TreiTniarv z^, i»ii>. 
i^ A i\ u iv i\ jj .\v iv. 1 Ji Jtc, 
Osowiec-Lomza. Tluit advance v/as fJow. Heavy 
as had been the Russian losses, the losses of the 
enemy attacking the well-defended narrows 
l)etween the lakes muvst have been far heavier than 
that of the Russians in wounded and killed (save 
X in the 20th C'orps), and there appears to have Ijeen 
something like a halt for the reorganisation of the 
advancing force Iwfore its next effort was made. 
That next effort took the form of a number 
of local actions upon the Thursday and Friday 
and Saturday of last week, and it is interesting 
to note where these local actions took place, 
because these points are an indication of the 
approach of the enemy to tlie Niemen and Narew 
line. 
You have three points in particular. Each of 
them is about ten miles from the defensive line 
of the rivers, the fate of wliich line lends all its 
meaning to the present turning movement for the 
investment of Warsaw. 
You have, first of all. an engagement taking 
place on the road between Grodno and Lipsko, 
r x^'^j 
r- w^-^^. 
Osowelcs 
"MlUs 
JV 
somewhere about the point marked X. There is 
only one highroad in this district. It was upon 
cither side of this causeway that the action seems 
to have diverged, and its locality shows that the 
enemy have passed without check through the 
forest of Augustowo : an advantage which they 
owed to the partial destruction of the 20th 
Russian Army Corps. The enemy is in his next 
column aiming at the central point of Osowiec. 
We arc not given the name of the locality 
where the shock took place in this line, but it 
must have been at much the same distance from 
the river as on the Grodno advance, and at a)x)ut 
eight miles or so from the Bobr one, whicli 
is part of the Niemen-Narew line, as in 
the following plan. Here, again, only one 
main road crosses the belt of marsh through 
which the little river Bobr sluggishly winds, 
the great marsh known as the Marsh of 
Lafki. Our indication as to the locality of this 
shock is afforded by the news that the guns of the 
forts of Osowiec, the range of whose north-western 
sector lies somewhere along the line A B, were in 
action : so your central German advance had 
reached, by last Saturday morning at latest, to 
within a day's march of the defensive point of 
Osowiec, upon which everything here depends. 
The third point on which the German advance 
has developed, as shown on the following page, is 
further south still and is concerned with the bend 
of the Narew east of Lomza. 
This is a very important point. 
It is here that the defensive line approaches 
most nearly to the railway which it is the object of 
the enemy to cut. Ihgre are no obstacles of marsh 
just at this place, when once one is west of the 
great Wizna marsh. 
Here, again, the action took place at about 
a day's march from the defensive line. The village 
of Jewabno is the starting point for two columns 
that might be taking the roads for Wizna 
and Lomza respectively. At any rate, it is the 
outpost which must be taken before Lomza and 
the line of the Narew at this point can be carried. 
Upon Friday, or possibly as late as Saturday 
morning, a counter offensive undertaken by the 
Russians carried and kept Jewabno against the 
Germans. 
Matters therefore in general stand thus. The 
Russian retreat has been effected normally enough 
with the loss of not 12 per cent, of its guns and of 
such wounded prisoners as a rapid retirement 
before an unexpected blow delivered by greatly 
superior numbers necessarily involves. But to this 
general statement there is an unfortunate excep- 
tion in the army corps lost, the 2nd one in the 
Russian line from south to north, the 20th, of 
which two divisions disappeared and of which not 
quite one-half of the artillery appciirs to have 
been taken. 
The remainder of the 10th Russian army, 
having lost altogether, say, 35,000 or 40,000 men 
and 60 or 70 out of, say, 600 guns, is now just in 
front of the defensive line Niemen-Bobr-Narew, 
which covers the main railway feeding Warsaw 
from the N.E., and on Saturday last (v/e have no 
later news at the moment of writing, Tuesday 
evening) it was engaged with various portions of 
the enemy on points about a day's march in front 
of this defensive line. 
So much being said, let us turn to the object" 
and comparative success or failure of the Germau 
movement in this region as a whole. 
The effort of the Germans ui>on the frontier 
i» 
