tAND 'AND WATER 
December 12. IQIC 
line, B, going directly east through Siedlce. There 
is, joining the two lines at about fifteen miles 
behind Warsaw, a cross-line, C, relieving the 
pressure upon these two lines of supply and per- 
mitting the transference of trains from the one to 
the other in case of congestion upon either. 
Southward there runs yet another main line, 
D, which connects Warsaw with Ivangorod, and 
then on through Lublin with the south of Russia' 
and the depots there. Between the two converging 
lines, D and B, there is yet another cross-line, E. 
Finally, important also, though less important 
than these three great lines with their connections, 
rims the line northward from Warsaw to NewGeor- 
gievsk, and thence up to the comparatively small 
Russian forces operating on the frontiers of East 
Prussia. All that convergence of raihvays, parti- 
cularly valuable in so ill-supplied a territory as the 
Russian Empire, depends on Warsaw for its nodal 
point, and on the great bridge there for its use 
as a system of supply feeding troops west of the 
river. Once let an invader occupy Warsaw, and 
the force at N not only has its communications cut 
in the sense of cutting one line, but, what is even 
more essential, can receive no reinforcements save 
by marching and by road transport from its depots 
and from the reserves gathering everywhere to the 
east of it. At first the idea was to destroy the 
Northern Russian Army, N, by piercing its centre, 
and this was actually done — not the destruction, 
but the piercing. Considerable bodies of German 
troops got through to the south a good twenty miles 
behind the line, Lowicz-Lodz, and some of the 
German cavalry actually seem to have penetrated 
as far as Radom. It is hardly credible that they 
RfiiDOM 
m 
reached the town itself. Perhaps the brief news 
relates only to the 'province of Radom ; but, any- 
how, they reached the River Pilitza, the boundary 
of that province. Having so penetrated the Rus- 
sian, line, the German commanders must have 
thought that Warsaw was already in their grasp. 
For they had produced a state of affairs 
like that upon Plan III., and the Russian 
Northern Army, N, had been broken into two 
halves, N, I and N, II. The Germans had appa- 
rently only to concentrate their forces upon N, II, 
surrounding it from the south in the direction of 
the arrow, and Warsaw was theirs. It must be re- 
membered that the distances involved were not 
very great. The place where they had broken 
through was only about forty miles from Warsaw, 
and the continuation of that rapid piercing move- 
ment seemed easy. What defeated it was the 
arrival of further large Russian reinforcements 
from the east, which closed the breach in the line, 
cut off many of the advanced German bodies that 
had pierced south, and formed that curious pocket 
(P) in which two German Army Corps were for the 
moment trapped, and from which they only with 
L 
W 
difficulty, and at very great loss, extricated them- 
selves a fortnight ago. 
The original attempt, then, of the Germans 
upon Warsaw, by way of piercing and rolliag up 
to the east the Northern Russian Army, hiul 
failed. And it had failed without in any way dis- 
turbing or withdrawing forces from the main Rus- 
sian body in the south by Cracow. The Northern 
Russian Army had foiled the German attempt 
with its own reserves, and depending only upon its 
own line of communications through Warsaw. 
But, in spite of that failure, the German plan 
was not abandoned. If to pierce and so destroy 
the Northern Russian Army was no longer pos- 
sible to the German commanders, they might yet 
bend back the Russian line and obtain possession 
of Warsaw by an effort against the right extreme 
of the Russian Army. And should they do tins, 
that Army would be in as difficult a position 
as it had been when it was temporarily pierced 
ten days before. It must here be remembered 
that the Germans had been moving troops from 
the western theatre of war almost from the begin- 
ning of these operations, that reinforcements were 
continually arriving, and that Hindenberg still 
counted on a numerical superiority in this field 
when his second plan developed a week ago. The 
first advance, the sudden appearance of the large 
Germa,n body from Thorn, by the use of the Ger- 
man railways behind the frontier, had started on 
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