Julv 24, 1915. 
LAND AND JV! A T E R , 
Heavy B atfesr ie^j 
AV, 
Heavy BatU 
THE WAR BY LAND. 
By HILAIRE BELLOG. 
NOTE.-Tbis article has been submitted to the Press Bureau, which does not object to the publication as censored, and takes n« 
responsibility tor the correctness of the statements. 
In accordance with the requirements ol the Press Bureau, the positions of troops on Plans illustrating this Article must only ba 
regarded as approximate, and no diflnite strength at any point is indicated. 
It is not always lyossihle, on account of the 
difficulties of make-up, to put a diagram in 
exactly that part of the text to which \t corre- 
sponds, and as inconvenience due to this has been 
pointed out to me, I shall in this article, and in 
future articles, refer to each diagram by its 
number, which ivill be lyrinted upon it in large 
type. 
WARSAW. 
UPON two lines of railway, and one 
defensive line natural and reinforced, 
depends the fate of Warsaw. 
One of these lines is that pass- 
ing from Lublin and Cholm, the other is the main 
railway from Warsaw to the Russian capital, 
defended by the natural line of the River Narew, 
and the fortifications thereupon. 
At the moment of writing (Tuesdav evening) 
the last news of the enemy related to Sunday, and 
upon the evening of that day the advance of the 
enemy, with six hundred thousand men, against 
Lublin and Cholm. had come to within ten miles 
of the railway. His advance with about half 
these numbers against the Narew had come up to 
the line of the river. 
These notes are written, therefore, in the last 
and most acute crisis of the great series of battles 
upon which the fate of Warsaw, and with it the 
line of the Vistula, must depend. It is possible 
that before my readers have these words before 
them next Thursday the issue will be decided. It 
is c^^rtain that it will be decided now so shortly 
that our chief purpose must be, not to guess at 
the chances of that decision, but rather to appre- 
ciate its character. 
When you are dealing with considerable 
tracts of cwmtry, and with the modern defensive, 
you must not speak of a salient merely in terms 
of the map. 
A siilient is indeed a salient whether it be 
large or small, and still offers many of the charac- 
teristics which it has offered in past wars. For in- 
stance, it necessarily requires a greater number 
of men to hold its prolonged line than would be 
required to hold the chord across the neck of the 
salient. Again, the forces operating within the 
salient have obviously the advantage of interior 
lines. 
But the danger which a salient presents is 
something different under the conditions of the 
exceedingly strong modern defensive from what 
it was in the older wars. 
When a salient has a neck so narrow that 
Iximbardment threatens either side of the neck in 
reverse, as in Diasrram T.. then the salient is 
obviously an element of danger. Its tieck tnay be 
cut, and the forces within isolated and destroVed. 
More than this, the neck, as l>etween A and B in 
Diagram I., mav, if the enentv succeed against 
either side of the neck, leave a gap through which 
the enemy may pass and pierce the line. 
We saw all this some weeks ago in the case 
of the salient in Przemysl. Another example was 
afforded in Flanders by the too-much-projecting 
salient of Ypres after "the first use of poison by 
the enemy, upon April 22. 
A great strategic salient covering a territory 
too large for such attack in reverse is another 
matter. Many such a salient has been held in the 
course of this great war without difficulty. In 
the old days of mobile armies in the field avy such 
salient was from the moment of its existence a 
peril. You were fighting on two fronts, and you 
were trying to hold (under conditions where 
advance and retirement were matters of a few 
hours, and the whole line subject to continual 
fluctuation) more territory than you needed to. 
But the strength of the modern defensive is 
so great, entrenched men amply provided with 
missile weapons and ammunitions are, within a 
certain minimum per mile, so enforced against 
any attack that the old general arguments against 
a large salient no longer hold. We see that in 
the great main one which has its apex near 
Noyon, in France, and in the smaller example, 
which has its apex at St. Mihiel. We saw it for 
a month round Ypres, and we see it to-day on a 
small scale just north of Arras. 
The same is true of even so pronounced a 
salient as that long curve, the apex of which 
is Warsaw, with its bridges over the Vistula. An 
exact trace of that salient is given in Diagram II. 
?.s it stood last Sunday, the 18th. the latest date 
of which we have information. It will be .seen 
from this trace that the salient is not only- 
irregular, but pronounced. 
[('■^ipyrirjht in America hij "The Xew York Amfrican."] 
