tAND AND WATER 
January 2, 1915. 
THE POLISH THEATRE OF WAR. 
WHAT has happened in the Polish 
theatre of war after a month's fight- 
ing is an excellent example of the 
way in which this war, like so 
many in the past, having estab- 
lished its character, develops that character 
throughout a whole series of campaigns. 
^ it was, for instance, with Marlborough's 
Tvars. They began with the unexpected use of the 
cavalry at the right moment at Blenheim, and they 
■went on with just the same feature appearing and 
reappearing time after time until Malplaquet. So 
it was with Napoleon's use of massed artillery. 
So it was with Wellington's choice of defensive 
position and his dependence upon the reserved 
fire of a thin line. 
This war has already presented a certain fea- 
ture which on a smaller or greater scale is being 
repeated over and over again. This feature, if it 
could be kept up, is the most favourable augury 
we have for the final success of the Allies against 
what are still their numerically superior enemies. 
It is a feature directly produced by the mind and 
method of Prussia, and it is as follows in its three 
phases : — 
(1) The determining of a particular objective, 
at once politically and strategically important, 
from the attainment of which other subsidiary con- 
sequences may flow, but the attainment of which is 
the prime task set to the Army. 
(2) The successful approach to that objective 
as the result of a very carefully thought-out and 
widely laid plan. 
(3) The failure at the last moment to reach the 
objective, a failure involving losses enormous in 
proportion to the intensity of the will to reach that 
goal — and how intense that will may be only those 
who have studied the half-hypnotic theory of 
Prussian military text-books can tell us. 
The great strategical object in the whole of 
this Polish campaign has been, of course, to relieve 
the pressure of the great Southern Russian Army 
against Cracow. The way in which this was to be 
done, if it was to be done permanently, was by 
exercising unexpected counter pressure in the 
north and taking Warsaw, which town, as we have 
so often seen in these notes, is from its gather- 
ing upon itself all the communications from 
the east, essential to the German plan. The great 
advance of that plan, its sudden discovery, is now 
nearly two months old. The battle for Warsaw 
itself has now proceeded in two separate chapters 
for nearly a month, and in the last of these 
chapters, in this very Christmas week, it has to all 
appearance failed. If it finally fails, if the Ger- 
mans do not succeed in taking Warsaw, neither 
can they ultimately succeed in relieving the pres- 
sure upon Cracow. And, indeed, the first result 
of their failure before Warsaw in the north was 
the recovery of the Russians in the south against 
Austrian pressure, and the beginning of a re-ad- 
vance by their troops. 
Let us never forget the formula which governH 
the whole of the Eastern campaign, and therefore 
«jltimately the whole war : — 
Tlie Russian objective is Silesia which Cracow 
lars. The Go-man counter stroke can only he in 
tJie noi'th and fails if Warsaw is missed. 
The great action of which Poland is the 
theatre still divides itself, therefore, into two sepa- 
rate fields, united by a less important central 
" bridge " as it were, which keeps the northern 
and southern armies, both of Austro-Germans and 
Russians, in connection with one another. These 
two fields are (1) in the north, the battle for War- 
saw, whore the Germans are attempting to take 
the town and the Russians are defending ; and (2) 
in the south, the battle for Cracow, where the con- 
ditions are reversed. 
Before dealing with the present phase of these 
two particular actions, the battle for Warsaw and 
the battle for Cracow, it may be well to examine 
the position as a whole. Why the Russians re- 
tired before the Austro-German advance I have 
already suggested, although it is no more than a 
suggestion. I believe it to be due to difficulties of 
supply, which difficulties are due, in their turn, to 
the conditions of winter, coupled with the absence 
of railways. The railways to the west of the Vis- 
tula being ruined, the maintenance, especially of 
munitions for quick-firing artillery, far from that 
great avenue of communication, is difficult. At 
any rate, retirement there was, until after the first 
week of December, and that retirement halted 
upon the following line : — 
Rather more than thirty miles below Warsaw, 
in a straight line a little north of east, is a point 
where the small river Bzura falls into the Vistula 
from the south. The Bzura runs in this part 
through flat country, rich enough in times of 
peace, full of plough lands, and falling gently to 
the water level on either side. The broad, 
monotonous landscape is interspersed by woods, 
one group of which between the Bzura and War- 
saw is large enough to be called a forest, being 
nearly twenty miles in extent. We must conceive 
of this landscape in the north as being as yet 
largely free from snow, while, the winter remain- 
ing singularly open, the frost is not yet severe. 
The first sharp frost of some three weeks ago wa^ 
interrupted by a thaw, and the difficultieg of thO; 
fio 
