August 28, 1915^ 
LAND AND KATER 
THE POLISH CAMPAIGN. 
By HILAIRE BELLOC. 
NOTE.— This article lias been submitted to the Press Bureau, which does not object to the publication as censored, and take* oA- 
responsibility for the correctness of the statements. 
In accordance with the requirements of the Press Bureau, the positions of troops on Plans illustrating this Article must only b€ 
regarded as approximate, and no d<:fiaite strength at any point is indicated. 
r 
KOVNO AND NEO GEORGIEVSK. 
THE fall of Kovno, followed by that of Neo 
Georgievsk, is a very grave matter. The 
fall of Kovno — fully evacuated — indi- 
cates no error in judgment and gives 
rise to no unexpected peril; but it does mean that 
the line from the Baltic southwards upon which 
the Russian armies were announced to retire 
cannot be held continuously. 
It is too earlv to discuss as yet the effect 
which this will have upon the whole campaign in 
the East; it is enough, perhaps, to say that the 
onlv alternative to a continuous chain of positions 
more or less linked up with one another, over so 
considerable a stretch of country, is the manoeu- 
vring of independent armies by groups— the 
immediate future will show both the advantages 
and perils of such a method. 
The configuration of the whole ground over 
which the Austro-German advance is taking place 
is such that once one gets east of a line drawn 
from Riga to Brest, the space to be covered grows 
greater and greater and the opportunities of 
checking an advance by continuous and unbroken 
advance less and less. 
The line, or chain, of positions now occupied 
by the Russians stretches roughly along the dotted 
line upon the following Sketch I., in so far 
as its northern portion is concerned. That line 
still protects upon the right flank of the Russians 
the railway which leads through Vilna to the 
capital, and therefore supplies the armies with 
munitions from the manufacturers there situated. 
This railway is mstrked upon the 'Sketch I. by the 
letters AAA. 
But with the fall of Kovno there was lost the 
main stronghold upon the line of the River 
Niemen, no natural obstacle intervening between 
the enemy advance in this region, pressing along 
the arrows, and the threatened communications 
to the north-east. .With every increase on that 
pressure vital points upon the railway are more 
and more in peril. We need not wonder that 
iVilna has already been evacuated of its civil 
population, that Dvinsk or Dunaburg should be 
under orders apparently of a similar evacuation, 
or that, the great manufacturing town of Bialy- 
stock now immediately threatened, all machinery 
should have been hurriedly removed. 
The fall of Kovno means that if the battle 
which the enemy is seeking to force in the neigh- 
bourhood of Brest is either not immediately 
joined or decided in favour of our Ally, there 
must Ije ultimately a falling back of their right 
wing. With that an inability to hold the rapidly 
increasing length of line as one goes eastward, 
and with that, again, the rearrangement of what 
has been an unbroken chain of posts into groups 
of armies. 
I repeat that it would be of the highest' 
interest to discuss here the effect of this new 
arrangement, its chances of success or failure, 
against an advancing enemy, but that discussion 
cannot be undertaken until the campaign has 
further developed. 
If Kovno has this strategical importance Neo 
Georgievsk has quite another and a moral one. 
The fall of Neo Georgievsk was quite plainly an 
unexpected and therefore a gravely significant 
thing. 
I say " gravely significant," although the im- 
mediate effect of the breakdown will not be very 
great. The place was isolated; it was bound to 
fall sooner or later; it involved in its fall a 
number of men, which, if we count the equipped 
and trained men alone, were not three per cent, 
of the total Russian forces; a more serioua 
number of heavy guns, and considerable amounts 
of that heavy munitionment for pieces of large 
calibre. But there was nothing decisive in the 
event. Strategically, it freed the whole line of 
the Vistula as an avenue of approach for muni- 
tions for the enemy. It did nothing more. Yet 
disastrous it was because it indicated the first 
error — or apparent error at least — in the 
admirably skilful retirement hitherto conducted 
throughout Poland. It is not easy to believe that 
the very large number of heavy pieces with their 
munitionment, let alone the garrison necessary to 
the holding of such a perimeter, were left behind 
by the Russian Higher Command with no further 
object than the gaining of a fortnight's time. A 
fortress means nothing but time. No fortress 
can hold out for ever. But the amount of time 
which you calculate that a fortress will give you, 
before it goes, is the very essence of your deci- 
sion when you judge whether 3^ou will abandon 
it or garrison it as you retreat past it. Had Neo 
Georgievsk closed the navigation of the Vistula 
and in general ham[»ered the enemy's advance 
until, say, October — had it proved capable of 
eight weeks' resistance — its full purpose would 
have been achieved, for it would have handi- 
capped the chances of the enemy getting his deci- 
sion before the change of the season. But it is 
not credible that the fortnight during which it 
withstood a modern siege train was worth in 
time the loss in guns and munitions and even 
men. The thing can only mean that the sj'stcm 
of external temporary fortification had not been 
fully carried out, or that the pieces and men and 
munitions necessarv to such a system were not 
present. It was pointed out last week in these 
columns that the fate of the fortress turned 
upon whether those elements were present or no. 
