chan- 
nel. If I were to put down in detail upon the map 
the exact position of every unit no general reader 
could follow a map so complicated. From sim- 
plification to simplification one arrives at the sim- 
plest element of all; one puts down two points, 
Oxford and London, and draws a straight line 
between them, and says: " This is the line I hold." 
Then one puts another straight line in front, and 
says: "This is the line of the Thames "—an ob- 
stacle ; then one puts a line beyond to represent the 
enemy and says, " This is the enemy advancing." 
That is the thing reduced to its very sunplest ex- 
pression, and, I repeat, in seizing a difficult and 
complex military situation the first essential step 
for the general reader is to grasp these elementary 
plans. 
Well, then, in the situation between the Rus- 
sian forces and the Austro-German the simplest 
element of all was of the following nature about a 
fortnight ago. You had along the frontier be- 
tween the Allied Germanic Powers and the Rus- 
sians (which frontier I represent by a dotted line) 
two main operations, one very much larger than 
the other. You first had the minor operation A; 
three or four Russian Army Corps trying to force a 
German body about equivalent m size past the 
frontier in East Prussia, and slowly succeeding in 
doing so. They lay in two groups, the one attack- 
ing and defending the north-eastern corner of that 
province', the other attacking and defending the 
southern. corner; for the frontier of East Prussia 
against Russia is roughly a right angle. The com- 
munications of the two bodies were separated, but 
united in the rear, and I have grouped th?m under 
this one letter A. 
In these great operations to the south groiiped 
under B you had three main segments : these seg- 
ments were the bodies which had in the case of 
the Russians advanced, in the case of the 
Germans retreated, from the line of the Vistula 
(V, V, V) towards the line of the Warta (W, W, 
W) and the frontier just behind it. The most im- 
portant segnient of the three, I, was that in which 
the Russians were advancing upon the fortress of 
Cracow along the line of commuiucatiofts (1), 
mainly dependent upon the railway through 
Lemberg to Kiew (this line of communications, of 
course, does not actually cross the Vistula, and I 
have only put it as a straight line on the 
diagram for the sake of simplicity). It was along 
this main advance that Silesia (the oblong marked 
S) was threatened; and if Silesia was entered, as 
we have seen so often in these pages, the last and 
(for the G-ermans) desperate phase of the campaign 
was opened. Against the large Russian body thus 
advancing the most considerable Austro-German 
forces were concentrated. 
The second segment, II, working through line 
of communications (2) was much smaller in force, 
and came right on to the middle of ,the River 
Warta. It merely prolonged the Russian main 
force in the south to prevent outflanking. 
The third segment. III, woi^king along and 
reinforced from line of communications (3) was the 
thinnest and smallest of all and barely did more 
than keep touch between the northern A group and 
tiie much more important southern B group. It 
was opposed by an equally small German forc3, 
which retired l^efore it. 
These things being so, and as the Russian ad- 
vance in force at (1) against Cracow and threaten- 
ing Silesia began to appear formidable, the Ger- 
man commanders conceived the following plan : — 
(and here for the moment we will neglect Group A 
altogether, for it no longer enters into our descrip- 
tion of the critical moment through which the cam- 
f)aign in Poland is passing.) 
The bulk of the German troops in front of the 
Russian segment (I) were to be taken by the intact 
and excellent railway system, which runs parallel 
■^ 
WARSAW 
iD 
CRACOW^ 
L 
n 
to and behind, or west of, the German frontier 
and brought round to the north. In front 
cf Cracow should be left only forces just 
sufficient to hold up for some days the great Russian 
advance, and there should ap])ear between the 
Vistula and the Warta a very large body of Ger- 
mans quite unexpectedly at X, overwhelming thcs 
