LAND AND WATER. 
January 16, 1915. 
on'd this Caucasian battle, fought with Turkish 
soldiers under totally different climatic and topo- 
graphical conditions, is a third failure in exactly 
the same image. 
In order to effect an envelopment of this kind 
the Germans had to count on a numerical superi- 
ority of their ally's troops in this region, for you 
cannot thus hold in one place and turn in another 
unless you are numerically superior to your enemy. 
Nothing could make up for this necessity of superi- 
ority in numbers save some great superiority in 
mobility, which mobility the Turks, lacking any 
railways in this neighbourhood, obviously did not 
possess. We may take it, therefore, that the 
120,000 men or so (possibly altogether as many as 
160,000) which the Turks had to hand were con- 
fronted by no more than some 100,000 Russians, or 
at least expected to be confronted by no more. 
A second necessity, lacking which a movement 
of this sort is bound to fail, is the exact co- 
ordination of all the movements. If your various 
bodies converging upon the enemy do not keep in 
touch and work accurately to a time-table, they 
are bound to be defeated in detail, for some of 
them will be in conflict with the whole of the enemy 
before the rest have come up. The classic example 
of this sort of failure is the Battle of Tourcoing in 
1794. 
The co-ordination of movements over dis- 
tances of more than a hundred miles in such a dis- 
trict as this jumble of high mountains between 
Armenia and Georgia in the depth of winter was 
impossible, and it is difficult to see how the Ger- 
mans could have believed it possible. The whole 
place is a confusion of immense ridges, arranged 
on the most complicated pattern, with passes over 
them often 8,000ft. above the sea, and peaks rising 
two to three thousand feet higher. The whole 
place is deep in snow and subject at this season to 
very heavy storms. Translating the diagram into 
the actual map and following the movements from 
day to day this is what happened : — 
f<^^!^^^'^^''^BatouxrL 
/>,, 
dahan. 
X 
Erzerum 
Koprikoi 
^^^/sh 
Towards the end of October there was con- 
centrated at Erzerum a force consisting of three 
Turkish Army Corps: the 9th, the 10th, and the 
11th. 
With what rapidity the Turks could assemble 
their men we do not know, but at any rate the great 
concentration was taking place about that time, 
and the corresponding Russian concentration was 
taking place in the neighbourhood of Kars in those 
same days. The distance from Kars to Erzerum 
