January 2, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
?utiy more than they were strong enough to hold 
A-B. Still less is it of any use for him to prepare 
further lines such as G-H, for G-H is as long as C-D 
or A-B was, and by the time he got to G-H further 
wastage may have reduced him to only eight units, 
and it would be quite impossible to think of hold- 
ing the lines. 
Still more obviously would this be the case if 
the country were so formed that the next lines 
■which he could form behind and parallel, A-B, 
were, as in the accompanying diagram, each suc- 
cessively longer than the original line. 
I 
It is self-evident that the only case where a 
General who is compelled to give up his original 
entrenched lines can fall back to other parallel 
lines prepared behind them, is when those other 
lines are shorter than the original line. Thus, in 
the accompanying diagram, a General who, for 
IV 
political or other reasons could just hold A-B with 
his original sixteen units, finding them reduced to 
ten might well fall back to new prepared lines, 
CD. 
He would say : " I have to give up all the in- 
tervening country between A-B and C-D (which for 
such-and-such a reason I should very much like to 
have held), but the all-important thing is to pre- 
vent the enemy getting to F, and though it is a' 
disaster to have to give up the country intervening 
between A-B and C-D, yet it would be a much 
worse disaster to let the enemy get to F. There- 
fore, I will fall back on the new prepared line, 
C-D, which is much shorter than my old line, A-B, 
and which I can hold with the ten units that are 
left to me." 
Now the whole interest of the campaign in the 
West lies in the fact that the German Commanders 
are deprived by the physical and political 
geography of Western Europe and by the political 
task they have been set from thus falling back suc- 
cessively to shorter and shorter lines behind their 
original line. 
This original A-B is for them the existing line 
between the North Sea and the Swiss Mountains. 
F is the soil of Germany proper, to keep the in- 
vader out of which is the grand political object of 
the German Commanders at this moment. If they 
give up their line A-B, upon what shorter line, 
C-D, and up to what further shorter line, E-F, 
can they fall back ? 
Note upon the map on page 4 the existing 
German lines in the West, and the conjectural 
lines behind on which they might retire, and note 
in what a political dilemma either such retirement 
would put the Commanders of the German Army ! 
Their present A-B line which they hold is roughly 
three hundred and fifty miles in length in all its 
convolutions. I have marked it 1, 1, 1, 1. Suppose 
they fell back upon the C-D line passing in front 
of Antwerp and Brussels to Namur, then up the 
Meuse to the neighbourhood of Verdun, and so 
along their original line to the Swiss Mountains. 
I have marked it 2, 2, 2, 2. They would shorten 
their total present line by not much more than a 
seventh, and this slight advantage they would only 
gain by sacrificing all their present hold upon the 
strip of North-Eastern France, which is their 
principal political asset in the Western campaign 
as it is now developing. The distance from their 
present positions just north of Verdun to Antwerp, 
counting the necessary fluctuations in the line, 
would be nearly 200 miles. Their existing lines 
from the same point north of Verdun round past 
Reims and along the Aisne and then up to the 
North Sea by Nieuport, are barely 240, and to gain 
that 12 or 13 per cent, of relief from the strain 
upon their diminishing numbers, as compared with 
the increasing strength of their adversaries, they 
would have to give up all thought of further ad- 
vance on Calais, all Western Belgium, and all the 
French territory they hold, except a tiny strip east 
of the Meuse Valley. 
See what a sacrifice they would be making in 
the objects and nature of their war, and for how 
slight an end ! 
There is more than this. There is the loss of 
abandoned wounded, and of materials and of 
stores that would necessarily accompany such a 
retreat— and all this for a concentration of men 
hardly perceptible. 
But there is a further line behind this again 
to which the enemy might retire, and by so retir- 
ing really seriously shorten his line and concentrate 
his effectives. 
It is a line which many must have been struck 
by as they looked at the map, and it is one which, 
if this war were to be conducted by the Germans 
merely as a problem of strategy, they would ob- 
viously regard as their next line of defence. 
It is the E-F line which, starting from the 
Dutch frontier, covers Liege, runs along the valley 
of the Ourthe, includes the Grand Duchy of 
Luxembourg, and further south reposes upon 
8** 
