LAND AND .WATER. 
March 27, 1915. 
Sea, 
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sentimental one of clearing German soil of the 
invader, but the practical one of cutting the rail- 
wa)s behind Warsaw (if he did not succeed in 
achieving which task his movement would have 
failed), he proceeded to advance upon those rail- 
ways in three main bodies, which I have marked 
in the accompanying sketch 1, 2, and 3 respectively. 
^a.Cti c 
district and partly engaging itself in that district 
until it had come to occupy the line A B; its right 
wing was within half a march of the East 
Prussian town of Tilsit, its extreme left was a 
couple of marches south of the town of Lotzen. 
It had not quite penetrated either to Insterburg 
nor, I think, to Lotzen itself, and it must be re- 
garded as a chain of four forces, each an Army 
Corps, which I have numbered in the accom- 
panying sketch 1 to 4. These four Army Corps 
retired very rapidly before the advance of their 
vastly superior enemy along the arrows marked 
upon the sketch towards Kovno, towards Suwalki, 
towards Augustowo, and further to the south. 
During this retreat they suffered no more than the 
losses normal to a perilous operation of this kind, 
say ten or twelve per cent., in men and material, 
save in the case of one Army Corps (the Twentieth 
Russian Army Corps), which, either because it 
deliberately remained behind to act as rear-guard, 
or because it was so handled that it got out of 
touch with the forces to the north and to the south 
of it, suffered envelopment, and was almost wiped 
out as a fighting force. 
This disaster occurred in the marshy forest 
district surrounding the town of Augustowo, and 
the success (though but local and partial in a cam- 
paign of such dimensions) was a hea\7 score for 
the enemy. 
The enemy exaggerated it, naturally, and told 
us that the Tenth Army as a whole had been 
destroyed. This was, of course, not the case; but 
it had lost through normal casualties and through 
this particular disaster quite a third of its men 
by the time the first chapter in the great movement 
was closed, which we may fix roughly at the end 
of the third week of February — say, Saturday, 
Februai-y 20. 
In this first shock the newly-concentrated 
German forces had everywhere crossed the frontier 
of East Prussia, and had, along tlie whole 
crescent of their advance, penetrated into Russian 
territory. 
With the last week of February, from Feb- 
ruary 21 to February 28, inclusive, opened the 
second chapter, and to understand this we must 
Jiave recourse to a third sketch. 
The object of the enemy being, not the purely 
WARSAW , 
^ ^ e I AV 
The first and smallest body was directed 
against the neighbourhood of Grodno. The 
second was directed against the fortress of 
Osowiecs, the third was directed upon a broad 
front towards the lower Narew, and the reason of 
this disposition was as follows : 
It is obvious that the effort to cut the railways 
behind Warsaw would be successful and rapid in 
proportion to the closeness to Warsaw at which the 
advancing force managed to strike home. 
A success by column 1 would be of little use if 
column 2 were held up and column 3 were defeated. 
For column 1, supposing even that it could 
get past Grodno and cut the railway behind that 
fortress, would have a very long way to go before 
it would get at the next of the railways which 
spread out divergently eastward from Warsaw; 
and coming up so very far behind that city would 
have but little effect upon its fate. 
But if column 3 could manage to force the 
defensive line and get upon the railways imme- 
diately in the neighbourhood of Warsaw, where 
they all come close together, and where the cutting 
of the first would be rapidly followed by the cut- 
ting of the second and third — and that so neiir to 
the city that this success would immediately isolate 
it — then the object of the great German move 
would be decisively accomplished. 
Further, a blow thus struck in the neighbour- 
hood of Warsaw would divide in two the main 
Russian forces in the North; it would leave the 
great army in Warsaw in front of it and to the 
west isolated from the bodies that had retired 
upon Osowiecs and upon the upper Narew. 
Nevertheless, it was necessary for column 1 
and for column 2 to be operating as they did, both 
because their action would occupy the Russian 
forces in the North and prevent their coming down 
South to the relief of the neighbourhood of 
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