LAND AND WATER 
July 31, 1915. 
to the railway as the Houses of Parliameut are to 
^'- ^^\ere :s a second and more dc>ubtful 
f^sj\c^stssra^dii;>^ch 
^r r^iuitn-sible that Russian strategy -y 
turn, and that thesis may be called the tuan^ie 
of fortresses." -P^vmnlafpd as 
Briefly, this thesis may be fo mulated as 
follows ''When a given area, bounded by 
sSt lines, bas a Fortress standing at each 
fiWe or iunction of these straight lines, then tl a 
area wUl not be open to occupation, nor any part 
ofTt ^y an army hostile to the power garrisoning 
?he fortresses until one or more of these fortresses 
^'^^:^L theory that many a famo^^ 
rroup of fortresses in history has been designed, 
ft wis this theory that lay behind the conception 
of he group Liege. Namur, Antwerp. ^It wjis this 
theory that gave all its value to the famous 
Quadrilateral of the Lombard p am in he 
eighteenth century. And it wa^ this theory which 
governed the fortification of Poland in our own 
'"^^It is obvious that the simplest and least 
expensive figure so contained by straight lines is 
a triangle, the junctions of whose boundaries are 
but three in number. 
A triangle of fortresses was therefore con- 
Btructed by the Russians at Neo Georgievsk, Ivan- 
corod, and Brest. Warsaw, with its bridges lies 
lust within the area of this triangle, and if the 
thesis quoted above be still sound the line ot the 
.Vistula can never be held by an enemy until he 
has reduced one or more of these three fortresses. 
The thesis presupposes, of course, that the 
reduction of a fortress would be a lengthy busi- 
ness, and even exhausting to the enemy. It 
further presupposes that the area shall not be so 
large as to prevent any two adjoining fortresses 
from helping one another or leave a gap between 
any two adjoining fortresses so wide as to leave 
immune from interference an enemy army trying 
to pass between them. 
One might put the whole thing in a nutshell 
by saying that this thesis of the " triangle of 
fortresses " was equivalent to maintaining that 
a whole area of many hundred square miles could 
be turned into one great fortress by using indi- 
vidual fortresses at its boundaries in the same 
way that individual forts and batteries are used 
to surround a single stronghold. 
I propose to take these two theses upon which 
we must form our judgment in their order, and 
to deal first with that with which my readers are 
by far the more familiar, the defence of the rail- 
ways and the fate of the Narew fortified line. 
THE LINE OF THE NAREW. 
With the state of affairs south of Warsaw 
upon the line leading through Cholm, Lublin, and 
Ivangorod, the public are now fully acquainted, 
and there is little matter for analysis. The enemy 
tas arrived at an irregular line in front of, and 
roughly parallel to, this railway, sixteen miles 
away from it at the furthest, and not two miles 
away from it at the nearest. 
If the map upon the page opposite be con- 
sulted, it wiU be seen how the Russian front and 
the corresponding German lines very nearly touch 
this railway between Lublin and Cholm^ 
Whether the railway will be seized in the 
near future or no depends entirely upon the mum- 
tionment of the enemy and of the Russians rcspec- 
tively If the munitioninent of the enemy 
continues to show its overwhelming numerical 
preponderance, then it is only a question ot time 
for a sufficient mass of heavy shell to be accumu- 
lated for a further overwhelming Austro-German 
bombardment, followed by a further Russian 
retirement in this quarter. But if the proximity 
of the railway and the increasing rate ot produc- 
tion and purc'hase of shell by our Ally has made 
matters more even, then the line will stand, and 
the railway remain unsevered. We have no means 
in this country of judging the chances of either 
of these alternative issues. 
With regard to the northern line, however, 
the nature of the peril menacing it is much clearer. 
Upon Friday last the enemy managed to force 
a crossing of the Narew a few m.le^s above 
Pultusk; upon Saturday or Sunday he forced a 
second crossing somewhere above Ostrolenka, and 
at the same time a third just below Rozhan. 
It behoves us, if we would understand what 
will follow in this region, to go in some detail into 
the strategics of the belt between the fortified 
Narew line and the main northern railway from 
Warsaw to the capital. t n 
For the purpose of this description, I will 
append a sketch map, IV., with its scale (see 
^^^^This sketch map (Sketcli IV.) shows clearly 
enough the error of two opinions rather generally 
spread in our own Press and that of the Continent. 
The first is the idea that the region between the 
Narew and the railway is a roadless waste, a tang e 
of marshes, without communications, and by its 
nature protective of the railway. The second 
error is the conception that the Bug, a broader 
river than the Narew, covers the railway, it 
covers Warsaw, indeed, and forms part ot that 
strategic conception of the Polish triangle ot 
fortresses, with which I will deal in a moment— 
for the Bug runs from Neo Georgievsk to Brest. 
But the Bug will not save the railway; for the 
railway can be seized north-eastward of, and 
beyond its crossing of the river near Brok Only 
the Narew forms a continuous screen. Aot tne 
"^And that is why the Russians have fortified 
all the bridgeheads of the Narew, but have not 
done anything of the kind with the Bug. 
As to the belt between the railway and the 
Narew being one of pecuUar difficulty for the 
enemy to traverse, that, also, is nonsense. There 
are in a region not larger than a moderate-sized 
English county, four transverse lines of railway, 
and a whole system of fairly good roads, proper 
causeways traversing the occasional marshes 
which roads converge upon the important road 
centres of Wyszkow, Ostrow, and Radzymm; all 
three of which will be found marked upon 
Sketch IV. . J 1 
It is true that the district is very densely, 
wooded, as Sketch IV. also shows, but there is not 
a sufficient belt of obstacle for the defending army 
to rely on continuously, once, or if ever, the Narew 
is abandoned. , 
Now let us see exactly what has happened to 
this stream of the Narew. . . 
The Narew is, in this lower portion, a river ot 
about the breadth of the middle Thames, often 
