L A JN IJ A i\ U W A 1 i. K. 
i-eOFuary -xt, ivio. 
ilSO.OOO men, and these four army corps we will 
iiidieateupon the sketch (purely diagraminatically, 
of course) by the figures 1, 2, 3, 4. Against tins 
force there apjjeared upon the whole line from 
tl'ilsit to the Southern frontier anything from 
300.000 to 500,000 Germans, who made it their task 
to clear Prussian territory of the enemy and to 
advance upon the line of the Niemen and the 
Xarew. 
Let it here be pointed out that upon four 
separate occasions the Russians have been suddenly 
attacked by a German movement in force. The 
first at Tannenberg, six months ago. Next in the 
euddeu advance during October through Russian 
Poland. Next in von Hindenberg's great stroke 
to capture Warsaw at the end of November or the 
beginning of December; and lastly in this struggle 
in East I*russia, during the last fortnight. 
The reason of these sudden attacks has been 
largely the perfection of the German railway 
.system and the imperfection of the Russian; but 
•there may have contributed to them the difficulty 
of air work under the weather conditions of the 
time and place, and perhaps other factors of which 
we know nothing. At any rate, these sudden 
;attaeks have continually taken place, and have been 
ias remarkable for their repetition in the Eastern 
field as for their absence in the Western. 
You have, then, sudilenly and unexpectedly 
, attacking the four units upon the line A B any- 
thing from eight to ten units, going direct along 
*t!ie direction of the arrows from the west. At the 
first shock the Russian retirement was immediately 
ordered, for it was apparent that vastly superior 
forces had come into contact with the four Russian 
army corps, v.hich together constituted the 10th 
]?ussian army, and which had l)een forcing their 
way into East Prussia, with the special object of 
embarrassing the general plan of the enemy 
between tJie Baltic and the Carpathians. 
That retirement would have been normal 
enough but for a successful piece of strategy on 
the enemy's part, which cost the Russians perhaps 
30.000, perhaps 40,000, inen, and rather less than 
lialf the artillery of one corps. This successful 
piece of strategy I will next proceed to describe. 
The blow aimed at unit No. 4 was directed 
with special weight against the left-hand of its 
line at C. The German commander.s evidently pre- 
. supposed — and with justice — that the fourth unit 
of the Russian command, in peril of being thus 
cut off from the rest of the army and having 
behind it the advance on Kovno, would fall back 
as rapidly as possible upon that town. Permanent 
fortifications are always — and necessarily — a lure 
to an army in peril from superior forces pressing- 
it. And this fourth unit had, as a fact, not only 
fallen back with the utmost rapidity towards 
Kovno, but also had turned slowly in the press of 
that retreat from facing east to facing north- 
east. The unit immediately to the south, No. 3 
(which was the 20th Army Corps under Bulgakov) 
neither retreated with the same rapidity nor 
in the same direction. The precipitate retire- 
ment of No. 4 under the pressure upon its 
left left No. 3 exposed, and the enemy broke in 
through the gap thus left betw^een No. 3 and 
No. 4. No. 3 could not even attempt to extricate 
itself by a parallel march towards Kovno — the 
distance was too great — while No. 4 was marching 
eoraewhat north of east, 3 was falling back 
south of east, and suffered the whole weight of 
the German north central advance. No. 4 got 
away, but No, 3. was bent, partially enveloped, and 
for the most part wiped out as a fighting force. 
It was not wholly enveloped, as is proved by the 
fact that it did not lose even a full half of its 
guns, and that certain elements composing it 
escaped entire. But of the thirty odd thousand 
men composing it the greater part never returned 
to Russia. They were killed, or picked up as 
wounded, or, some portion of them, captured as 
unwounded prisoners. The v.hole movement may 
bo clearly enough seen in some such diagram as 
the followincr : 
where the shaded lines represent the Germans 
and the unshaded ones the Russians. 4, 
threatened with vastly superior foices and 
returning from C, falls back on to the position 
of the dotted oblong A, meanwhile making for 
Kovno at K. Meanwhile 3 tries to fall back 
towards the position B, but before he gets there 
is badly crushed upon both Hanks by the cxteiiding 
enemy in front of him and by the spreading out of 
that enemy's lines, which takes immediate advan- 
tage of the gap between A and B, and of 3 only a 
small proportion makes good the retreat to the 
frontier. 
Meanwhile 1 and 2, lov>er down the line, 
fought normally enough and suficred no disaster. 
They retreated in not too great haste, fighting for 
more than a week with their rearguards to defend 
the narrows between the lakes in the Masurian 
region (half shaded upon the map). The last 
stand of these rearguards was round the town of 
Lyck, which was carried by the enemy upon the 
10th of Eebruary. By the 12th all the Russian 
forces were out of German soil. What I have 
called the fourth corps was safe back near Kovno, 
the third had for the most part disappeared in its 
disaster, the second and the first were standing in 
front of the line of the Niemen, and lay there in 
front of Grodno, passing in front of Osowiec to in 
front of Lomaz. On Sunday, the 14th, the large 
German forces, having reordered their line, pro- 
ceeded to two tasks, the advance of the smaller 
body from Wilkowiski and Marianpol to the 
Lower Niemen and the advance on the line Grodno- 
I 
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