LAND AND WATER 
May 22, 1915. 
It is tme that the enemy will never be 
entirely dependent upon one line of lateral com- 
munications. He will, for instance, be able to say, 
" If you cut my main line of lateral communica- 
tions (A, B) or embarrass them seriously in two 
critical points, such as X and Y, so that I cannot 
bring up men to help sector 3, for instance, from 
the other sectors between 3 and 12, as quickly as 
before, yet I can always bring them rather more 
slowly in a roundabout method by using com- 
munication lines C, D, E, F, which ultimately 
effect the same object. You cut ray lateral com- 
munications or gravely embarrass them at X and 
Y from the positions which you gained during 
the fighting of the last few months, but I 
can get away beyond your shell fire by bringing 
my troops round along the lines, 0, D, E, and F, 
to the secondary lateral communications G, H, 
with which these lines join up." All extended 
railway systems show such lines lying one behind 
another and connected by cross lines. 
This is true; with your first lateral cniinmni- 
cations interrupted you can still, in any country 
well provided with railways, use secondary round- 
about lines behind the first. But in war everything 
depends, after the factor of numbers, upon the 
factor of time, and in thus imposing delay upon the 
enemy's concentration you heavily handicap him, 
so that he already, by hypothesis, is only just strong 
enough, if that, to hold the line at all, and when 
you thus secure that he could not bring up men 
in forty-eight hours, but only in four days, say, 
to the threatened section, it may well be that }'ou 
will attain your object before his concentration 
can be effected. 
Now, if you will take a railway map of 
Eastern France and compare it with a con- 
tour map you will perceive that the action of 
the French ever since December has been 
aimed at securing points from which they can 
dominate the main lateral communications of the 
Germans. 
In all save one district, that of Soissons 
(where a stroqg attempt to reach the ridge domi- 
nating the lateral communications behind the 
hills of Craonne failed, as we know), the French 
are now in a position to attack the lateral com- 
munications all the way along, and that at the 
critical points. 
They have the outliers of the Vosges above the 
Alsatian Plain and its railways. They have the 
heights of Les Eparges above the Woeuvre, and its 
railways. They have the crest of the ridge at 
Beausejour, above the Rheims-Argonne Railway. 
They have only the other day secured the heights 
above Lens, and the fight 'for Notre Dame de 
Lorette was essentially a fight to get hold of the 
point from which the junction of I^ns and the 
railways of that plain could be observed and ulti- 
mately dominated by distant shell fire. 
This point must not be misunderstood to 
mean that the holding of a height nowadavs givps 
direct artillery domination, as it used to formerly. 
No one can place guns in a conspicuous position 
without having them destroyed ; but to dominate 
this lower ground over which communications pass 
IS to have a height behind which you can hide 
your heavy artillery, from which you cvan judce its 
effects, and the attack upon which by infantry is 
more difficult than such an attack would be across 
Jevei or falling ground. 
THE OPERATIONS IN GALIGIA. 
We are now in a position, with more than a 
fortnight's fragmentary news, to piece together 
the various parts of the great Russian retreat 
from Western Galicia, and of the less important 
Russian counter-offensive in the east of that 
province, and I propose to describe with 
elementary plans the nature of this very important 
operation. 
The main Austro-German offensiA'e against 
the Russian positions in Galicia opens upon the 
last two days of April, the Thursday and the 
Friday, the 29th and 30th of that month. It was 
somewhat upon the following plan. 
The Russians, who, some months ago, had in 
their second general offensive nearly reached 
Cracow, the key of Silesia, were, by a powerful 
counter-efl'ort of the enemy, thrust back on to the 
line of the Dunajec and the Biala, the River 
Dunajec being the principal tributary falling 
from the south into the Upper Vistula, and the 
River Biala a sub-tributary falling from the crest 
of the Carpathian Mountains into the Dunajec 
before the latter river joins the Vistula. This 
position to which the Russian armies were thrust 
back from before Cracow months ago, I have indi- 
cated upon the subjoined sketch by a series of dots 
following the streams which give the position its 
name. It might also be called the position of 
Tarnow, because Tarnow is the principal town 
through which the line passed. 
Now the special function of the line thus 
thrown from the crest of the Carpathians to the 
Vistula (it was continued beyond the Vistula by 
further lines up through Russian Poland, drawn 
in front of the town of Kielce, which continuation 
I have indicated by dots on the accompanying 
map) was to protect the operations of the 
', •Kielce 
Przemy^I Vemhe?^ 
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X 
Russian armies in Galicia against the Carpa- 
thians and the effort of the.se armies to cross the 
crest of that range and to invade the plains of 
Hungary. Protected by this screen, as it were, 
of the lines at Tarnow. the Russians were able 
by slow pressure to make themselves masters of 
the three road jiasses marked 1, 2, 3 on the sketch 
(the Polianka, the Dukla, and the Jaliska respeo- 
