December 12, 1914, 
LAND AND WATER 
November 12th or thereabouts. It was a fortnight 
later, between November 26th and 28th, that its 
attempt to break the Russian line, at first appa- 
rently successful, had failed; but it was also about 
this time that the German reinforcements from the 
western front Jjegan to pour in, and it will be re- 
membered how the Germans had masked this by 
spreading reports through the Dutch agencies, 
which they control, that they were contemplating 
a new attack on the Yser. The German plan was, 
as I have said, to reach Warsaw by pressing back 
the Russian right wing along the Vistula. To 
make this possible it was necessary to engage the 
Russians heavily upon their centre and upon their 
left; otherwise they would have reinforced their 
right at will, and withstood with ease the German 
attempt to move up the river towards Warsaw. 
It was in the last days of November and the 
first two days of December that certain of these 
western reinforcements added to the German 
troops already present between the Warta and the 
frontier, advanced in force in the region. A, upon 
the accompanying map, and upon the front repre- 
sented by the two arrows. Meanwhile, the other 
western reinforcements through Thorn in the 
north had reached the region, B, a day or two 
later, and last Thursday and Friday the position 
was apparently as follows ifthe German reinforce- 
ments being certainly not lewer than a quarter of 
a million men): — 
The Russian right, the cavalry of which had 
a few days before got as far as Gombin, was back 
at Ilov. Upon the centre in front of Lodz the 
Germans were more than holding their own. 
There had been fighting in the suburbs of the town 
and an unconfirmed rumour was already abroad 
that Lodz itself had been occupied, while the Ger- 
man attack on the left, proceeding from the region 
A, had here bent the Russian line back from the 
Warta to about the position C on the above sketch. 
It will be seen from all this that the second 
German plan was proceeding, as Berlin put it, 
" normally." The left wing of the Russians was 
heavily engaged and could not send reinforcements 
to the centre or the right : the centre, very hard 
pressed to defend the great town of Lodz, only 
just held its own; the right was bending back 
towards Warsaw. 
By Saturday last the field artillery of the Ger- 
mans was already delivering shell over the houses 
of Lodz, and two hotels situated in the central 
part of it were bombarded by 77 mm. shrapnel 
from the German field guns. What had happened 
was that the Russian left wing, being pressed still 
further back, the great town of Lodz, which the 
Russians were attempting to defend, had become 
by its shape and position a peril to them, just as 
Ypres (though very much smaller) was rightly held 
by the Germans to handicap our own " bastion " 
or salient in Flanders the other day, and just as 
Lille would have badly handicapped a French line 
had that line included Lille within a salient. 
The effect of a large amount of valuable built 
property upon an army defending it and in front 
of it when the pressure upon that army is so great 
that this built property forms a perceptible salient, 
is evidently to weaken the line stretching before 
it. Thus, on Plan Va., so long as the de- 
fending army was on the alignment, A, B, C, 
the large town behind it does not bother it, but if 
it is pressed back on to the alignment, D, B, E, 
then the part near B and round the town forms a 
salient of a very awkward kind to defend, and one 
in whose neighbourhood the whole line may very 
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