LAND AND WATER 
December 26, 1914. 
and a very appreciable thing. There was a touch 
of it in the beginning of the retreat from Paris, 
but it was soon recovered. Its evidences are 
numerou&— uncalled-for surrenders, lack of cohe- 
sion, mutiny, and the rest. Until we have signs 
of such things upon some appreciable scale, we 
are quite misjudging the war if we afhrm them 
to exist. When in the West occasional counter- 
attacks are still undertaken, those counter-attacks 
are launched (so we are informed) with undimin- 
ished vigour, and we all know that in the East a 
very vigorous counter-offensive on the part of the 
Germans has everywhere been successfully main- 
tained for now four weeks. We equally know, 
what is as excellent a test of moral, that retreats 
conducted before the enemy in the East have been 
conducted with no very great loss of men or of 
material. 
No. It is when we turn to the higher com- 
mand and to the state of mind of the Government 
and the Staff, whose centre is Berlin, that we find 
novel elements in the problem, and a situation not 
only of real interest, but in support of our hopes. 
The evidence here is not what you will find 
for the state of civilian opinion or the military con- 
dition of an army as a whole. No documents are 
shown us; no conversations are repeated. The 
whole thing is confined to a handful of men whose 
whole business it is never to permit the enemy to 
penetrate their minds, and to discover Vv'hat that 
handful of men are really thinking we have nothing 
but their actions to guide us. 
It so happens, however, that the mental atti- 
tude of this handful of men is more important than 
all the other four categories which I have been 
examining. The state of mind of the Austro- 
Hungarian population and of the German popu- 
lation as a whole, the state of mind of the Austro- 
Ilungarian forces and of the German forces as a 
whole, only tell us negatively what the moral 
strength of the enemy in this war continues to be. 
They only assure us that confidence and tenacity 
continue established. It is in the higher com- 
mand, which is not double but one, not Austrian 
and German, but simply Prussian, and which 
resides in the Government at Berlin and in the 
Great General Staff, that the judgment upon 
which ultimately all civilian opinion and even the 
texture of the armies is to be found. 
The state of mind of that higher command is 
to be discovered, I say, by no available documents 
or reported conversations, but only through 
actions. 
I think a table of those actions makes interest- 
ing reading. 
(1) Upon the discovery of a great French re- 
serve behind Paris, a discovery made on or about 
Sedan Day, the best and principal German Army 
is ordered to attempt the impossible, and to march 
across the front of the British contingent and the 
French Fifth Army. It fails, and the whole of 
the German forces are thrown back to prepare a 
defensive position along the Aisne, though still 
highly superior in numbers to the enemy before 
them. 
(2) That enemy is next dealt with on the basis 
of these superior numbers by attempted German 
movements to outflank by the west. These move- 
ments successively fail as they are tried one after 
the other. They proceed further and further 
north until the sea is reached. 
(3) A perfectly evident change in the objec- 
tive of the German commanders in the West takes 
place in early October, and it is determined, 
rightly or wrongly, to seize the French shore of the 
Straits of Dover, and, Paris having failed them, 
to consider London. But this attack does not take 
place in a concerted blow somewhere south of 
Lille, such as would uncover the whole sea coast 
were it successful; it takes the political rather 
than military form of an advance along the coast 
towards Calais. It hopelessly fails. And that is 
the story of October. 
(4) The story of the first half of November in 
the West is the story of an attack made upon the 
British contingent holding the salient round 
Ypres, an attack the full strategical value of which 
no one has defined, for with the utmost success 
(which it failed to obtain) it would have done no 
more apparently than straighten the line. It 
comes to no better end than the attack along the 
sea coast, and the two between them account for 
perhaps 120,000 men. 
(5) At much the same time, in the eastern 
theatre of war the earlier successes of the Russians 
against the Austrians at Lemberg are parried by 
an advance in force of Austrians and Germans 
combined towards the Vistula, the key of the whole 
of which is, of course, the capture of Warsaw, 
where the principal railways meet, and where is 
the principal bridge over the river. There is 
fought for the possession of that city and point the 
first battle of Warsaw. The Germans are com- 
pelled to retreat, and their whole line falls back 
towards the frontier. 
(6) As the Eussian forces approach the fron- 
tier the great mass of them are concentrated in 
the south threatening Cracow and Silesia. It 
is absolutely essential to Germany to save 
the latter province from invasion. Many 
of the nevv^ formations of rapidly trained 
men are now ready (they prove excellent in 
the field) ; armies are summoned from the V/est 
where no more men are left than can just hold the 
line, and perhaps the best General of the Germans 
— Hindenburg— relieves the pressure on Cracow: 
while a daring and successful surprise is effected 
by the great mass of his forces (which he ha$ 
brought round by rail behind the frontier) against 
the comparatively weak forces on the Russian 
north. The object of this movement is, of course, 
again to grasp Warsaw, and the second battle fori 
Warsaw begins. It has gone on for a month, 
during which period the Russians have lost about 
twenty miles of ground, and are still covering 
Warsaw as their reserves and supplies slowly con- 
tinue to arrive. 
(7) Meanwhile, in the south, in front of 
Cracow, the Russians give ground also, because 
the passes in the Carpathians are retaken by the 
Austrians and threaten them in the rear. But 
they are only retaken by the Austrians at a cer- 
tain expense, for : — 
(8) The complete subjugation of Servia, and 
the final elimination of that factor in the war, the 
control of the Balkans and an issue to the Turkish 
Ally and to the sea, is overwhelmingly and drama- 
tically defeated in a week's violent action, which 
drives the enemy out of Servia altogether and re- 
crosses the frontier into Bosnia. 
There is a table of the main events of the war 
since the tide turned on September 6th. And 
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