LAND AND .W, A T E H. 
April 17, 1915. 
The Austrlans supply us with hardly any in- 
formation. We have to deduce from chance utter- 
ances or private reports all that we know. 
The Russians publish nothing official, save, 
very rarely, a few big facts : as, that they had at 
one moment (some months ago) rather over 100,000 
German prisoners; that they had about a fortnight 
ago over 800,000 Austrian prisoners. 
The French have deliberately pursued a policy 
of complete reticence, varied only by occasional 
purely local pieces, of information : " In taking 
Buch and such a trench we captured 100 prisoners 
and a machine gun." Of their own losses they 
publish no casualty lists. We have had just one 
statement, about four months ago, with regard to 
the number of wounded men who have been 
received in hospital, and the proportion that have 
l^een discharged. We can guess from their method 
of conducting the war, and from their use of 
reserves, certain maxima and minima of losses, but 
we can do no more. The British publish full 
casualty lists in which ultimately every kind of 
loss, except that through sickness, is recorded. But 
they do not publish the numbers of the prisoners 
they take. 
With methods so various obtaining in the five 
Great Powers at war, there has, I repeat, been a 
confusion in the public mind upon this great main 
fact of numbers, and in particular upon the im- 
mense German and Austrian wastage which has 
brought about a turn of affairs in our favour 
earlier than the best judgment had thought 
l^ossible. 
We can be rid of that confusion if we bear 
clearly in mind the leading fact with which I 
opened this article : the tide has turned strongly in 
the West; in the East it is already nearly slack 
water. 
The tide in numbers having turned has, short 
of the entry of further enemies into the field 
against us, turned for good. 
Germany and Austria have still a certain 
amount of untrained material to hand, which they 
can put into the field between this and midsummer. 
■But they have not more than the full British 
reserve of men coupled with the young recruits 
■which the French have trained and have not yet 
used. Superiority in numbers of actually equipped 
and present men in the West is already established, 
and it is now only a question of the completion of 
equipment for that superiority to go on increasing 
steadily. The same is true of munitions for the 
liea\y guns; the same is true of air-machines; the 
same is true of the numbers of the heavy pieces 
themselves. 
In the East, the long-lasting numerical in- 
feriority of the Russians to the coalition opposing 
them began to change (presumably) about a fort- 
night or three weeks after Vladivostock was open. 
At first a dribble an-d later a stream of equipment 
and munitioning then became available at the 
Russian front. Had it been possible to force the 
IXardanelles that stream would already have 
become a flood. 
Russia was blockaded by two things : the 
enemy and winter. Winter has raised the blockade 
in the Far East. She maintains it in the White 
Sea. But she will not maintain it indefinitely even 
there. The twenty-eight miles of river between 
Archangel and the o])en sea will be free by the 
middle of May at latest; perhaps earlier. We 
know, of course, that if the ice-breakers had 
remained undamaged Archangel might have been 
partially kept open throughout the Avinter. As a 
fact it has been closed for fully four months. 
Whether the narrow gauge railway to Vologda has 
been broadened yet in its whole length we do not 
know; but if it has another stream of munitioning 
will in some four weeks begin to pour in to the Rus- 
sian front from the north. We may take it that 
on the Eastern front the problem of numbers is 
solved. 
Now let us see how this factor of numbers 
is working in the two fields which have been most 
prominently before the public during the last 
-week — the St. Mihiel Wedge and the Carpathian 
Front. 
THE ST. MIHIEL WEDGE. 
The French are hammering at either limb 
of the great salient in front of Metz which has 
its apex at St. Mihiel upon the Meuse. They are 
attempting, by threatening the communication 
which runs through the centre of this wedge, to 
compel the enemy to withdraw from St. Mihiel 
and to straighten his line. 
That is their objective. 
But it would be a great error to read into 
this attempt some mysterious efficacy in the mere 
shape of that salient. 
The French are not hammering at the St. 
Mihiel wedge simply because it sticks out. 
If the French reach the lines of communica- 
tion, the railway which has been continued beyond 
Thiaucourt to the river, and tlms compel the 
enemy to withdraw, they will have achieved a 
great local success. They will be cheered, and 
we shall liave the papers full of a new tone for 
a day or two. So people were cheered by the 
pounding of the advanced German trenches at 
Neuve Chapelle and their occupation by British 
troops. So people were cheered by the heavy 
work in the Champagne district, which advanced 
the French line by an average (perhaps) of the 
distance between Hyde Park Corner and St. 
Paul's. But neither at Neuve Chapelle, nor in 
the Champagne, nor here in the Woevre was the 
end in view a mere advance, whether of one mile 
or of twenty. The end in view was the wearing 
down of the enemy's numbers and the fretting of 
that long line of his until it should be too thin 
to hold. Supposing the enemy thought of 
St. Mihiel as something all-important to his pres- 
tige — strategically it is no longer of importance 
to him, for by this time he knows very well that 
he cannot make the strap meet the buckle and 
that he will not invest Verdun — well, supposing 
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