August 7, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER. 
useless unless they were provided with the very- 
large garrisons mentioned, for only very large 
forces within the defended rings could menace the 
flanks of such enormous armies as are those of the 
enemy's advance. 
Now, as the Russians had suffered their 
great retreat, it was most improbable that 
they should have retained a sufficient accumu- 
lation for the valid and prolonged defence 
of these great fortified rings. But if it 
had been ultimately decided to stake every- 
thing upon the " Polish triangle," failure 
would have involved not retirement, but disaster. 
The triangle (or quadrilateral, if we include 
Ossowiecz) would have been of the nature of a 
beleaguered fortress, which, if it fell, involved the 
fall of the troops contained therein. But these 
troops were, in this case, no less than all the 
central masses of the Russian army — more than a 
million men. The evident peril of the railways, 
therefore, appears to have been regarded by the 
Russian higher command as a sufficient reason 
suggesting the abandonment of Warsaw and its 
whole salient, and so handing over the line of the 
Vistula to the Austro- Germans. 
Now, if this intention be proceeded with, we 
come to the second point : What would be the fate 
of the two great fortresses above and below 
Warsaw upon the river. Novo Georgievsk and 
Ivangorod ? 
The removal of all guns and stores from such 
thoroughly organised and extensive and long 
standing works is an immensely laborious 
and necessarily lengthy task. The stores 
alone demand ample rolling stock and a con- 
tinual stream of traffic for their removal, to which 
must be added the evacuation of the garrison. 
The guns could hardly be wholly saved. If the 
Russian command decides on a retirement and 
succeeds in leaving to the enemy nothing but the 
geographical space occupied by the two fortresses, 
losing no guns in the process, it will be the most 
astonishing achievement in the history of the war. 
The moving of a single big gun is a vast business 
when it is a gun of position and designed for 
fixed emplacement. The removal of hundreds in 
the face of enemy pressure and while the railways 
are so occupied with the maintenance of a mil- 
lioned army as well, would seem impossible. It 
may be said that our Ally could render the pieces 
useless by destroying them. Of course they could. 
But if there is one thing that Russia can ill afford 
to destroy at this moment it is her heavy 
artillery. It would seem as though the chief part 
of the price which must be paid in case of a full 
retirement would be the considerable loss of 
material in these two fortresses. 
There is indeed another alternative. The 
investment of either or both may be risked, even 
though it should be calculated that their resistance 
cannot be much prolonged. The Russian higher 
command may judge that the embarrassment 
caused to the enemy by the holding out of the 
two strongholds even for a few weeks — with 
summer drawing to a close and the enemy numbers 
daily wasting — would be a sufficient equivalent 
for the loss in men and material that would follow 
their fall. But it is difficult to see how such a 
calculation could be sound. In a very few days 
we shall know what the fate of the fortresses is 
to be. If the retirement is not proceeded with they 
stand. If they are abandoned, we shall have the 
enemy claim to his captures of material and the 
Russian tacit admission or contradiction of those 
claims. If it is determined — in spite of the army 
falling a hundred miles behind them— to hold 
them, we shall have news of their investment. 
We sum up and say, then, that the anomalous 
position of the two fortresses is the least satis- 
factory feature in the retirement at the present 
moment, or at any rate the one which it is most 
difficult to fit into the scheme of the Russiaji 
retreat. 
As to the third point, the perils menacing the 
proposed or suggested Russian retirement, it Is by 
far the chief subject of discussion at this moment, 
and it is clear why this should be the case. 
The enemy does not merely want the Vistula 
line. That is an advantage; it is not a decision. 
But he does want — he imperatively needs — the 
disarming (the surrounding or dispersion) of a 
really considerable portion of the Russian armies. 
That would be victory. That would be the achieve- 
ment of his object and the reaching of his goal in 
that great campaign of Poland upon which he has 
staked all and which has already cost him so 
prodigious a price out of his rapidly-failing 
resources. 
Let us examine as best we can the very 
meagre elements upon which a judgment can be 
formed. In the Sketch map No. II. there will be 
seen in its simplest elements in the form of a mere 
diagram the fortunes of the salient which the Rus^ 
sians may now flatten down to a straight line, and 
the opportunities the enemy may have of inter- 
fering with that movement. 
The Russian armies are within a front shaped 
like the line AAA from the Baltic to the Upper 
Bug. This line projects in the awkward fashion 
apparent to the left of X Y. Their retirement. 
