August 7, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER, 
THE WAR BY LAND. 
By HILAIRE BELLOG. 
In accorJance witli tbe requirements of the Press Bureau, the positions of troops on Plans illustrating this Article must only Im 
regarded as approximate, and no deBnite strength at any point is indicated. 
IT is clear that the immediate future of the 
war will now be determined by what has 
happened upon the Eastern front. 
The enemy's success upon that front 
has closed what may properly be called the third 
chapter of the great campaign — the enemy offen- 
sive in the East — and has opened a fourth, whose 
nature and issue are as yet unknown to us. 
I propose this week first to describe what has 
happened and is in process of happening upon 
that front. Next to consider what the effect 
of this happening may be upon the immediate 
future of the campaign* 
As to the first of these questions, then : 
WHAT HAS HAPPENED. 
Everyone is now familiar with the strategic 
meaning of the Vistula line. It is only repeating 
what has been printed a hundred times to say that 
the Vistula is the most formidable military 
object in Europe; that no considerable Russian 
offensive can l)e conducted to the West of it unless 
the railway bridges at Warsaw are in Russian 
hands. 
That is what gives Warsaw its unique 
strategic value. It is not only a bridge-head 
guarding a passage over an obstacle, it is the ouli/ 
(railway) bridge-head for the most formidable 
obstacle in Europe.* 
Now, if we are to credit the elaborate, 
officially inspired Russian messages of which the 
Western Press has been full since last Friday, the 
Russian higher command contemplate the aban- 
donment of this Vistula line, and leaving it to the 
command of the enemy. 
In mere strategics the capture of War.saw 
town means nothing whatever. It is but the occu- 
pation of so many square miles upon the hither 
bank of the Central Vistula. But a grip upon the 
bridges of Warsaw is, from a strategical point of 
view, exceedingly important, and it has, perhaps, 
an industrial importance, which I will deal with 
later. 
The decision, if it be adhered to, to abandon 
the Vistula line, means, then, that the enemy will 
command to his use an obstacle which he can hold 
with less troops than he now has on the Polish 
front, and is thus free to use elsewhere very con- 
siderable numbers of men : supposing he chooses 
to use //—supposing, that is, he is content now to 
halt on that Vistula line — a matter by no means 
certain yet, as we shall presently see. 
Such is the great fundamental point deter- 
mining the character of all that is happening upon 
the Eastern front. Let us add, before turning to 
the effect of this great event, certain considera- 
* Thera la, indoed, on* other railway bridge, that of the Ivangorod 
Bingle line (at the bottom loft-hand corner of the square 16 G in the 
Land and Watf.r Map of the Wat), bat it U wholly insufficient to 
Uia supply of a groat army. 
tions upon the nature of the Russian retreat, 
which is still in progress. 
These latter points are three in number : 
Eirst, the nature of the retirement which the 
Russian commanders are in process of achieving. 
Secondly, the fate of the two fortresses above and 
below Warsaw — Novo Georgievsk and Ivangorod, 
which that retirement, if it be persisted in, will 
leave unsupported, and, thirdly, the perils to 
which such a retirement may be subject. 
First, as to the nature of the retirement : The 
Russian plan would seem to be a flattening back 
of the salient which still runs from the neigh- 
bourhood of Ossowiecz, covering Warsaw, and 
thence bending sharply back to the south and east. 
The cause of this determination is the presumed 
inability to retain the extreme western parts of 
the salient, including the bridges of Warsaw. 
It will be remembered that there were two 
quite distinct strategical conceptions on which 
might be founded the power to retain Warsaw, 
in spite of the pronounced salient which that re- 
tention imposed upon the Russian line and the 
corresponding waste of men and munitions in the 
continued maintenance of it. 
These two conceptions were, first the obvious 
one of keeping the railway supply leading up to 
Warsaw intact— particularly the* main northern 
double line to Petrograd (1) (1) (1), and the 
southern single line (2) (2) (2), through Ivango- 
rod, Lublin, and Cholm. So long as these two 
avenues of supply were uninterrupted Warsaw 
could be held. If either of these avenues of 
supply were in the enemy's hands, the situation 
of Warsaw would become difficult, so far as its 
support and munitioning from the rear was con- 
cerned. If both were lost, there would remain no 
more than the central Brest — Moscow line (3) (3) 
(3), double, it is true, and the extreme Warsaw 
point would become impossible. This, which may 
be called " the Radbury theory," is that long 
insisted on in these columns and admittedly sound. 
The other strategical argument for a reten- 
tion of Warsaw is a second-best and admittedly 
doubtful. It is that which we discussed last week, 
the famous "Polish triangle," on which so much' 
military writing and discussion has turned for 
half a generation — the supposed power of resist- 
ance of the whole area bounded by the lines con- 
necting the three fortresses of Brest, Ivangorod, 
and Novo Georgievsk. 
There were those who maintained that even 
if both railways were lost or threatened, the Rus- 
sians might fall back upon the supposed power of 
these three fortresses to keep the area witliin them 
intact : an area which might even be regarded as 
a quadrilateral by the inclusion of Ossowiecz. 
As to the first of these theories : It will be 
[Copyright in America by "The New York American."} 
