March 27, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER. 
tWarsaw, and second!}' because the cutting of the 
railway even high up would prevent the arrival 
of reinforcements from the North dovvn on to the 
threatened district near the Vistula. 
,We have then this second chapter of the great 
movement opening with the advance of the three 
German bodies upon the whole line of the Niemen 
and the Narew with the object of piercing that 
line, and particularly with the object of piercing 
it in great force at its Southern end between the 
two fortresses of Ostrolenka and New Georgievsk. 
The fortified line of the Niemen and the 
NareM^ consists in the following elements. 
It starts with the fortress of Kovno upon the 
broad and considerable obstacle of the lower 
Niemen and runs up that river to the correspond- 
ing fortress of Grodno about eighty miles away. 
Between the two is the minor fortified point of 
Olita. At Grodno there is a great bend in the 
River Niemen, the upper reaches of which come in 
from the East, so that the line of the river is no 
longer useful as part of the screen to defend the 
sheaf of railways that converge on .Warsaw. In- 
deed, the main line from Warsaw to Petrograd 
cuts the Niemen at this bend. 
But a natural obstacle suitable to the pro- 
longation of a defensive line or screen is discovered 
in the neighbourhood of Grodno in the shape of 
the small sluggish river called the Bobr. This 
stream oozes through great belts of marsh which 
are crossed by only one causeway and railway, and 
at the point of this crossing the little town of 
Osowiccs has been fortified. Some twenty odd 
miles below Osowiecs the Bobr falls into the 
Narew, which river takes on from that point the 
task of the defensive screen. There is a small 
fortified point early in this continuation at Lomza, 
a more important one at Ostrolenka lower down, 
and below Ostrolenka a fortified point at Rozan, 
then a more important one at Pultusk. A short 
day's march south of Pultusk, at Serock, the 
Narew falls into the River Bug, which almosC 
immediately afterwards falls itself into tho 
Vistula, at the highly important great modern 
fortress of New Georgievsk, whence a railway 
leads to Warsavv^ on the one hand and up to the 
Prussian frontier at Mlawa on the other. 
The whole of this line, in a chord drawn from 
one extremity to the other, is just over two hundred 
miles long. In all its twists and turnings it is 
considerably over two hundred and forty. And it 
v/as the business of the enemy to get through this 
fortified screen, and that without too much delay, 
if he desired to take Warsaw before the melting 
of the ice in the White Sea or the possible forcing 
of the Dardanelles should permit the further 
munitioning of Russia and before the new armies 
appeared in the West from England. 
As we have seen, he attacked during the last 
week of February in three main bodies — the first 
towards Grodno, the second towards Osowiecs, the 
third in the region vvhich I have marked upon the 
sketch with the letters A B, a front stretching 
from the neighbourhood of Khorgele to that of 
Allawa. 
In order to follow the fortunes of this triple 
attack it is necessary to appreciate the fact that 
here upon this frontier, as upon the whole lino 
where Russia and Germany meet, the enemy has 
provided a perfect network of railroads upon his 
side to which the Russians have built nothing 
corresponding. Indeed, it was the knowledge that 
the Russians, sooner or later, would perfect their 
system of railroads which, among other things, 
tempted the German Government to force on the 
war at the moment it did. This German series of 
railways, the main line exactly following the 
frontier and feeders coming out from it at regular 
intervals, is clearly shown upon the sketch. We 
shall see how this affected the fighting. 
The smallest column, consisting of only one 
Army Corps (the 21st Army Corps of the German 
active Army, a first-rate body), crossed the Niemen 
at the point I have marked X upon the sketch, 
about fourteen miles north of Grodno. It was able 
to do this under the cover of a thick belt of wood 
which here passes the river and extends eastward, 
but it did not cross in any great force, and, as we 
have seen, its object was no more than to occupy 
the enemy in this region and to prevent his forces 
there from coming down South to the main field 
of action near Warsaw. Precise details as to this 
crossing are lacking, but it would seem to have 
taken place round about February 20, and such 
units as got across the water would seein to have 
lingered there for rather more than a week, await- 
ing the developments that might take place down 
South. They did not proceed further than the 
limits of the wood which had covered tho 
operation. 
In front of Osowiecs the second column had 
for its mission the reduction of that central 
fortress and gaining possession of the railway 
which here crossed the fortified line. 
Now the elements of Osowiecs are simple 
enough. You have a river (see plan 5) A B, a 
townlet at C on its banks, a railway and a road 
parallel to each other on the line D E, and upon 
either side of this crossing place at C two great 
marshy districts X X and Y Y, the narrows be- 
tween which are occupied of course by the crossing 
and by the town of Osowiecs itself. Taking 
advantage of so strong a situation, permancrtt 
works have been erected round Osowiecs as at 
