LAND AND .WATER. 
April 3, 1915. 
form of confidently expecting great victories at the 
outset of war and a victorious peace, perhaps 
■within a few weeks, certainly within six months 
of its inception. 
The lirst of these expectations was amply 
realised. The strong fortress of Liege was com- 
()letelv in German hands within ten days of the 
irst shots. The full mobilisation of the German 
forces had not been completed a fortnight when 
the greater part of Belgium was securely held. 
The capital, Brussels, was entered and occupied 
immediately afterwards. The first French armies 
gathered to" meet the shock v.eie borne down in an 
avalanche of invasion. All the six weeks succeed- 
ing the forcing of the war were an uninterrupted 
triumph, eten exceeding nhat had been eajiectcd 
hi/ the general public in the German Empire: the 
whole garrison of Maubeuge, the crashing blow of 
the battle of Metz, the uninterrupted and enor- 
mous charge through Northern Trance to the very 
gates of Paris, prisoners by the hundred thousand, 
and guns in interminable nujubers. To crown all, 
just as the decisive stroke against the l)eaten 
French Army made possible the immediate occupa- 
tion of Pans, with the approach of Sedan day, 
the German population received the astounding 
news of Tannenberg. 
The point has been repeatedly emphasised in 
these pages. It needs no further elaboration. The 
mind of a nation influenced by a legitimate exalta- 
tion of this kind can change but very gradually; 
and cannot change at all save under the pressure 
of some vivid and clearly defined disaster. 
No such disaster folloAved. Nothing hap- 
pened which could reasonably make the general 
lay opinion of Germany abandon its old unques- 
tioned confidence in the supremacy of its military 
machine and in the certitude of ultimate victory. 
But what happened was of a nature which, if 
ft could not thus affect the popular mind, was 
certain to affect the directing mind, and, in par- 
ticular, the soldiers ultimately responsible for the 
conduct of the campaign. For those soldiers liad 
planned a great strategy of a simple sort, and the 
plan had manifestly gone wrong. The battle of 
the Marne meant that the envelopment or crushing 
of the French Army was thenceforth impossible. 
It meant that the rapid decision in the West was, 
therefore, equally impossible, and that the cam- 
paign would be indefinitely prolonged. More than 
that at first it did not mean. 
The second chapter of the war emphasised in 
the directing military mind of the enemy this new 
mood. Pinned to a line of trenches 400 miles long, 
but still in superior numbers, the obvious task for 
the enemy in the West was now to break through. 
From the early part of October to the middle of 
November the enemy's Great General Staff massed 
his vast numerical superiority for a great attempt 
to break through the northern end of the line, first 
upon the front Dixmude-Nieuport, then upon the 
front of the salient of Ypres, held by the 
British contingent. He disastrously failed in the 
double attempt. He suffered very heavy losses 
indeed — certainly the equivaleiit of six army corps 
— and he knew that the future was more doubtful 
than ever. 
But it must be clearly borne in mind that the 
renewed failure, most significent to the staff, had 
no immediate effect upon the popular conception of 
the war. As we see clearly enough from the 
instance of our own popular opinion, such purely 
adventitious conditions as the fact that war was 
taking place on the enemy's soil, that there was no 
dramatic single surrender of large numbers of 
prisoners and guns, &c., were quite sufficient to 
maintain (though they could not reinforce) the old 
confidence. 
We know how difi'eront is the attitude of the 
purely military obserA^er from that of the general 
public in any military opci'ation. 
Perhaps the clearest example of the contrast 
is to be found in the fact that mere advance is 
coupled in the popular mind with the idea of suc- 
cess, and it is often even identified with it. 
The tliird chaj^ter of the war opened with yet 
another change of plan upon the part of the 
enemy's directing military mind. 
So much time had })assed by the middle of 
November that Russia might in the course of the 
next few montiis j)rove formidable. If she became 
really formidable in equipped numbers and ammu- 
nition in a further five or six months, and no deci- 
sion iiad in tlie m.eantime been reached in the 
West, tlie German fortunes, already very doubtful, 
might begin to turn towards disaster. By this time 
— the middle of November — quite half the avail- 
able untrained German men to be put into the field 
had already been put into the field. The remaining 
margin was not very large, and the wastage from 
the conditions of a winter campaign, from the fact 
that everytliing had been designed for a short war, 
but, above all, from the strategic and tactical tra- 
ditions of the Prussian service, was continuously 
enormous. 
This third chapter therefore took the follow- 
ing form : 
The Germans, with their Austrian ally, were 
to pin the Russians behind the Vistula while still 
the winter lasted. To achieve this immobilisation 
of the enemy upon the East, it vvas necessary for 
the Germanic alliance to command permanently 
the railway bridges of Vv^'arsav/ ; and to that end, 
leaving in the West only just sufficient numbers 
to hold the line, the main energy of the enemy was 
directed throughout the whole of the wintt'r. 
The grand strategy of this third phase is still 
in progress, but so far it has failed precisely as tho 
grand stratcgj- of the first phase, the euAelopment 
or destruction of the French, and the second phase, 
the breaking out in the West, had failed in their 
turn. 
The attempt to carry Warsaw by direct attack 
from the West broke dov.n and was abandoned 
after the first vreek in February. The attempt to 
carry it round the northern flank broke down, in 
its first effort at least, by the first week in March. ■ 
We are just coming to the first week in April, and 
Warsaw, with its bridges, is still secure. 
A secondary, and rather political than mili- 
tary, field connected with this main Polisli effort 
was that of the Carpathian fi-ont. The Austro- 
Germans must clear the Russian armies from 
Galicia if they were to free Hungary from the 
menace of invasion daring the coming spring. 
With this object in mind they massed forces far 
superior to the Russians in the field, and planned, 
while holding the Russians along the front of the 
mountains, to turn them in flank from the south- 
east. They were aided in this conception by the 
prolonged resistance of Przemysl, with its garri- 
son of souie three to four army corps. Should 
Przemysl fall, it was certain that the Russian 
arniies in Galicia could not be expelled. Przemj^sl 
fell upon March 22. The abandonment of the 
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