LAND AND WATER 
February 6, 1915. 
THE WESTERN FIELD. 
IN the western field there has been a series of 
those attacks and counter-attacks which 
have upon the side of the Allies the object 
(and upon the whole the result) of slowly 
wearing down the enemy's numbers in 
greater proportion than the losses sustained 
t^i^mst them, but the actual movements recorded 
have been quite insignificant and merit neither 
illustration nor particular analysis. 
The most conspicuous have been the very 
violent attack in the region of La Bassee, the cap- 
ture of the big dmie or sand hill just east of the 
river outside Nieuport, and the rather heavy work 
in the Argonne, in which one line of French 
trenches was taken and the French lost ground for 
about two hundred yards. 
The most remarkable point about these various 
engagements has been perhaps the heavy German 
loss connected with the days immediately preced- 
ing and coincident with the German Emperor's 
birthday. 
It is not a very great matter nor a very mate- 
rial one, but it is curiously worth watching on the 
part of any student of this war, that the enemy 
adds to his high military efficiency little marks of 
superstition or ncHi-military motive which throw 
an interesting light upon his psychology of war. 
One cannot imagine a modern French com- 
mander acting in this fashion or in that because 
it is July nth or the anniversary of Austerlitz, 
but we have the Germans crossing the frontier 
on the same day and hour as in 1870; making 
Sedan Day coincide with the daring (and luckily 
disiistrous) march across the Allied front near 
Paris, comparing a brigade action with Gravelotte 
" because it had the same frontage in kilometres " ; 
and now wasting a number of men in three days 
which bad no direct military significance, but 
which happen to coincide with the Emperor's 
birthday : as though it were part of the business 
of war to give one's commander-in-chief a present, 
and that present a sacrifice. 
It is not wise to ridicule too much this not 
logical and not material sentiment in war : this 
touch of superstition. One certainly cannot con- 
nect it with rational plans, but no one will deny 
to the enemy a great excellence in drawing up and 
maturing such plans. The touch of non-rational 
motive which you find added to such plans, both 
by individuals and by nations, usually connotes a 
high exaltation of feeling, and it is an indication 
of the enemy's mind which must not be neglected. 
iWe shall probably find examples of it recurring in 
the future of these campaigns. If it is exagge- 
rated it will be all in our favour. 
The capture of the great dune will prove of 
importance if it gives the Allies a sound gun posi- 
tion. That it does so as against the plain to the 
east is obvious. The Dunes run in this region be- 
tween the main road and the sea, and behind the 
main road is a flat, cultivated and pasture country 
full of water, meadows and ditches and traversed 
by the main canal between Nieuport and Ostend. 
From any conspicuous one of these numerous sand 
hills, once its summit is occupied, there is a clear 
range eastward as far as, say, Slype, 7,000 yards 
away, and southward well beyond St. Georges. 
But what one cannot tell, what no one can tell 
unless he is on the spot, and cannot always tell 
then, is the relation of the position to other posi- 
tions amid these tangled heaps of sand bound to- 
gether with coarse grass, which line the whole of 
that coast for fifty miles. It may be that the posi- 
tion here captured is of such importance that it 
will permit a steady advance eastward along the 
main road, more probably it will meet opportuni- 
ties of resistance eastward among the low heights 
of the same formation and v/ill not seriously ad- 
vance our offensive upon this extreme flank of the 
enemy. 
The fighting in the Argonne bears out what 
was said in these notes last week : that the enemy 
would continue to make rigorous efforts in the 
woods west of Verdun, because one part of his 
plans must be the attempted investment of that 
fortress when he can bring up his new formations. 
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say : " Be- 
cause one of his commanders is advising the ulti- 
mate attempt to procure such an investment " ; for 
there is and will continue to be upon the side of the 
enemy a series of disconnected plans each depen- 
dent upon a different commander. That is quite 
evident from the way in which for now three 
months the enemy's energy has been spent upon 
one point after another, not only as opportunity 
seemed to suggest, but as individual Generals ob- 
tained the ear of the chief command, or were left 
free to act each in his own region. 
Beyond this there is nothing to be said with 
regard to the western field at the moment of writ- 
ing — Tuesday evening. 
THE COMING GERMAN OFFENSIVE 
IN THE WEST. 
Although it is true that nothing is less easy to 
forecast than the course of a war, yet there are 
sometimes circumstances in w^hich one can be fairly 
certain of the general course which warfare will 
take when a particular campaign has reached a 
certain point in its development. 
For instance, when one of the French armies 
was contained in Metz (in 1870) by the Germans, 
and the only other regular forces the French pos- 
sessed had been captured wholesale at Sedan, it 
was so obvious that the next German move would 
be an advance on Paris that no one concerned with 
the defence of the French allowed for any other 
issue. 
The next development of our enemy's plans is 
not quite so obvious as that; but it is fairly clear 
that this next move will be a very heavy assault 
upon the western line in the hope of breaking that 
line. 
The reasons for this are fairly obvious; the 
enemy is aware that the French are working with 
a large strategic reserve. He is also aware that 
Great Britain has, more and more ready day by 
day as equipment increases and as training is per- 
fected, another reserve consisting of new forma- 
tions, and one which in future can grow, not in- 
deed indefinitely, but up to limits far beyond what 
was expected in Germany when the war broke out. 
His total reserve of men is not 2^ million. Many 
converging lines of proof and reports which are 
believed to be reliable in the West combine to put 
the German " disposable " reserve which has not 
yet been put into the field at no more than twa 
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