August 14, 1915. 
LAND AND ffiATEB. 
— the latter point will be further considered when 
we speak of the evacuation of the points on the 
.Vistula. 
What is the corresponding loss on the enemy's 
side? 
The basis of our calculation here is that the 
enemy originally put into line for his great effort 
in Poland about four million men. 
He may have put more; he will hardly have 
put less ; the numbers being fairly equally divided 
between Austrian and German troops. 
The first question we have to try and answer 
is : What proportion of these four million have 
been put out of action temporarily and perma- 
nently ? We must remember that " temporary " 
losses must be fully counted. The proportion of 
wounded that have returned since the beginning 
of the advance, or that will return before the 
summer closes and the result of the whole effort 
can be estimated, is insignificant. Though for 
the campaign as a whole, and over the period of 
another year, that number would be large. 
We must further remember that an army thus 
advancing loses heavily from other causes than 
casualties in action. Even in mere peace 
manoeuvres, upon such a scale and so prolonged, it 
would suffer an appreciable loss. 
Lastly, we must remember in attempting to 
make a rough estimate that not all parts of the 
line have been equally heavily engaged. 
The centre in front of Warsaw itself has been 
more or less quiescent, the army advancing from 
Courland has only now begun to meet with a 
strong resistance. The armies concentrated upon 
the frontiers of East Prussia to advance upon the 
Narev were until July only losing at the rate im- 
posed by such immobile trench warfare as was 
being conducted along that front for the first two 
months. 
On the other hand, the acting and driving 
portion of the force, that in Galicia, the '" march- 
ing wing of the attempted envelopment," amount- 
ing with its southern extension to half, or perhaps 
more than half of the total, was occupied in very 
hard fighting indeed during the whole three 
months. 
There are those who conceive of this fighting 
in Galicia and on up to the Lublin-Cholm railway 
as being no more than a series of heavy' bombard- 
ments by the enemy, crushing the Russian 
trenches with an overwhelming superior fire, and 
following up each action by an easy and victori- 
ous advance. Those who form this picture of the 
campaign in the south of the Eastern front be- 
little the enemy's losses, for that picture is fan- 
tastic. On one occasion only was the fighting 
of such a nature as they imagine, and that was in 
the heavy original work upon'the Rivers Dunajec 
and Biala in the last two days of April and the 
first day of May — the enemy success that began 
the Russian retreat. It is probable that in those 
'days the Russian losses were very much heavier 
than the enemy's, and that immense concentration 
of men and guns — five to one, perhaps, of the for- 
mer, and seven or ten to one of the latter — did 
inflict far more serious losses than it suffered. 
Though we know that during the first two days' 
fighting when the successful attempt to cross the 
rivers was in progress, heavy punishment was 
inflicted upon the offensive. 
But in all the rest of the retreat the condi- 
tions of the fighting were very 'different. The 
enemy were held upon the San and round the 
salient of Przemysl for eighteen 'days — from 
May 13 to June 1. During the whole of that 
period they were perpetually attacking in force 
and as perpetually finding themselves checked. In 
spite of serious deficiency in heavy ammunition 
and even in infantry equipment from whidi our 
Ally suffered, the enemy found himself unable to 
break the Russian front, and the measure of his 
losses is established by the fact that every day 
of this fortnight and more he was trying to break 
that front, and was in close contact with it. 
North and south of the salient of Przemysl alone 
forces which, in combination, were not much less 
than a million men, were perpetually upon the 
Offensive and as perpetually failing. 
Later there came very heavy work of just the 
same nature upon the Upper Dniester. It was 
a week before the enemy obtained a crossing, and 
so far from being able to follow up that blow he 
was thrown back again at the point of crossing 
(Zurawnow) with a loss of eleven thousand in 
prisoners alone upon one day; while a similar 
active resistance was being kept up all down the 
river to the south — though it is true that here the 
forces engaged were smaller. 
In the third chapter of the retreat (the re- 
tirement behind Lemberg and the evacuation of 
that town, the swerving of the main enemy forces 
northward and the advance towards the Lublin- 
Cholm railway) you had not only the deadly en- 
counters between the advancing enemy forces and 
the Russian rearguards, but the highly expensive 
actions in front of Zamosk and Krasnik in the 
first week in July. The first of these was a dead- 
lock, the second a local repulse for the Archduke. 
All through the rest of the month you had the 
close fighting between the six hundred thousand 
of the enemy who were in action between the Vis- 
tula and the Bug and the Russian line opposed to 
them in front of the railway, and fighting hardly 
less fierce going on all the time along the upper 
Bug and so on to the Dniester. 
Of this Galician drive as a whole the 
Russian estimate of their enemy's losses, perma- 
nent and temporary, was not less than ten thou- 
sand a day. Scale that down liberally for the 
necessary difficulties in judging the losses of an 
advancing enemy and for the inevitable tendency 
to exaggerate such losses ; call it only seven thou- 
sand a day, and you still have during the whole 
great operation from beginning to end — from its 
inception before the close of April to its present 
phase in the first week of August — more than 
three-quarters of a million men out of the field. 
Upon the Narev front there has been one 
month's very heavy and particularly close fighting 
with forces about half as numerous. That fight- 
ing, though representing not more than a third 
of a million men in action on the enemy's side 
and proceeding in full intensity for not more than 
four weeks, has been exceedingly expensive. It 
had not behind it the overwhelming enemy artil- 
lery that was present in the south. 
You have only to follow the movements on 
the map to see that the offensive on the Narev 
and the Russian defensive opposed to it resembles 
two wrestlers at close grips. The enemy advance 
proceeds with the utmost stolidness— averaging 
during the last three weeks not a quarter of a 
mile a day. The defensive holds it absolutely, 
over the greater part of the line and only suffers 
the passage to the river at three points, between 
