LAND AND HVATER 
May 29, 1915. 
line, and the attempt to break it would have 
failed. 
Now, supposing the Russian line — on account 
of this gradual depletion of munitions on the 
enemy's side and corre.si)ondingly gradual accre- 
tion on the Russian side — to stand, why would 
such a dull result be equivalent to a strategic 
defeat for the enemy ? 
Because in these moments, which are the 
critical moments of the whole campaign, there can 
be no such thing as the establishment of a dead- 
lock. 
The enemy is fighting in the East in order to 
get his decision, and, having got his decision, he 
would reverse the machine and put all his energy 
into an attack on the West. He must hope to 
deliver that attack with his full weight before 
the Allies strike their main blow. Quite apart 
from the intervention of Italy, that must neces- 
sarily be his general plan. There is no other. 
This being the case, he is under the necessity 
of achieving his object in the East within certain 
limits of time, or of sacrificing himself again in 
the East when he turns back westward. If he 
attempts to hold the ground he has conquered in 
Galicia — as probably he will — he is thereby 
weakening his oncoming work in the West, and 
he is exposing himself to a counter-offensive 
whenever the accumulation of Russian supply 
permits it. In a word, if the Russian line stands, 
then the enemy is simply, for all his efforts in 
Galicia, coming back to the strategic conditions 
existing before he struck his great blow. 
He has achieved a great deal. He has saved 
Hungary from invasion, and he has raised, for 
what that is worth, the already determined spirit 
of the civilian population behind his armies. But 
he has not done what is necessary to the prosecu- 
tion of his plan. He has not released the full 
reserves of energy which he will require immedi- 
ately upon the Western front. 
When I speak thus of " reversing the 
machine " and " turning its reserves of energy 
towards the Western front," I do not only mean 
an accretion of the enemy in numerical strength 
of men upon the Western front. I mean even more 
the releasing of munitions and guns for the work 
there; and the direction of his productive 
capacity, of his streams of shell, westward, after 
their outpouring for a month past towards the 
East. 
Let us sum up, therefore — or, rather, repeat—- 
arid say that we are still awaiting in this great 
battle of the San one of two issues : Either the 
Russian line breaks or it does not. And if it doea 
not break t^e enemy is a great deal further froin 
his chances of an inconclusive peace, and a great 
deal nearer thorough defeat than he was when he 
crossed the Dunajec. 
But let us not forget the alternative. If the 
Austro-German forces under the effect of superior 
munitionment for the heavy pieces do pierce their 
opponent's line, they have all the southern part of 
it at their mercy, they compel the Russians to lose 
the line of the Vistula; they w"ill be in a position 
to act quite soon with very heavy reinforcements 
on the West, and they will be nearer to the goal of 
what they term " an honourable peace " and to the 
saving of Prussia than they have been since the 
December morning when they pierced the Russian 
front before Warsaw in that terrible crisis of 
which, in this country, we heard nothing, and the 
extreme peril of which was but just barely con- 
jured by the restoration of the Russian line upon 
the third day. 
THE DARDANELLES. 
Of tlie operations upon the Dardanelles we 
know nothing save that we have the casualty lists, 
as yet incomplete, and that the first enemy posi- 
tion, that of Achibaba, is not yet taken. It is clear 
that the general plan connotes as great an inter- 
ference as possible with the enemy's munitioning 
in shell and reinforcement in numbers from the 
Asiatic side across the Straits, and the hope that 
this interference may prove fatal ultimately to his 
continual resistance. How far this hope is justi- 
fied only the future can tell. 
THE WEST. 
Tlie really important point about the Western 
front during the last week, if we regard the war 
as a whole, is purely negative. It is the refusal of 
the offensive until the chosen moment. There has 
been local work on the lower slopes of the Notre 
Dame de Lorette position, but what happens here 
does not very much matter, for now^ the junction 
of the lateral communications at Lens is well in 
range. 
There has been more important work 
straightening out the dent between the two 
salients occupied in the advance of a few days ago, 
the one in front of Festubert, the other in front 
of Richebourg I'Avoue, each rather under a mile 
in depth. It was in this straightening out of the 
dent between the two salients that the incident 
occurred which is worthy of comment in a separate 
note. 
A NOTE. 
There are two perfectly well authenticated 
pieces of news of which we have the best evi- 
dence this week, anc^ which, though they only 
concern slight details, are most significant. 
They are of a nature which those who con- 
cern themselves with the moral issues of this 
war are more concerned with, perhaps, than is 
military criticism; but that criticism also can 
learn a useful lesson from them. 
The first piece of news is this — we have all 
read it in the papers under the best authority. 
A body of Saxons (presumably without 
officers) were advancing to surrender to the 
British the other day. They held up their 
hands in sign of their desire to be made pri- 
soners and to be relieved of the strain of war — 
for they were in a very perilous position. 
As, rightly or wrongly, it is admissible in 
North German morals to use such methods as 
a ruse, the British troops continued to fire upon 
the men thus desiring to .surrender, because 
they could not tell whetlier the holding up of 
hands was an action done in good faitJi or was 
what our forefathers would have called a piece 
of treachery. 
Meanwhile this body of presumably 
olEcerless Germans w-as observed by other 
bodies of the enemy whose officers were still 
present to control them, and these at once 
poured in a fire Avhich massacred the would-be 
surrenderers. 
Throughout this war the great military 
virtues of the enemy have been clearly apparent : 
his patient preparation and his discipline 
chief, perhaps, among the rest. But there has 
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