LAND AND .WATER. 
April 17, 1915. 
attempt to keep a point to which he attached pecu- 
liar importance. 
On the south limb of the wedge the French 
effort is complicated by the chance there is there of 
possibly dominating the railway, but meanwhile 
this effort necessarily draws great masses of the 
enemy to the threatened points, and, therefore, 
achieves much the same numerical result as the 
attacks on the north. 
The conformation of the ground is such that 
it is not possible for the rails leading from Thiau- 
court to St. JSIihiel to go at first very far away 
from the course of the little River Mad. For the 
Mad runs after its first part in a very steep 
trench, the sides of which can only be negotiated 
by tunnelling or tlip use of a light railway and 
break of gauge. The wood of Montmare, in front of 
Thiaucourt, the village of Regnieville, the western 
part of the Bois du Pretre, in front of Pont k 
Mousson, between them give the line of the French 
trenches, about a third of the way from the high 
road to the Mad, or, measured in ranges, you have 
from the French trenches to the Mad no more now 
than 5,000 yards ; if anything, the trenches of the 
wood of Montmare, though we do not quite know 
where they cut that wood, are a little closer to the 
ravine than those of Regnieville. 
THE CARPATHIAN FRONT. 
On the Eastern front the new business is also 
a matter of numbers, though after a rather dif- 
ferent fashion from the West. Why are the Rus- 
sians thus able to press slowly mile by mile on to 
the crest of the main range and down the further 
slopes of the Hungarian side of the mountains? 
Because their numbers have here increased and are 
still increasing. The fall of Przemysl released 
another quarter of a million ; much more, it freed 
the whole Galician railway system and permitted 
new streams of equipped men to be fed and muni- 
tioned upon the mountain front from the advance 
passes in Galicia and from the main passes in 
Russia itself. Meanwhile the new munitioning 
of Russia with the end of the winter still swelled 
the numbers, and the pressure upon the Car- 
pathian barrier may be compared to the pressure 
of water upon some containing wall when that 
water rises higher and higher by continued addi- 
tion. 
How was this threat to Hungary to be met ? 
Only by a pouring in of corresponding numbers 
upon the other side. Germany must lend her 
desperate ally first three Bavarian corps, then 
four more corps, making seven in all; j^t the 
slow Russian advance continued. It is said that 
she will attempt to find somewhere yet another 
100,000 men, and see whether the dam can be 
mended. But those men must come from some- 
where, and every man taken round to the Car- 
pathian front weakens Germany in every other 
part of the field. 
Throughout the war until the present phase 
the Germans and the Austrians met the local pres- 
sure of the numerically inferior Russian forces in 
the same way. They massed their greatly superior 
numbers by the use of their superior railway 
system in some unexpected direction and struck 
a blow at a point which the Russians could not 
afford to lose. 
When at the end of November, just as the 
attempt of the Germans to break out in Flanders 
had failed, the Russians were at the gates of 
Cracow, eminently superior numbers were swung 
up north and tlic blow was struck at Warsaw 
which came within an ace of succeeding. The 
pressure on Cracow was relieved. 
As, towards the end of the winter, the Rus- 
sians had perceptibly increased, and as the direct 
attack on Wai-saw had failed, a new and a last 
concentration of great German numbers was 
made in East Prussia, and the month of February 
was full of this renewed surprise attack from the 
north to cut the railways behind Warsaw. It 
failed in its turn. But it created a diversion. 
It emploj'cd vast numbers of the Russians upon 
what was for the moment a purely defensive 
scheme. 
Here we are in the middle of April, the snow 
is already melting upon the southern slope of the 
Carpathians, the pressure of the Russians there 
gets heavier and heavier, the danger is extreme. 
Why does not some new diversion relieve that 
pressure and conjure that peril? Because the 
enemy no longer lias a superiority in men where- 
with to effect such a diversion. 
On both fronts, then, it is the same story. The 
tide in numbers has turned. 
As to the exact positions of the Russians on 
the critical part of the Carpatliian front, near 
Lupkow, by the last telegram received on Tuesday, 
it is as follows : 
Tunnel- 
WaMidiov/a 
■■•^■>^ 
i—iii.iiiii t. I 
» 
"McCes 
'Russicui Tvont ^• 
M 
On the Carpathian front it is interesting to 
note that the Height 909, w^hich is situated just 
south-east of the summit of the Lupkow, remained 
in the hands of the enemy until last Thursday, and 
was the last point of this front upon the main 
ridge to remain till the general Russian capture 
of that ridge between the Rustok and the district 
west of the Dukla. 
The point 909— the highest peak in this dis- 
trict — thus forming an exception to the general 
Russian grip upon the watershed, having fallen, 
something like forty miles of this line, or a little 
more, is now in the hands of the Russians. 
It would be an error to regard the mere sur- 
mounting of the ridge, even upon so broad a sector, 
as the conquest of the range. 
It is here, as everywhere, a question of num- 
bers. Could the enemy Ijy some miracle pour in 
great masses of new numbers, he would check the 
advance as securely upon the Hungarian as upon 
the Galician side, for the broad belt of wooded 
slopes on the Hungarian side offer as good oppor- 
tunities for resistance as does the corresponding 
belt on the eastern slope of the mountains. It is 
true that the snow has disappeared more largely 
from the Hungarian slope than from the Galician, 
for it is the slope turned away from the w'et winds 
6» 
