February 6, 1915. 
LAND AND WATEE 
million of men. The enemy is not certain of the 
quality of the British new formations, or of their 
rate of equipment. Sometimes he seems to make 
calculations upon these too favourable to himself. 
But what his real judgment is we can hardly tell, 
because we only hear the official accounts put 
forward to affect opinion within Germany itself 
and to affect the opinion of neutral countries. 
At any rate, he knows that if he allows too 
long a delay to pass he will be confronted in the 
West with bodies superior in number to his own, 
and against a superiority of number he believes it 
impossible to contend ; his whole theory of war is 
based upon the certitude of a numerical superi- 
ority. This superiority he still maintains; he 
knows that he will not now long maintain it. 
Therefore he must fight. 
He must fight rather in the West rather than 
in the East for the following reasons : — 
1. All the resources of the future in every- 
thing but unequicped men are to be found in the 
West. 
2. His efforts upon the East have failed to 
attain the objective of Warsaw, but they have suc- 
ceeded in keeping his enemy there at bay. And 
he may presume upon the rigors of the climate to 
prevent any considerable pressure being renewed 
upon him in this quarter before the spring. This 
calculation may not be a wise one ; an exceptional 
period of very hard but very clear and windless 
weather would probably permit successful action 
by the Russians on the extreme north of their line. 
Such action they are contemplating already, but, 
take the line as a whole, and it is improbable that 
the enemy believes in the danger of serious peril 
from the East before the spring. 
3. Upon the West, on the contrary, he can 
shortly come, say, after the next six weeks upon 
drier weather and upon a better chance for attack- 
ing. This is particularly the case in the more 
inland parts of the line, and the mention of this 
leaves us to consider where that effort may come. 
There are five main fields of action in the 400- 
mile line between the S\nss mountains and the 
North Sea. 
which is Verdun, because the southern part is 
blocked by Epinal, and because near Verdun alone 
of the great fortresses are the Germans threaten- 
ing, an action in which would first require the in- 
vestment of Verdun. 
3. Next you have the open Champagne dis- 
trict west of the Forest of Argonne. 
4. Next comes the "elbow" of the line, the 
Soissons district and all its neighbourhood to the 
north up, say, as far as the Albert-Arras region. 
5. Lastly, there comes from this Albert-Arras 
region to the sea what may be called the Flanders 
district, including, of course, much territory that 
is not within the limits of Flanders. 
Now, it is absolutely impossible to say which 
of various opportunities an enemy will take. The 
whole business of generalship is to prevent an 
opponent from guessing what you are to do next. 
But we can examine these five sectors so that, 
when the shock comes, we may be able to estimate 
its chances, and at the same time to judge where 
the attack would seem to be most dangerous. Let 
us take these five sectors one by one. 
1. First and southernmost is the district pro- 
tected by Bel fort and the southern half of the 
tV^osges Mountains. 
2. Next we have all that region the key to 
1. To attack in mass with their new forma, 
tions upon the sector of Belfort would l>ave one, 
and only one, advantage; the success of such an 
advance would be followed by the turning of the 
whole French line. It would be necessary for the 
southern portions of that line to fall back as a 
whole to some such line as A-B ; it would uncover 
Nancy ; it would turn the barrier fortresses ; it 
would isolate or uncover Verdun. Judged in terms 
of its difficulty, howeVer, and not in terms of its 
advantage, it would be the most hopeless of 
achievements of all the tasks the enemy could pro- 
pose to himself. The Vosges are an obstacle across 
which only heavy and prolonged fighting would 
carry the offensive. They were abandoned last 
summer, and have had to be painfully recovered 
by the French only because they were turned upon 
the north. After the battle of Metz, in the region 
X, in the last ten days of August, the country to 
the west of the northern end of the Vosges was in 
the hands of the enemy, and the French line had 
