August 21, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER 
opinion — of occupying important towns, of which 
Warsaw is the most important. He has cleared 
his own territory from invasion (all but a few 
square miles), he has profoundly invaded that of 
his foe. He has inflicted, as we have seen in past 
articles, upon his Russian opponent losses some- 
what superior to his own — perhaps superior by 
one-third — and, whereas a certain proportion of 
his losses will return to the Colours before the 
winter (perhaps a sixth of all the casualties will 
appear again in the field), of the Russians most 
will not appear again, because the wounded upon 
that side appear for the greater part as prisoners 
in the enemy's hands. He has destroyed and some- 
times captured undestroyed, as we have also seen 
in past articles, many hundreds of machine guns. 
He has recovered an ample supply of petrol. 
All this is not to be despised. But the enemy 
did not set out to do this. A man with, say, half 
a million capital at his back does not spend a 
quarter of a million of it in advertising in order 
only to make a great show, to stir a certain amount 
of interest in the public, to bring himself in 
general forward. He spends it with the object of 
getting returns ultimately much greater than the 
sum which he has laid out thus unproductively. 
The enemy set out to envelop as large a 
portion as possible of the Russian forces, to 
destroy the enveloped portion as an army and to 
capture its field pieces and heavy artillery. He 
could not begin this process until he had pene- 
trated the line of the Russian positions and had 
separated various portions of the Russian armies. 
No other scheme can have been in his mind, and 
every move he has made since the end of April 
towards what was logically his necessary policy, 
has also been his actual policy. 
At this very moment, instead of taking the 
opportunity afforded him by the line of the 
Vistula for putting a brake upon the Eastern 
offensive, and leaving it to act elsewhere, he still 
engages vast forces forward, south-east and north- 
east, in the continued attempt to prevent the 
Russian retirement, now so nearly accomplished, 
from achieving a perfect success. 
Nothing in war is conclusive save either a 
decision or so complete a wearing down of oppos- 
ing forces (the retreat from Moscow is the classical 
example) that, even without action, it ceases to 
exist. 
No decision has yet been arrived at, and most 
certainly there has been no process of wearing 
down leaving either side as it would be left after 
a disastrous action. Each faces the other, the one 
still on the offensive, although with its momentum 
strangely lessened; the other still on the defen- 
sive, though with the situation now apparently 
well in hand. But each may ultimately reverse his 
old role, each is a great army in being ; and there 
is no seal yet set upon the Eastern campaign. 
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the 
enemy has failed in his main endeavour. In other 
words, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion, even 
at so early a date as this, and with another seven 
or eight weeks of tolerable weather before the 
rains set in in Poland, that the Austro- German 
Higher Command gambled for a far swifter 
progress and for a much more definite result. 
They have expended in reaching so neutral an 
issue nearly half what was in the beginning their 
reserve of men trained and equipped (excluding 
what they must keep back for draft? to the new 
f%mq] : 
c ; 2i4f6Te9 10 a a a it His^iaWJi/tii. 
0li3*S678 "MUu 
Southern front). They have done their very utmost' 
with shell under conditions where the big gun had 
it all its own way. They have devoted almost 
entirely to this effort fifteen out of the now 
numbered weeks remaining to them as the utter- 
most limits of their continued strength, and it ia 
difficult to see how, to the moment of writing at 
least, they can regard the thing they have pur- 
chased as worth anything like the price they have 
paid, in men, in materials, and in time. For all 
these three essentials are counted out to the enemy 
by fate very strictly. Materials least, men far 
more, time most of all. 
NOTE ON KOVNO. 
The fortress of Kovno is an obstacle to any 
attempt at turning the Russian line by the north, 
and it is upon Kovno, as the last telegrams inform 
us, that a strong effort is now being made by the 
enemy. 
Let us see what the conditions of that effort 
are. 
We may take it that the fortress has been 
prepared for modern attack by dismantling of the 
old permanent works and the formation of tem- 
porary batteries, the heavy pieces concealed in 
which can be moved within certain limits when 
their positions chance to be discovered by air 
reconnaissance. We may further take it that the 
second condition of defence against a modern 
siege train, the ample provision of holding muni- 
tions, is present in Kovno, for if it were not so any 
attempt to hold the place would be waste of 
energy. 
The task before the enemy, then, consists in 
the attempt to reduce these outer temporary 
mobile batteries, and he is at present restricted to 
an attack against the western sector alone, for the 
Russian positions stretching north and south of 
the town forbid his approaching it as yet from 
any direction but the west. In front of the per- 
manent heavy batteries will be a certain number 
of field works, and the outer perimeter of these 
ultimate works is probably indicated by some 
such line as the dotted line upon the accompanying 
Sketch v., while the perimeter of the mobile bat- 
teries (the position of which varies, of course, 
greatly with conditions of ground) may not im- 
probably be averaged at something like the line of 
crosses in the same Sketch IV. 
The fortress of Kovno covers the junction of 
three very important avenues whereby munitions 
could reach a force attacking Vilna and the great 
northern railway line passing through Vilna. 
These are, first, the River Wilia, next the great 
