LAND AND .WATER 
April 24, 1915. 
crosses the main ^ rest. The position may be ex- 
pressed in the foregoing sketch, where X— Y repre- 
Bents the crest of the Carpathians, the shaded area 
the mountain belt, the part left blank on either side 
the plains, and the brackets (1), (2), (3), (4), the 
four main passes of the Dukla, the Lui)kow, the 
Uzsok, and the Jablonitza, of which the last 
ithree are railway as well as road passes, while the 
thick line running transversely through the whole 
represents the front of the two armies. In such a 
scheme the most salient point and that which 
leaves the issue most in doubt is this : — 
That the Austro-Gcrmans are in possession 
t)f a great deal of the plain upon the far side of 
■ the mountains in the district I have marked with 
it he letter A ; while the Russians are only in posses- 
sion of a narrow mountain district beyond the 
crest, which I have marked with the letter B. 
If the effort of either combatant were pre- 
cisely the same in character and in strength, it 
■would be obvious that this possession of the plain 
on the Eastern flank by the Austro-Germans would 
give them the advantage over the Russians, and a 
situation such as that represented in the diagram 
w^ould mean that the Russians could not hope to 
force the Carpathians. For although they had 
crossed at one place, they would appear to have 
been badly beaten in the race for the plains by 
itheir opponents crossing at another, and the 
'Austro-Germans, with their advantage of roads 
and railways in the plain, could bring such an 
effort to bear there that those plains at A — A 
w-ould become the principal field of action, and the 
Russians could not move with safety until their 
enemies had been driven out of the flat country. 
But, as a fact, the effort has not been of the 
same character upon the two sides. The Austro- 
Germans occupying the plains at A — A, and the 
belt of mountains between those plains and the 
main crest, have been where they are for several 
months past. They did not slowly beat tha 
Russians back. The Russians A'oluntarily retired 
before greatly superior numbers long before 
Przemysl had fallen, and long before their new 
munitioning and equipment had permitted them 
to bring forward reinforcements. 
The Russians are not upon this Eastern flank 
in the position of a force in front of which the 
dam of pressed invasion has burst. They are on 
a calculated defensive, long drawn up and held 
.with sufficient numbers. 
At the other end of the line, the X end, 
although the Russians are still far from the 
plains, their advance into the belt B — ^B has been 
the result of steady and heavy fighting against a 
defensive which has been slowly beaten back, and 
which may at any moment betray signs of exhaus- 
tion. . , . 1 ,, 
Nor is this the only matter in which the 
apparently superior position of the Austro- 
Germans must be qualified. 
The Carpathian belt is not of even width, nor 
its difficulties of ground of equal character, nor 
its passes equally easy to use in the maintenance 
of communications. Its actual shape is not the 
parallelogram represented in diagram IV. » but 
rather something like that of diagram \., 
in which the increasing width of the range 
as one goes south-east is indicated by the 
shape of the shaded portion and the increasing 
difficulty of the ground indicated by the increas- 
ing closeness of the shading as one goes from north- 
west toward south-east. Though, therefore, the 
Austro-German line covers a good deal of the 
northern plain, that is, a portion of Galicia and all 
the Bukovina, while the Russian line only covers a 
small mountain portion beyond the main I'idge, yet 
the Russian advance represents an easier field of 
action and less perilous communications upon its 
side of the crest than the Austro-Gerinan effort 
upon theirs. Moreover, the increasing difficulty of 
the ground as one goes south-cast means higher 
mountains, both lateral and main, deeper ravines, 
far more extensive woods, and, I believe, a rarer 
population. 
The modification of the position is furllier 
emphasised by the nature of the passes which, 
when they are studied, will be seen to be at once 
easier and closer together whore the Russians are 
pressing forward than where the Austro-Germans 
hold them in check. 
In order to appreciate this the following 
sketch map m.a.y be useful. 
Taking as the limits of the plain country the 
principal towns which stand at the issues of the 
valleys and marking these with dots, giving the 
railways in the usual convention (the single lines 
single and the double lines double), and showing 
the principal road passes by brackets, it is appa- 
rent that every facility for crossing the range 
increases as one goes to the left — that is, north- 
ward and westward — and that whoever is pressing 
on in the region A — A has advantage over his 
opponent pressing on in the region B— B. 
It is upon this general advantage tiiat the 
Russians are now counting, in spite of the fact 
that their enemies have a good footing on the 
plains, which they have not; the actual front 
being very much what the thick line is on the same 
sketch. Should the Russians, for instance, succeed 
in forcing their way down to the point H (which 
is Homonna, and at the gate of the plains), they 
