July 24, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER, 
V 
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Inglvsh Titles 
'=Uooded 
V Hills 
■:^To Verdcin 
VARENNES 
TetLtBouveoLlIes 
BovLvewIks' . 
Vlenne 
LeChaeeaa, 
are three methods known to the enemy, used and 
reiterated as occasion demands. 
The first is exact enumeration, to which he 
is quite conformable. It is suitable to the Prus- 
sian temper. 
The next is giving any number that occurs as 
conceivably likely to aiTect the enemy's judgment. 
After a considerable success this method is nearly 
always employed. It was employed after Tannen- 
berg, for instance, and after the Dunajec. It is a 
legitimate method of war, but it is no basis for 
calculation. Its object as a military measure is 
to make the enemy believe that he has lost more 
men than he has in the first confusion of a dis- 
aster. 
The third method is to give as your number 
of prisoners the total number which the enemy 
can possibly discover to be missing after a long 
period. This also, of course, involves falsehood, 
because of the missing a great number will be 
dead and a few will be stragglers who rejoin their 
colours, or wounded who will be afterwards dis- 
covered. This method is employed when the 
enemy has had time, or is known to have taken 
pains, to estimate his total losses, and its object 
is to make him believe that the largest possible 
number of his men have surrendered so as to shake 
his moral. It is the latter of these three methods 
which were undertaken by the Prussian authori- 
ties after the failure of the Crown Prince's at- 
tack during the last three weeks, the numbers of 
French prisoners given by the enemy (7,000) being 
the total number of missing along that whole sec- 
tion of the Western fi'ont during the whole period. 
The actual num.ber of prisoners seems to have been 
the first statement given — wounded and un- 
woundcd, about three thousand. The number 
picked up by the French in their successful 
counter-attack, the French, pursuant to a stand- 
ing order which admits of very few exceptions, 
refuse to give. 
THE PRUSSIAN POLITICAL EFFORT 
IN EUROPE AND A.VIERIGA. 
Meanwhile, and consonant with the situation 
in Poland, there is present a psychological factor 
in the present phase of the war which all careful 
students of it should note, for it will sooner or 
later re-act upon the enemy's strategy. 
This psychological factor is the product of 
the enemy's advance through Galicia and of the 
postponem-ent of the Allied oft'ensive in the West. 
To some extent it is the product also of those dis- 
loyal newspaper campaigns in England by which 
our Allies are so perplexed and which the Govern- 
ment should never have allowed. 
Such as it is, it may be summed up in one 
sentence : The great mass of the enemy is now con- 
fident of a draiD. 
To this main truth might ht added the modi- 
fication that in proportion as the enemy critic is 
trained to military affairs (or concentrates on 
purely military problems) in that proportion he 
knows that, with the grand alliance unbroken, the 
purely military result of the campaign cannot be 
a draw. 
There is not the slightest doubt that if we 
could hear the private conversation of the Higher 
Commanders of the enemy we should discover a 
frank admission that, short of a real decision 
before the winter and granted the tenacity of the 
Allies, defeat is ultimately inevitable for them. 
But even here, even among the highest com- 
manders of the enemv who direct the general 
