LAND AND WATER. 
February 13, 1915. 
fail until it had been pressed with singular tenacity 
and with corresponding loss. Of the whole line 
(which stands at present much where the dots run 
upon the accompanying sketch) it was the front, 
A, A, just in front of Bolimow, the front most 
immediately threatening the city, which was 
chosen for this attack. It is not the German point 
nearest the city : that is on the Vistula. But an 
attack along the Vistula bank is impossible because 
of the fortress of Nev Georgievsk, between War- 
saw and the mouth of the Bzura, and difficult, 
naturally, because the district is a belt of marshy 
forests on the left bank. 
away, west of Warsaw ; and that front has been 
maintained for now two months almost unaltered. 
The great attack of the other day, in which 
something less than four corps (the equivalent of 
that with which von Kluck struck at the British 
contingent at the opening of the war) massed upon 
'a front of about 10,000 yards was engaged, did not 
The German trenches are here upon the east 
of the Eawka — a position which does not repre- 
sent any 'retirement of the Russian line, for the 
very slight rise of the ground for some little way 
in front of those trenches (becoming steeper as one 
goes eastward) gives the Russians an excellent lino 
upon the low heights that look down on the little 
stream. Upon these 10,000 yards or so the enemy 
attacked with a force which may have been any- 
thing, in its present condition," from 80,000 to 
120,000 men, and more probably nearer the former 
than the latter figure. The attack was supported 
by rather less than 100 guns a mile— no very heavy 
proportion for such a concentration — and both the 
fire of the German artillery and the massed Ger- 
man columns of infantry which were thrown 
against the Russian trenches were seeking to effect 
a, breach only just wide enough for their purpose. 
In (/cher words, they were limiting the hammer- 
blow by which they hoped to tear through the Rus- 
sian defence to the very strictest and weightiest 
form compatible with a permanent success. You 
must not strike in too narrow a front, because, if 
your breach of an enemy's line is to be of perma- 
nent value, it must not be less than of a certain 
extent : it must be wide enough for you, when you 
have effected it, to have room to turn him left and 
right and begin hammering at the ragged edges of 
either of the two torn halves. 
How near this 10,000-yard effort was to suc- 
cess we do not know, because we only have the 
account of one of the combatants. For the same 
reason we cannot decide what the total losses of 
the defeated assailants may have been. 
The account which puts them at 30,000 must 
almost certainly be exaggerated. Such a propor- 
tion of losses out of such a force in such a time 
would be crippling, and no commander would risk 
being thus weakened, unless, indeed, at the most 
expensive moment of the action success had seemed 
4* 
