Aujnist 28, 1915, 
LAND AND WATER 
It would seem that they were not; and we must 
conclude that the calculations upon which its 
value depended were erroneous. 
Important, however, as the fall both of Kovno 
and of Neo Georgievsk are in their various ways, 
neither are comparable to the capital importance 
of the apparently approaching but not yet 
achieved decision, or attempted decision, in 
Eastern Poland. 
The vital interest at the moment is the 
determination of the enemy to compel our Ally to 
a general action in the neighbourhood and to the 
north of Brest, and to this, one of the critical 
points of the whole war, I will next turn. 
THE PROBLEM OF A DECISION IN 
POLAND. 
The problem of the next few days, I say, is 
this : Can the enemy compel the Eussian armies 
concentrated in the neighbourhood of Brest and 
up northwards, over a front of about sixty miles, 
to accept battle ? 
If they can, a very great part of the enemy's 
plan is achieved. For the Russians do not desire 
to challenge a decision as yet, and it is all the 
enemy's plan to compel them to do so. 
If they cannot, the business goes on again 
indefinitely, every week that passes making the 
price that the enemy is paying more and more out 
of proportion to the results he has obtained. 
The matter is perfectly clear. 
The enemy went into his great Polish adven- 
ture on April 30 last, having accumulated a vast 
amount of heavy munitionment and concentrated 
against the Dunajec front tlie great mass of his 
winter-trained men. 
He proposed to attack, of his two great 
groups of enemies, the Eastern group. 
He proposed to do this because he believed 
he could more immediately obtain a decision in 
the East than in the West. 
He knew that he had before him the four 
summer months of fine weather — May, June, July, 
and August. He knew that September still per- 
mitted him to act in Poland. He knew that with 
October the end of his chance would come. It was 
not only climate, it was also numbers, which made 
him fix October as the term of his efl'ort, for his 
ultimate reserves of men a!fe against those of the 
Allies were insufficient. He staked everything 
upon this throw. 
It is certain that the enemy believed he would 
achieve against the Russian forces a decision 
within a comparatively short period. It is certain 
from the nature of his advance, and from the 
changes subsequent to his first triumphant move 
in Galicia. 
Such a decision would mean the thing 
defined more than once in these columns. When, 
of two forces opposed, the one by direct action 
within comparatively limited terms of space and 
time, disarms his opponent in such a degree that 
the opponent can no longer hope to resume the 
offensive, then a decision is achieved. Thus 
Waterloo was a decision, Austerlitz was a deci- 
sion; but Ligny was not a decision, neither was 
Malplaquet. 
Why did the enemy thus (ietermine to make 
the Eastern field the scene of his great gamble? 
Because he appreciated through his Intelli- 
gence Department, as well as through his general 
knowledge of the conditions of Europe, that 
Russia, very poorly industrialised, almost entirely 
an agricultural State, possessed of few railways, 
and (oddly enough) of still fewer hard roads, from 
the scarcity of stone, would be in a state of grave 
inferiority with the coming of the early summer. 
The war has shown that success will ulti- 
mately depend upon the power to equip with rifles 
and with guns, and to provide with ammunition 
for both, the enormous number available on paper 
to the belligerents. 
But the production of rifles and of guns and 
of munitions is a matter for machinery. All had 
failed to appreciate — or, rather, to guess — what 
vast quantities of munitions the war would 
require (particularly in large shell), because no 
one had foreseen that the great war would be a 
war of trenches. 
The Germans and Austrians were as much at 
fault in this provision as their unwilling oppo^ 
nents. They had indeed the advantage of having 
prepared for war for about three years; they had 
therefore all ready the equipment for their 
maximum total potential man-power. But shell 
in the number required for the new conditions 
had to be made. France and the Central Empires 
saw that at once — as long ago as last September. 
France, with the greater part by far of her mines 
and of her industrial equipment occupied by the 
invaders, yet did better than the Central Empires 
in the months that were critical in this affair. 
With a population of less than a third of the 
Central Empires she reached by June a production 
of shell close upon half their production. 
But as against Russia the difference was 
enormous. The difference in the power of equip- 
ment of infantry was and remains most serious. 
The difference in the power of production of sheli 
was at the outset of the Polish campaign out of 
all reason. It was perhaps 5 to 1. 
Under such circumstances the enemy wisely 
determined to stake the remainder of his strength 
upon a decision in the East. ° . 
His attempts to obtain this decision (each 
hitherto unsuccessful) appear in two phases very 
different in their length and their cost. During 
the first phase, which lasted from the last days o1 
April to the end of June, it was his determination 
to break through the centre of the Russian line 
opposed to him, to split the Russian Army into 
two portions, and to defeat these in detail. Thajfc 
this was his plan is proved by the fact that during 
all the days of this advance his heavy artillery was 
massed upon the centre of his line — and it was 
by the continued superiority of his heavy artillery, 
in particular the Austrian part of it, that he 
depended for success. [ 
Ia this first attempt, the attempt to break 
the Russian forces, he came (characteristically 
enough) nearest to success in the very first days 
of his onslaught. Compare the advance on Paris, 
At the San he was already checked. On the 
Upper Dniester and in front of Lemberg he was 
held at the rate of a mile a day. When he 
entered Lemberg the hope of breaking the Rus- 
sian forces asunder had disappeared. 
Then came his change of plan; and his next 
conception was to envelop some portion at least 
of those Russian armies which now formed the 
great salient of which Warsaw was the apex. 
The proof that this was his new plan is to 
be discovered in the swerving northward of his 
armies in Galicia, and the gathering opposite 
