LAND AND .WATER 
May 22, 1915. 
Somewheip about last Friday or Thursday 
night the rearguards of their retreating columns 
had reached the left bank of the Pruth, and 
during the Friday the Russian effort was concen- 
trated upon the crossing of that river. Already, 
upon the Thursday evening, the bridge-head 
established at Sniatyn had fallen into the hands 
of our Ally, and during the Friday the river was 
crossed, so far as we can discover, in several 
places. 
It will be seen, however, from the above sketch 
map that the higher reaches of the Pruth, before 
it becomes a mountain torrent, curl round south- 
ward, and the Russian advance, the Aiistrian 
retreat parallel to that advance, did not impinge 
upon the line of the Pruth north-westward of the 
town of Kolon)ea. This town remained, as late as 
about a sixth of tho total forces at work in 
Galicia. The effect of that counter-offensive, com- 
bined with the Russian retreat upon the north, 
may best be gauged, perhaps, by some such general 
sketch as the following. It will be seen that the 
line approximately occupied last Sunday is not a 
settled one. It fluctuates very considerably, and 
involved at that moment a dangerous salient 
round Przemysl and discussed above. But it will 
also be seen that as a line it is still intact. The 
territory lost in this particular retirement by the 
Russians is marked with horizontal lines — that is, 
the territory lost since the beginning of May ; that 
regained by them is marked with stippling. 
It will be seen how much upon the balance the 
enemy have gained, but it need hardly be repeated 
that the final result of such operations is not to be 
last Saturday, in the hands of the Austrians,as also measured in the belt of advance or retirement, but 
did Czernowitz, lower down; and the line was con- it has two main strategical effects. The first, a 
tinned up north-westward in the direction of Nad- lesser effect, the fact that the Austro-Germans 
worna. But Nadworna itself was carried by the have compelled our Ally to lose their hold of the 
Russian advance in the course of last Friday. It Carpathian passes in the north; the second, a 
will be particularly interesting to see whether 
that advance can master the railway junction at 
Delatyn, because if it does our Ally will have 
blocked the main avenue of retreat across the 
mountains to their adversaries. No railway 
crosses the Carpathians southward of this pass, 
and, as will be seen on the above sketch, the rail- 
way junction at Delatyn ends the communication 
of this pass with the Galician Plain. 
Roughly speaking, this counter-offensive has 
had the effect, in the course of last week, between 
Sunday morning, the 9th, and Sunday night, the 
16th, of forcing the Austrian front back from a 
more important point, that they have none the 
less failed to break the Russian line, and to 
recover their liberty of manoeuvre in the largest 
sense. 
OBJECT OF THIS RUSSIAN COUNTER- 
OFFENSIVE. 
On this point the question will be asked, 
tWhat object our Ally had in thus assuming the 
counter-offensive against the Austro- German 
right and from his own left ? 
The answer to such a question must, of 
course, be purely conjectural, and I do no more 
line, such as that of the dots in the above diagram, than put before my readers the conjectures the 
to a line such as that of the crosses immediately situation suggests to me 
to the south of them, and, by the latest advices it 
would seem that the Russian pursuit is con- 
tinuing. 
As to the scale of the whole operation in com- 
parison to the much larger business towards the 
^U 55IAN 
New Line (May 16**^) 
OrJTinecAUyl-') 
^.^ 
north, in which our Allies have been compelled to 
retreat, it must necessarily be judged by the pro- 
portion of prisoners in the two cases, for prisoners 
mean (in an operation of this kind) mainly the 
.wounded and stragglers abandoned in the retreat, 
and the proportion to the total numbers engaged 
would not be very different in the different armies. 
By this rule the Russian counter-offensive on the 
extreme left of their Galician line would seem to 
deal, 60 far as the enemy was concerned, with 
10* 
In the first place, just as the original occu- 
pation of the Bukowina by the enemy's forces four 
or five months ago was largely a political under- 
taking, aimed at preventing the Roumanian 
Government from deciding in favour of interren- 
tion, so this Russian move back again into the 
Bukowina may have primarily a political object. 
.Whether there is any chance, proximate or semote, 
of the Roumanian Government deciding upon 
intervention is a thing only known to those in 
authority, and necessarily unknown to the present 
writer; but it is conceivable that the obvious 
approach of Italy towards intervention is pro- 
ducing a parallel movement in Roumania, and 
that in any case the Russian more presupposes 
the possibility of Roumanian action. That is the 
first point. 
The second and more obvious point, of which 
there can be no doubt, is that this counter-offensive 
had the character we always get in any counter- 
offensive along any line. Finding yourself em- 
barrassed in one sector of your line, you try to 
relieve the pressure by attacking upon another 
sector. That is a very simple principle common 
to all warfare at all times. But it is only just to 
remark, if we desire to arrive at a sound judg- 
ment upon the position in Galicia, that the Rus- 
sian counter-offensive upon their left has nothing 
like the same effect in checking embarrassment 
upon their right and centre that similar strokes 
at a distance from the threatened point would 
have in Flanders, for instance, or in the plains of 
Central Poland. 
The Carpathians, as has been frequently 
described in these columns, rise in height and 
