LAND AND WATER 
December 5, lOlC. 
,PLOCK 
l^£««Y«\ j^p^ ^^^m Germans 
I Hussions 
.WARSAW 
C 
IIX 
outflanking an enemy and never trying to pierce 
him. But here, in front of Piontek and to the 
cast of Lodz, upon the road to Warsaw, the supe- 
rior German numbers did pierce the Russian line ; 
and it looked for the moment as though the Ger- 
mahs had it in their power to destroy either one or 
the other of the separated Russian halves. The 
situation was at that juncture after the fashion of 
the following plan. With the marshes of the 
Kutno), to repose behind the line of the marshes 
and there hold the German advance while await- 
ing reinforcement. Such was the situation when I 
wrote my notes last week. My readers will re- 
member that upon the Russian ability to hold the 
line of the marshes depended the value of their plan 
'at the moment. 
Now that line, whether by design of the Rus- 
sians (as they say) or against their will, was forced. 
^Across the marshes there are two main causeways, 
I one leading on to the town of Piontek, the other 
on to the town of Lenczyca ; and of these the former 
.was much the more important, because the marshes 
!and the River Bzura there form a more serious 
obstacle. The river is indeed, as I have said 
ibefore now, only a small obstacle, but the marshes, 
though not everywhere of the same difficulty, every- 
where check an army. 
Well, the Germans passed the marshes and 
occupied Lenczyca. They also, after apparently 
rather heavy fighting, got across the causeway and 
occupied Piontek ; and some ten days to a week \go 
the situation of the opposing armies was more or 
less what I given in the following plan, where the 
A German. Jleserve 
lenczyt 
0^ IZZ=] 
IV 
Bzura behind them, and the course of that river 
too, German forces had succeeded in getting right 
through the Russian line, and in isolating, appa- 
rently, that part of it, B, B, which lay round the 
town of Lodz from that part of it, C, C, which lay 
in front of the town of Lowicz. 
The Third Russian Army thus menaced had 
this great advantage over the invaders, that, 
although it had not called for reinforce- 
ments from the south, although it had 
not weakened the main general plan against 
Cracow and Silesia, although it had de- 
pended for reinforcements entirely upon its own 
line of communications and from its own depots, 
it was daily becoming stronger as the danger 
pressed ; and at the very moment when the line 
was broken it found itself able to reclose that line, 
to entrap not a few of the German bodies which 
had passed beyond it, as at D, D, and a situation 
almost uhique in military history apj^eared. The 
line, though pierced, had been reformed and had 
cut off certain forces of the enemy which had suc- 
cessfully carried through. 
Upon the arrival of these reinforcements and 
the re-closing of the gap in the Russian line you 
had such a situation as the following. The Ger- 
man forces which had pierced through the Russian 
Germans had everywhere crossed the Bzura, and 
the Russians, now already considerably reinforced, 
but not yet equal to the invaders in this field, were 
i defending the great town of Lodz, but were still 
heavily pressed by the invaders in their still supe- 
rior numbers. 
Now, at this point in the battle, which corre- 
sponds roughly to the situation of last Thursday, 
there occurred a decisive movement. At the point 
I A on the above plan the Germans advancing from 
I Piontek got through the Russian line. The 
moment is one of interest, not only to the eager 
inquirer upon this particular war with its vast 
effect upon our own fortunes, but to the mere 
student of military history; for if there is one 
i thing which has distinguished Prussian strategy 
for a generation past it has been the dependence 
upon machinery, numbers and calculation, and the 
consequent dependence upon the tactics of always 
line were now in face of a newly-formed line, no 
longer breached : they were in a sort of pocket at 
C, while the foremost bodies who had got through 
were cut off at D. 
These foremost bodies, comparatively small 
in number, have by this time surrendered and are 
i* 
