May 22, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER, 
THE WAR BY LAND. 
By HILAIRE BELLOG. 
NOTE — This article has been submitted to the Press Bureau, which does not object to the publication as censored, and talies n« 
responsibility for the correctness of the statements. 
In accordance with the requirements of the Press Bureau, the positions of troops on Plans illustrating this Article must only be 
regarded as approximate, and no definite strength at any point is indicated. 
MUCH the more important of the two 
great series of operations which we 
have witnessed during the last few 
days is that which has thrust back the 
Russians from the Carpathians in the East and 
threatens, as a matter of sentiment, the re-entry of 
the enemy into Przemysl ; and saves, a matter of 
strategical importance, Hungary from invasion. 
But the Western operations, as they concern us 
more nearly, will be dealt with first. 
They have a certain connection because, large 
as are the last new levies of the enemy, the greater 
part have been thrown into the Eastern field, and 
have left the Western line for the most part not in 
strength to resist the attacks delivered upon it; 
or, rather, not in sufficient strength to permit so 
great a concentration as was attempted against 
Ypres without weakening dangerously other parts 
of the line. 
It by no means follows that great enemy rein- 
forcements will not reach the enemy line shortly. 
It is, on the contrary, highly probable that the 
enemy will attempt a determined offensive here 
the moment he discovers either that he cannot 
break the Russians in the East or that he has the 
good fortune to pin his adversary there behind 
sotne line. Meanwhile the story of what has 
happened in the West is a story of, upon the whole, 
a superior Allied offensive. 
THE ALLIES' SUCCESS IN THE WEST. 
In order to understand the very considerable 
success attained in the West during the last few 
days against the German lines that run from the 
neighbourhood of Arras to that of Ypres, we must 
first seize the territory as a whole. 
We are here concerned with a line approxi- 
mately fifty miles long — perhaps, counting all its 
sinuosities, more than fiftv miles. It has behind 
it a greater accumulation of German ammunition 
in depots, a better gridiron of communications, 
and, in proportion to its length, a far greater 
body of men than any other section of the German 
trenches in France and Belgium combined. It is 
also the point where the British and the French 
forces join. It is therefore the sector upon which 
the enemy has both been able to develop his 
strength to a maximum and has desired to obtain 
a decision over and over again. He is still 
occupied in that attempt. 
The British contingent holds on this line, 
roughly, the sector A B. To the north, beyond A, 
there is a sector A Z, which is continued up to 
the sea by a mixture of French and Belgian 
troops. To the south of the British contingent, 
from B to C near Arras, passing in front of the 
line in front of Lens, the line is French again, held 
mainly by Regulars, and continues French all the 
way to the Swiss mountains, 400 miles away. 
Now, the pressure exercised by the Germans 
upon this line was first delivered very violently 
and with the use of poisonous gases in the last 
week of April against the dent which corresponds 
to the thrust of the arrow (1). It had the effect 
of pushing in the line dangerously from the old 
position, marked by dots, to the new position, 
marked with a full line. The object was to cut 
off, if possible, the projecting piece or " salient " 
round Ypres, and, if fortune was very favourable, 
to break through the line just where the British 
and the Allied forces joined. Under the pressure 
of that attack the line gave way, as I said, from 
the dotted position to the position A Z. Mean- 
\\hile the old British line, which I have marked 
with crosses, in front of Ypres, had also to fall 
back to where the full line stands in the sketch. 
While the British line thus fell back nearer Ypres, 
the enemy delivered a very violent assault indeed 
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