May 22, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER. 
tively), of the Lupka road and railway pass (4), 
and ultimately of the Lusko road pass (5) ; while 
they seemed on the point of seizing them, they 
had not yet quite mastered the Uzog road and 
railway pass (6). Beyond this point of the Uzog 
their line fell away from the mountains north- 
wards and was subjected to considerable pressure 
from the Austro-Germans, who had there estab- 
lished a solid footing on the Galician side of the 
hills. The Russian line, as it stood before this 
great offensive on the part of the enemy and 
retreat on the part of the Russians, which we are 
about to follow, lay therefore along the solid line 
from A to B on the above sketch. 
Now, the enemy concentrated in great force 
against this slow, but successful, Russian advance, 
bringing up as well as his old formations very 
large numbers of new winter-trained troops, both 
Austrian and German, which may roughly be said 
to constitute his last reser\'e. Some portion of 
these had been sent West, as we know, but the 
greater part were undoubtedly used upon the Gali- 
cian front. But the enemy did not mass the 
greater part of his forces against the most 
threatened point — that is, against the passes 
which had fallen into the hands of the Russians. 
He attacked, upon the contrary, along the line of 
the Dunajec and the Biala, and maintained his 
assault all during the last two days of April, the 
Thursday and the Friday, and upon the critical 
day, the Saturday, May 1, he attacked in parti- 
cular strength at two or <jbree points upon the 
Lower Dunajec and at the point of Cestowice at 
C upon the Biala. 
By Sunday, May 2, he had succeeded in his 
attempt. Not indeed that he completed the full 
task of breaking the enemy's front and of piercing 
through, still less of reducing to chaos its 
cohesion. 
The German communique, issued with the 
political object of preventing Italy from coming 
into the war, grossly exaggerated the effects of 
these general actions along the Dunajec and Biala 
front, but, neglecting the political side of the 
matter, we must remark that the attempt to 
compel a Russian retreat along this front was 
successful, and we may further add that it was 
successful because the Russian munitions for 
heavy artillery and for field artillery had, as we 
remarked last week, given out. 
This running dry of munitions compelled the 
Russians to a rapid retirement, which went 
through the following stages. Upon Monday, 
May 3, the positions seized by the enemy upon the 
further banks of the two rivers, the Dunajec and 
the Biala, were consolidated, and a belt a few 
miles wide was occupied, in most places upon the 
further side of the streams. The Russians were 
compelled, of course, to abandon many of their 
wounded and a certain number of their guns 
which had lost their teams or had been wrecked. 
In other words, they suffered all the consequences 
incidental to a retreat, but that retreat was per- 
fectly orderly. They left behind them a compara- 
tively thin line of rearguard to permit of the con- 
tinuance of the retreat unmolested, and it was not 
until Thursday, May 6, that the enemy were in 
full possession of" Tarnow, the principal town 
upon the other side of the rivers and the centre 
of what had been the whole Russian defensive 
line. 
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II 
On the same day (Thursday, May 6) the last 
positions that were being clung to by the Rus- 
sians on the Lower Dunajec, just before it falls 
into the Vistula, were given up. The reasons for 
the greater tenacity of the Russians on the north 
of their line while they were giving way towards 
the south will be explained in a moment. On the 
same day (Thursday, May 6), while the Russians 
were but just abandoning the extreme northern 
positions of the line along the Vistula, the enemy 
upon the south had got as far as the upper waters 
of the River Wisloka, and the general position 
upon that day was that the Russian line had 
fallen back from its old position along the 
Dunajec to the Biala to a position indicated on 
the accompanying map II. by the line of crosses. 
Jaslo, on the Wisloka, had just fallen into the 
possession of the enemy, and it was with great 
difficulty that the 48th Russian Division, retreat- 
ing across the Dukla pass (2), managed to save 
itself from being cut off. 
By Saturday, May 8, this giving way of the 
Russians upon the south of their line had gone so 
far that they had already lost the Upper Wisloka 
altogether, and were back upon the upper waters 
of the Wislok, a river which bends right round 
eastward, as we saw last week, and is a tributary 
of the San. 
Krasno fell upon this day into the hands of 
the Austro-Germans, but the northern end of the 
line still held fairly strong, and the position on 
this Saturday, May 8, was that indicated upon the 
above sketch map by the line of dots, which lino 
also indicates the belt through which the retreat 
had passed in the course of three days. It will 
be apparent that by this time all the passes 1, 2, 
3, and 4, and possibly 5 as well, had had to be 
abandoned by the Russians. On the 9th the enemy 
seized the point of Debica, upon the Wisloka, 
which point upon the day before had still been 
covered by the retiring Russian line, and by the 
11th he had actually pushed up to the upper 
waters of the San, and though not yet in posses- 
sion of Sanok, he had crossed the river just above 
that town at the point marked A on the above 
sketch map. 
On the same day the northern end of the Rus- 
sian line, which had been holding out fairly, 
stoutly, began to retire and fall back to Szezucim 
(marked S upon the sketch map), and by Friday 
last, the 13th, the Russian retreat had straightened 
7» 
