LAND AND WATER 
December 19, 1914. 
julvance of a few hundred yards bad been made here 
or there, or that on such and such a section of the 
front certaui batteries have been silenced. But the 
metaphor which best explains the value of such 
detailetl work is a metaphor drawn from wrestling. 
You will see two men upon the ground, one of whom 
has hitherto touched with one shoulder only. His 
opponent is trying to make him touch with both 
shoulders. When he does so the match is at an 
end. Now in the progress of such a struggle you 
note a number of very small movements met by 
very small counter movements, each absorbing a 
great deal of energy. The whole strength and 
endurance of either wrestler is put into these slight 
successes and repulses. If we were to say to the 
wrestler who is upon the point of success "It is 
futile to put such an enormous effort into movements 
so slight " our advice would be manifestly ridiculous. 
These slight efforts have a cumulative effect, not in 
the way of adding numerically the one to the other, 
not that the victor gains first one inch and then a 
second inch and then a third inch, but that, after 
the prolonged strain of these tiny movements but 
hifjhly concentrated strains, you get the collapse of 
the beaten party. 
So it is with trench work, or at least so it has 
been in the past and so presmnably it will be to-day. 
There comes a moment when the curve of success 
from being so flat as to be hardly perceptible 
suddenly steepens ; when the heavy artillery of the 
one side having first resisted with difficulty, then 
established a slight superiority, suddenly begins to 
do almost what it wills with the works and emplace- 
ments of the other. Above all there comes a moment 
when that side which has exhausted itself by futile 
and ill-judged attacks no longer has the strength to 
hold its line. And that moment is a sudden one. 
You can hold a line of trenches say 100 miles 
long with so many men — X. We will not dogmatise 
upon how much " X " is in the particular case of a 
particular campaign. The British managed to 
hold in front of Ypres trenches nearly four 
times as long as the text books allowed them. 
Call the nurnber which will clearly hold a hundred 
miles of trenches X, take away from X so many 
men, say 50,000, leave only X minus M and you 
can just barely hold your trenches. After that 
minimum take away a comparatively small number, 
say only another 30,000, and the line breaks. X 
could hold on for ever. X minus M can just hold 
on. X minus M minus N cannot hold on at all. 
That is how trench work comes to an end and 
a decision in it is reached. It is a conflict of that 
type in which the descent of one party and the 
ascent of the other is not gradual throughout, but 
is in the first phase almost imperceptible and quite 
suddenly, in the last phase, abrupt. You have the 
same phenomenon in the breaking of certain brittle 
substances. Up to a certain point they do not 
yield at all, or hai'dly at all, you add the least 
fraction of pressure and they break right across. 
Now the whole of the containment in the west 
and of the active work in the east is based upon a 
knowledge of this. The Germanic Allies are sur- 
rounded._ They are, as I shall insist in the summary 
with which I shall conclude these notes, " besieged," 
and nowhere is the character of the siege more 
evident than in the western fiekl. It is the story of 
every siege that has ever laid from the beginning of 
the history of war that you have first the brisk 
throwing back of the enemy into his circumvallation 
— a phase full of incident and movement ; then the 
I 
long, dreary, monotonous business in which no end 
seems to be approached, and in which there is no 
movement but the sap and mine, or even the 
deadness of a mere blockade. But at last, in a 
flash, comes the third phase, which is one of three 
decisive tlmigs : either (a) the siege is raised by the 
approach of a relieving army ; (b) (very much 
rarer) the besieged garrison cuts its way out ; or (c) 
it surrenders, and nine times out of ten it does 
surrender. 
Now where is the "relieving army"? What 
sign is there of its appear^ice ? And what are all 
these violent efforts, east and west, by sea as by 
land, but attempts of the besieged to cut their way 
out ? 
THE SIEGE OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 
AND GERMANY. 
AM here taking the liberty, as I have said, of 
borrowing an expression used more than once 
in other journals by Colonel Maude in the 
numerous illuminating ai'ticles he has written 
upon this war : the phrase " The Siege 
of Germany." 
It is only a metaphor, and subject therefore to all 
the disabilities of a metaphor, but it is, I think, the 
best metaphor one can discover lor the condition into 
which she has now fallen, and I must acknowledge 
so valuable an epigram with gratitude. 
For that is, if we consider the matter as a whole, 
exactly what best describes the present position of 
the Germanic Allies ; Austria-Hungary and the 
German Empire having set out upon a campaign 
against enemies threatening them upon two fronts, 
and being in a position at the outset of hostilities to 
conquer with apparent certitude upon one front, to 
to return and, if not to conquer, at least to establish 
an invincible resistance upon the other, have seen that 
first plan of theirs fail altogether. Upon the v/est 
front where the troops employed were almost entirely 
German the initiative was lost in the first week of 
September. The attack was pinned and contained. 
Pinned and contained it has remained from that day 
to this.' While upon the east a whole series of 
operations has resulted, whether the Hussians were 
advancing or retreating, in a similar pennanent, 
though more fluctuating, penning in of the Germans 
and their Allies by their enemies. 
The whole problem, therefoi-e, every analysis of 
its character and every estimate of its probable 
chances, is the problem of a great siege. It is the 
problem of an army which, having begun by a 
crushing advance upon one front and a successful 
defence upon the other, finds itself reduced to one 
area from which it cannot advance, and ivilhin 
which it is itself contained. That is the full 
definition of a siege. 
But before we proceed with that metaphor let 
us consider two or three points about all sieges 
which may sober our estimate. 
In the first place a siege is not an absolute 
condition. It is only more or less strong, more or 
less perfect. That is, the besieged party is never 
entirely cut off from the outer world — there is 
always some minimum of leakage if it is only the 
occasional arrival of a message, or the occasional 
passage of a signal. And the degree to Avhich the 
isolation of a besieged garrison is carried differs 
greatly in different instances. A force may be 
truly besieged although it has avenues of supply 
still open. For the test of a state of siege is not 
the opportunity of supply, but the opportunity for 
m 
