'April 3, 1915. 
LAND AND BOATER. 
THE WAR BY LAND. 
By HILAIRE BELLOG. 
NOTE.— This article has been submitted to the Press Burcsn, tvhlch does not object to the publication ai cenioreJ, and takei a» 
responsibilUy lor the correctness ot the statements. 
In accordance with the requirements ol the Press Bureau, the positions ol troops on Plans illustrating this Article mast only b« 
rciJaraea as approximate, and no deilniie strength at any point U Indicated. 
THE GARPATIIIAN FRONT. 
The Russian Advance, the Uzok and the Lupkow 
Passes. 
IT not infrequently happens in the course of 
a campaign that what had been, sometimes 
over a considerable period, a secondary 
field of operations, becomes a field of first 
importance, success or failure in which proves 
decisive. There seems some possibility of this 
being the case in the future with the Carpathian 
front. 
Upon the whole Eastern front Warsaw was, 
and is, the critical point. With the Germans in 
iWarsaw (especially with Przemysl still holding 
out), the Galician operations — hitherto stationary 
— would have failed altogether, and a retirement 
of the Russian armies from the plain east of the 
Carpathians would have had to come. 
But v.'ith Warsaw untaken, and, apparently, 
now in no danger of falling during the immediate 
future, and with the interruption of Przemysl 
gone, it is quite another matter. Northern and 
Central Poland may well stand immobile while 
more decisive operations take place in Southern 
Poland ; and at the outset of these operations we 
shall do well to master the general and the particu- 
lar conditions of that Carpathian fz^ont, where a 
great action has been at issue for more than a 
week, and still at the moment of writing (Mondayj 
evening) (1) remains undecided. 
The general conditions of the Carpathian 
front may thus be summarised. A broad belt of 
mountain land, running roughly north-west by 
south-east, and, for the purposes of this field, 
about 250 miles long, or a trifle more, stretches 
from the Roumanian frontier to the sources of the 
Dunajec river above New Sandec. This line of 
the Dunajec river, prolonged by an upper tribu- 
tary coming in from the south, roughly defines 
the extremity of the Russian occupation in 
Galicia. It will be observed that this front (which 
I have marked on the sketch B with a line of 
crosses stretching from A to B) menaces Cracow, 
at a distance of rather less than fifty miles ujion 
the average. The Russian armies occupying the 
Galician plain to the east of the Carpathian 
mountains have been pressed back in the southern 
end of their occupation to, roughly, the line of 
crosses C D, and are in possession of the crest of 
the Cai'pathians only upon the narrow issuai 
between B and C. But it is further to be 
remarked that this particular section of the front 
B C is precisely that in which the Carpathians can 
most easily be crossed and where there is the best 
system of communication immediately to the east' 
on the Galician plain for the support of an effort 
(1) The ^xigcncios of tho press in the holiday week advanc* th4 
writing of Ihia iasue by twenty-four hours. 
