LAND AND SEATEE. 
2:ugust 14, 1915. 
the past— the grosdy unsoldierly character of 
Prussian war. 
The secoud matter was the destruction of 
railwaj' and road communication effected by the 
Germans in their retirement. This had so im- 
portant an effect upon the succeeding campaign 
that some critics have imagined, a little wildly, 
that the whole of this first German invasion of 
Poland was no more than a raid conducted with 
the object of ruining the communications of the 
country in order to check the enemy's offensive 
when later he should attempt an advance against 
German territory. 
While the German retirement out of Russian 
Poland was thus proceeding, and the Russian pur- 
suit was following that retirement up as best it 
could over ruined roads and railways, the main 
Russian body was still advancing in Galicia 
(though more"^ slowly than before) and pressing the 
Austrians back before it towards Cracow. 
This was the situation in the Eastern theatre 
of war at tlmt moment — November 11 to 15 — 
when, as we have seen, the great German effort to 
break through in the West had definitely failed. 
That failure, coupled with the increasing 
menace from the growing Russian forces, the 
approach of the Rusians to Cracow— behind 
which fortress the main strategic ways part for 
Berlin and for Vienna, and behind which also lies 
the all-important German province of Silesia — 
determined the German General Staff to yet 
another and third strategic conception. 
They had failed disastrously in their original 
plan — the achievement of a decisive victory in 
France. They had failed in their second, which 
was the attempt to break the Allied line while they 
still had a great superiority in numbers and to 
reach the ports of the Channel and so menace 
England. They now prepared to hold their 
Western line with only such forces as were 
required to maintain it and to turn their chief 
energies towards the obtaining of a decison in the 
East. 
If the campaign be regarded as a whole, we 
must decide that this third phase of it is still pro- 
ceeding and has not yet reached an issue. 
In other words, the first year of the war may 
properly be regarded as divided into three great 
chapters, each of nearly equal importance to the 
ultimate result, though the three vary greatly in 
the time which they occupy. 
Chapter I. is the complete German failure 
before Paris. It covers less than three weeks. 
Chapter II. is the rally of the invaders, their 
stand upon the lines of the Aisne, and of Picardy 
and Flanders, and their enormously expensive and 
quite unsuccessful efforts to break the Allied line 
and seize Calais and Boulogne. It occupies nine 
weeks, and lasts until the middle of November. 
Chapter III. is entirely composed of a 
German defensive upon the West, content with 
merely holding the lines already established, and a 
prodigious German and Austrian effort combined 
upon the East to obtain a decision against Russia. 
It has already covered the space of no less than 
thirty-eight weeks, and has not yet come to an end. 
It is, of all the three phases through which 
the war has so far passed, by far the most impor- 
tant to comprehend, because upon its issue the 
general result of the campaign will probably 
turn, because it is least grasped by general civi- 
lian opinion in the West, and because a misunder- 
Sutplement to Land axd Watee, Ausust 14, 1915. 12*' 
standing of it is more likely to lead to political 
trouble and to public confusion and doubt than 
a misunderstanding of the two chapters con- 
cluded with the Battle of the Marne and the 
Battle of Ypres respectively. 
To this third chapter I now turn, and with 
it I shall conclude this summary. 
VIII. 
The great characteristic of the German plan 
from the middle of last November to the present 
day has been the determination to obtain a deci- 
sion against the Russians — that is, to put the 
Russians out of the field ; to disarm them by one 
great action or by a series of actions. Failing 
such a decision, the enemy might conceivably, 
though doubtfully and at great expense, disarm 
them by a slow process of wearing down until the 
enemy 'should be quite certain that there was no 
fear of attack from this quarter in the future, 
and that the whole of his remaining power could 
be turned to obtaining a similar decision m the 
West, after wliich he could obtain peace. 
This peace would not be the peace he had 
expected a year ago. His victory would not be 
the victory which he had planned and taken for 
granted when he suddenly forced war upon the 
French and Russians. There was no hope left of 
destroying permanently the military power of 
his riVals and of establishing himself as the 
master of Europe. But he could, if this last pro- 
framme were satisfactorily worked out, compel 
is foes to acknowledge that the prospect of 
thoroughly defeating them was too remote to Ijc 
worth entertaining, and he could call a draw 
somewhat in his favour, inasmuch as he would 
have in his hands to bargain with the assets of 
conquered and occupied territory, while his own 
soil was inviolate. 
To defeat Russia the most thorough and 
the least expensive way— the way, therefore, 
which the enemy attempted — was to separate the 
chain of the Russian Army into at least two or 
more portions. After this had been done it would 
be possible to destroy the lesser portion, at any 
rate; in detail, and the remainder would be in a 
position of grace and permanent inferiority, and 
might even be destroyed in its turn. 
This result, by far the most desirable in the 
enemy's eyes, he set out to accomplish in the 
latter part of November, 1914. and his first effort 
was directed straight at the centre and at 
Warsaw. 
The plan was as follows : While the Russians 
were slowly exercising their increasing pressure 
westward, through Galicia, and approaching 
Cracow, the enemy proposed to leave in front of 
that fortress a force only sufficient to act on the 
defensive, while he would swing with the mass of 
his men round northwards, come in parallel to 
the left bank of the Vistula from the point where 
that river flows into German territory, and supply 
himself by the northernmost of the three railways 
which converge upon Warsaw from the west (it 
runs roughly parallel to and south of the Vistula 
River below that capital). 
The plan was wisely conceived because the 
mass of the Russian armies were in the south, in 
Galicia, and there were no railways running 
directly northward thence by which the inferior 
Russian forces in tlie northern part of Russian 
Poland could be reinforced. 
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