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war. The raiders aim at notliing more than annoy- 
ance. They therefore work with the least possible 
numbers. The value of tlie annoyance they cause is 
strictly moral. The conditions'under which it is 
worth while raiding and the conditions under 
which it is not depend entirely on the enemy's 
state of mind, and particularly on the state of his 
civilian mind and on the pressure that civilian 
mind can exercise upon the government and upon 
the army. No raid ever presupposes a permanent 
occupation. Tlie success of a raid is to be 
measured by two things : tlie amount of damage 
done and the ultimate safety of the raiders. 
Judged by these standards, the raid on IVlemel 
seems to have been fairly worth while; the raid 
on Chotin hardly worth while. 
The Russian raid on Memel was undertalien 
because tlie whole German scheme depends upon 
the integrity of German soil. On that depends the 
opinion which is the foundation for the armies, 
and though Memel is but an extreme outpost, yet 
its temporary occupation profoundly affected the 
German mind. Indeed the whole of that East 
Prussian land has come to be for the Germans 
what a sore tooth is for a sleepless mind. Soiue- 
times it stops aching, but it has ached and may 
ache again. On the other hand, the Russian 
raiders of Memel did not do anything like as much 
wrecking as they might have done, but they could 
boast that they escaped with very little loss — for 
the German accounts of their capture were almost 
certainly false. 
The raid upon Chotin satisfies the criteria of 
a raid less. It was indeed undertaken by the 
Austrians with no waste of forces. It seems as 
though the whole body did not consist of more 
than one division of second-line troops with a 
brigade of cavalry. Moreover, this little force 
appears to have been roughly handled. We have 
only the account of one side so far. but the account 
is probable enough, because from the nature of the 
ground, as will be seen in a moment, the position 
of the raiders was always somewhat perilous. 
It is not accurate to speak of the " wiping 
out " of the invaders, as it is put in one message, 
for the total number of prisoners does not come to 
much more than fifteen per cent, of the invaders. 
't-a 
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But the division must have suffered heavily in 
killed and wounded as well, and it has certainly 
failed in its object. It has done very little harm 
in the district attacked, and even if it had been 
more successful it would not have affected Russian 
opinion seriously. The eastern fighting, from the 
Baltic to the Black Sea, has taken place upon soil 
tliat is politically Russian, but the nationality of 
all tliese marches is not Russian. The little corner 
on the Dniester, for instance, of which Chotin, I 
understand, is the chief town, is Roumanian in 
speech, population, and religion. 
This corner is connected with the quite 
modern and artificial frontier of the district. Its 
elements may be seen in the accompanying sketch. 
The River Dniester runs in a very tortuous 
channel through hillv country, coming from 
Galicia and running through Podolia on its way 
to the Black Sea. For a few miles it forms the 
frontier between Austrian Galicia and the Rus- 
sian Empire. The frontier then turns up north- 
wards, following a small tributary called tlie 
So rut 3. South of the Dniester the frontier runs 
along an arbitrary line north and south for rather 
more than thirty miles, until it strikes the Pruth, 
on which river Czernowitz stands. From this 
point the Pruth becomes a boundary between 
Roumania and Russia, as also for a few miles 
between Roumania and Austria. The Russian 
lines and the Austrian lines facing them run in 
this district much as the line of crosses in the 
accompanying sketch. 
The raid followed, roughly, the line of the 
arrow in the sketch, and got about half-way to 
Chotin— or, say, one day's march into Russian 
territory. Its advance bodies, holding two vil- 
lages, was then rounded up and the rest retii-ed. 
The whole thing was on a very small scale, and is 
only interesting as an example of this tendency of 
a state of deadlock to break out into raid. It is 
just possible that a subsidiary object of the little 
effort was the impressing of local Roumanian 
opinion. But, if so, the effect was not worth any 
considerable expense of men. 
The details of this affair can best be appre- 
ciated by a glance at sketch IV. 
x\s is so frequent upon this frontier, the good 
roads belong to the Austrian side, and beyond 
them there is often nothing but a track of earth. 
By such a good road the Austrian divisioTi 
appears to liave marched up from Czernowitz to 
the village of Poporoutz, where apparently it 
halted after the first day's march. On the second 
day it would seem to have crossed the frontier and 
to liave taken the track which leads along the edge 
of the forest to the market town of Chotin, on the 
Dniester, rather more than twenty miles away. 
This forest stands on the right bank of tlie 
Dniester, over an area of about fifty square miles, 
and is ravined by numerous brooks falling into 
the river. It stands somewhat high, and to the 
south of it is a plateau of open country dotted with 
numerous villages. To hide an advance in such 
country was impossible. The advanced bodies of 
the raid would seem on the second day to have 
been billeted in tv/o villages on the edge of the 
forest, Szilowcy and Manicy. Here they took 
contact with considerable bodies of Russian irre- 
gular cavalry, accompanied, of course, by a strong 
force of guns and many dismounted. The 
main column fell back, defendeti by a rearguard 
occupying the two villages, and the troops form- 
ing this rearguard appear to have suffered heavily. 
They consisted of Hungarian reservists, and lost 
about two thousand prisoners. It may be pre- 
sumed that the vvhole of the body that escaped i^ 
by now back beyond the frontier. 
