LAND AND WATER 
December 19, 1914. 
of these notes are written) is as complete a local 
success as has been achieved upon either front for 
nearly two months. 
Its moral effect upon the dual Monarchy, but 
especially upon the Hungarians, will be greater 
than the material results, considerable as these 
are. It is Hungary's treatment of the Slavs, and 
the Hungarian claim to keep subject the Mag- 
yars' hostile and alien populations which was the 
particular cause of this great war. It was not so 
much the eastern population of Austria proper 
and the Tyrol as the Hungarian attitude which 
thus exasperated a dismembered and partly oji- 
pressed Servian nation. And defeat at the hands 
of the Servians, after a widely advertised andAvell- 
prepared effort to fuiish on that frontier once for 
all, will have the deepest consequences in shaking 
the Hungarian position in this war. 
Of all this I can speak at greater length next 
week, when I propose to examine the probable 
moral of the enemy, both German and Austro- 
Hungarian, civilian as well as military, so far as 
our imperfect present evidence allows us to ex- 
amine it. But this week we shall do well to dilute 
the effect of the Servian success by considering the 
very much larger campaign in Poland: which, 
•while successful as a defensive in front of Warsaw 
in the north, is for the moment less successful as 
an offensive in front of Cracow in the south. 
the northern Russian Army, fighting along a front 
such as N and hampered by the destruction of their 
railway, west of the Vistula, during the German 
invasion, are absolutely dependent for reinforce- 
ment and supply upon, the depots of Warsaw, the 
great bridge at Warsaw and the lines of railway 
that converge upon Warsaw from the interior. 
If the enemy can get Warsaw, they cut the 
communications of the northern army, and they so 
threaten the position of the main Russian Army in 
the south that is fighting to invest and to pass 
Cracow, as to compel its weakening itself by send- 
ing men north, and also as to compel its retirement 
eastward and the indefinite abandonment of the 
threat it proposes to Silesia. The rival armies are 
at the moment of writing roughly in this position, 
Tq Armies in East Pra&$ia. 
TStka 
RussiAn 
*Armics 
N 
where S is Silesia, C is Cracow, W Warsaw. 
VVVVV the Vistula, and the dotted line the Rus- 
sian frontier. 
It is -evident that if the Germans could estab- 
lish such a position as this 
THE CAMPAIGN IN POLAND. 
I.— THE BATTLE FOR WARSAW. 
IT has been sufficiently discussed in the article 
of last week and previous articles why the 
Germans began four weeks a"o their great 
attempt at North Poland, which may pro- 
perly be called " The Battle for Warsaw." 
It might even be called the Second battle for 
Warsaw, because the enemy had already made his 
great first move upon that key-point " (and had 
failed to carry it) in the middle of October. 
We have seen why Warsaw was the objective 
of all this movement in the north. It was because 
Warsaw (apart from its political importance) con- 
centrates upon itself and upon its bridge no less 
than four converging lines of railway, all intact, 
provided with cross railways relieving the pressure 
upon any one line, and capable of brino-ing re- 
inforcements from north, north-east, east, and 
south-east to the battlefields beyond and west of 
It)^'a"sk%pl'I Wn^''" the liberty of reproducing the Russian armies in front of Cracow (C) would 
z^l£aJ^?tt n^inf ^f • .r ^^•'■'^ ^^^^' ""^^"^^ ^^ compelled to reinforce the defeated and retreat- 
zirustrate. this point. It is therein apparent that ing Russian Army which was retiring from War^ 
0* 
