January 16, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER. 
I 
49t 
I 
'^ Lalu Van'/ 
<^^ \LahiUcmia:i 
35 E .^^^'Xfourttauunw loiwf. 
-45N 
49E 
-38N 
(1) A depression running from sea to sea, 
roughly parallel with the Caucasian chain, and 
(roughly also) at an average of sixty miles or so 
from its summits. This depression has, of course, 
its western and its eastern slope, the watershed 
between which on the Pass of Ssuram (at S) is 
itself nearly 3,000 feet above the sea. But the 
railway follows it all and unites along this natural 
trench Baku, the Oil centre, upon the Caspian, 
with Batoum, the European port upon the Black 
Sea, and this railway is connected along the Cas- 
pian coast with the systems to the north of the 
Caucasus. Not quite midway between the two 
seas is the chief town of Tiflis (T), at the foot of 
the principal road across the Caucasian Chain, 
and the nodal point upon which all land communi- 
cations (rail, road, and sea) for a Caucasian cam- 
paign must centre. 
From Tiflis southwards runs towards the Tur- 
kish frontier and the fortress of Kars (K) a rail- 
way which crosses two ridges of fairly high moun- 
tains and climbs beyond Kars to its railhead at 
Sarikamish, 6,000 feet above the sea (Sh). The 
mountains between the main Caucasian railway — 
that from Baku to Batoum — and the Armenian 
frontier, are too complicated to be represented 
upon this rough sketch, even in their main lines. 
They appear in the sketch as no more than " a 
mountainous area." It is all a tangle of high hills 
leading up to the Annenian Plateau. But we 
must conceive of all the land between the railway 
and the frontier as rising gradually by some 5,000 
feet, with summits 10,000 and even 11,000 feet 
above the sea, and so cut up that travel from one 
point to another, save along the Kars railway (and 
even that crosses great heights), nearly always in- 
volves the passage of a steep and snow-clad ridge. 
I shall give later a sketch of that tangle on a 
larger scale. In the direction along which the 
Kars railway points — that is somewhat south of 
west — but over the border and some 80 miles 
further on is, at a height of over 6,000 feet, the 
town of Erzerum (E), the place of concentration 
for the Turkish forces in this neighbourhood. 
Finally, upon the Black Sea at T.R. is the port of 
Trebizond, the principal Turkish port for this dis- 
trict. 
With these main elements before us we can 
follow upon a somewhat larger scale the details of 
the recent Russian victory. 
The first thing to seize is that the general plan 
of the Germans upon this front after they had 
brought Turkey into the war was an envelopment 
of the Russian army of the Caucasus, or at any rate 
of so large a part of it as should destroy the usefid- 
ness of the remainder. 
There was but one district in which such an 
envelopment could take place, for there is but one 
main avenue of approach by which a large force 
can march from Russian into Turkish territory or 
from Turkish into Russian, and that is the road 
from Kars to Erzerum. The Russian army would 
certainly bring forward the bulk of its forces by 
that road, which is further supplied with a railway 
as far as the terminal station of Sarikamish, 15 
miles from the frontier. Once this main advance 
began, and the main Russian force was engaged 
in the valley in its march upon Erzerum, it was to 
be held in front by resistance upon the main road, 
and while it was thus held Turkish forces stationed 
upon the left or northward of this main road were 
to sweep round and come upon the right flank of 
the Russians. There was even one extreme Tur- 
kish force still further to the north which was to 
come round by sea to work round behind the Rus- 
sians while the general engagement was in progress 
and to cut the main railway from Tiflis to Kars 
upon which the Russians depended for their 
munitions. The whole thing may be put 
diagrammatically as follows: where K is Kars, 
S is Sarikamish, and E is Erzerum. A railway 
coming from Tiflis and the depots of the Russians 
in Georgia accompanies the road as far as the rail- 
head at Sarikamish. The Russians are expected 
to make their main advance upon Erzerum as 
along the column A-A. The Turks under German 
direction proceed to envelop this Russian advance 
by holding it in front with a force B-B, and then 
moving forces C-C and D-D round against the Rus- 
sians in the direction of the arrow, while yet 
another force, E-E, strikes through to cut the rail- 
way behind Kars somewhere near X. There was 
a certain amount of detached work going on away 
to the south, that is to the left of the Russians and 
the right of the Turks, but we need not concern 
ourselves with that, the study of which would only 
confuse our grasp of the main operations. 
What the Turks had here been bidden to carry 
out was exactly upon the model of all modern 
German strategy, and that is what makes us cer- 
tain that the blunder was made under German 
direction. It may even be regarded as the third 
of the great failures of this enveloping strategy in 
the present war. The first was Von Kluck's 
failure to get round the Allied Army in front of 
Paris; the second was Von Hindenburg's failure 
to get round the Russian line in front of Warsaw; 
3* 
