December 19, 1914. 
LAND AND WATER 
This is important. The Russians being in 
possession of the Dukla Pass were threatening the 
plains of Hungary with the pohtical and economic 
consequences which we saw in a former article, and 
having turned the Carpathians by possession of this 
pass the other passes further to the east were also 
falling into their hands. Now, with the Dukla 
Pass m the hands of the enemy our Allies will have 
to abandon the passes to the east also, and assuming 
the position is reversed the threat to the Hun- 
garian plain disappears. True, the political effect 
of that threat is much more than counterbalanced 
by the Servian victory, at the expense of which the 
security of the north was purchased. Still, so far 
as the local problem is concerned we have here an 
important retirement of the Russians. 
THE DUKLA PASS. 
It is worth the reader's while at this stage to 
interest himself in the details of this famous passage 
over the Carpathians. I have already alluded in 
general terms to its position and value. It lies 
exactly in the "waist" of the Carpathian system, 
between the high and very difficult ground of the 
Tatra in the north-west and the high heavily- 
wooded and almost equally difficult ground of Tran- 
sylvania in the south-east. It has been for centuries 
a passage for armies, being to the Carpathians what 
Roncesvalles is to the Pyrenees or the Brenner pass 
to the Alps, or the Khyber to the North-west 
frontier. 
But the Dukla pass is more remai-kable than 
any of these, in that the gap by which it traverses 
a formidable range of mountains is at once low, 
broad and short. There are no gorges. The height 
of the summit over the neighbouring inhabited 
cultivated land is a paltry 500 feet, its total height 
above the sea even is only just over 1,500, and from 
the northern to the southern towns, or rather large 
villages, that guard its either entrance is but an 
easy day's march along an excellent road. From 
Dukla upon the north, itself four miles on in 
the flat country, it is but 16 miles or so to 
Ledomervagasa to the south, and there are three or 
four hamlets in between. The actual distance from 
the last northern flat to the first southern one is 
much less, it is barely more than 10 miles, and the 
slope is everywhere even and gentle. 
The neighbouring summits, well removed from 
the broad saddle, do not dominate it by more than 
another five or six hundred feet, and in general the 
whole system is an exception to almost all that we 
find of the same soi't in the passages of other moun- 
tain ranges throughout Europe, so extraordinarily 
low, facile, and wide is the gap. 
Why no railway has ever been traced through 
such an opportunity for a traverse I do not know, 
but at any rate, whoever holds the Dukla Pass is 
the master of the Carpathians as a whole, and has 
as effectually possessed himself of the four or five 
more difficult passes over which the railways run as 
though he had taken these with columns of troops. 
For a northern invader holding the southern issue 
of the Dukla Pass, or a southerly invader holding 
the northern one, has turned all neighbouring passes 
over the chain. 
This pass is now, as I have said, in the hands 
of the Austrians, and according to tlie official com- 
muniquds of both parties considerable Austro-Hun- 
garian forces are pouring down its northern slope on 
to Galicia. It will be sufficiently apparent from the 
sketch opposite, where the position of Dukla is 
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shown in relation to Cracow and Galicia as a whole, of 
what importance is this movement, for if the enemy 
can bring really formidable forces across the Dukla 
Pass the whole Russian position is turned. 
We must remember, however, that the enemy's 
power to do this is limited. The problem of numbers 
must already be pressing him more than it is press- 
ing our Ally. Though the Russian front has been 
pushed back fi-om the line of the river Raba to the 
line of the river Domajec there is no evidence that 
the retirement has been that of the main body. It is 
more probable that the retirement only concerns, so 
far, advance bodies falling back before the consider- 
able concentration of the enemy up to, and occupa- 
tion of, Sandec ; for the full result of the whole 
movement we must wait until we see in what strength 
the Russians will meet it, when the whole of the 
body they have free in Galicia can be brought up to 
this front — with the exception, of course, of the 
numbers required to contain the isolated Austrian 
garrison at Przemysl. 
THE WESTERN FRONT. 
So much, then, for the most important of the 
operations — those upon the eastern front. With 
regard to those upon the western front there is this 
week, as for so many weeks past, but little to say, 
because'the action here is essentially one of contain- 
ment on the part of the Allies. 
But this type of warfare has a certain character 
which was touched upon last week, and which it 
may not be impertinent to discuss somewhat further 
now. 
The concentration of two forces heavily en- 
trenched, and each with further parallel trenches 
behind its positions upon which retirement can be 
effected, is, on the face of it, a deadlock. Nor does it 
seem of material consequence when we hear that an 
