LAND AND WATER 
August 28, 1915. 
was very slow, coi^iained no element of surprise, 
and had objects before it all clear as daylight. 
There was no reason why the turning of the Rus- 
sian line on the north should spell disaster, or even 
compel the retiring Russian force to battle. The 
Russian bodies stretching from Brest northward 
had only to fall back before the advance of 
the enemy precisely as they had fallen back 
during the preceding four months of the retrejit. 
The time would come, as has already been 
suggested in this article, when the forces, as 
they fell back, could no longer hold a con- 
tinuous line, but the new dispositions ^\culd 
not of themselves lead to another disaster, because 
groups of armies, though sepai-ated by consider- 
able intervals, could still retire iu unison and co- 
ordinate their movements upon a common plan. 
More dangerous was. and is, the threat to the left 
flank— the region of the marshes. It is always 
upon the side where you think you are secure from 
envelopment that the threat of envelopment will 
probably come, or, at least, it is always from the 
side where you believe yourself to be secure that 
the chance of a surprise, in the very nature of 
thin^, is to be discovered. 
Is it possible for the enemy to advance with 
unexpected rapidity and in suflBcient force 
through the marshes in their present condition ? 
Should he attempt such an advance and fail in it 
he will be where he was before. He will again 
have failed in the tenth or twentieth of those 
repeated attempts to envelop a group of the 
Russian armies and obtain his decision. 
The way in which the marshes stand to what 
is now the isolated northern portion of the Rus- 
sian line can best be appreciated by some such 
rough sketch as Sketch II. accompanying these 
and from the fortress of Brest upon the River 
{B 
Bug run two railways which join at the junction 
of Baranovichi. In general terms the line from 
Brest to Baranovichi defines the northern limit of 
the great marsh. If we were to represent 
graphically the numbers of the Russian forces 
stretched out between Brest and the Baltic, we 
should probably have something corresponding to 
the areas indicated by the shaded groups upon 
Sketch II. Now, so long as that mass is certain 
that the marshy region towards the south and east 
of Brest, east of the River Bug and south of the 
Brest-Baranovichi railway is impassable to great 
bodies of the enemy, it stands reposing as securely 
upon its left flank as did the Allied army upon the 
sea in Flanders last November. Further, it can 
retire at will, certain that that retirement will not 
be interfered with from the south. But let the 
enemy effect what he has not yet done in the whole 
of this Polish adventure — to wit, a surprise : let 
him come up through the marsh region upon 
which the whole strategy of our Ally has turned 
for a month past, let him thus threaten the left 
flank, and clearly the Russians will be compelled 
to accept battle, the very issue which it has been 
their whole object to avoid during all these weeks. 
They would no longer be able to retire unmolested. 
They would be caught. They would be compelled 
to receive the blows of the enemy. 
It is therefore quite as much, I think, to the 
region of the great marshes on the south and east 
o± Brest, " the marshes of Pinsk," as they are 
called, which surround everywhere the upper 
basin of the Pripet River, as to the more obvious 
and long established threat from the north that 
our attention should be turned. 
Should the enemy fail upon either of those 
Hanks to threaten the continued retirement of the 
Russian armies, and should that retirement 
though leading to a separation of the line into 
groups of armies, proceed without mishap until 
sulhcient recruitment and munitionment are 
available, then the whole drama of the Eastern 
campaign during this summer will have ended 
in the strategical defeat of the enemy. 
But the marshes of Pinsk are not what they 
were during those earlier campaigns upon the 
analogy of which too much faith has sometimes 
been pinned Their drainage, though consider- 
able, is not the chief change which modern times 
have brought to that region. The chief change is 
the crossing of this huge area of difiicult land by 
at least two lines of railway. The advance of k 
modern army through that region, if difficult, is 
at any rate possible. Veiy much will turn upon 
the rapidity with which it may be attempted and 
the degree m which it may succeed. 
H. BELLOC. 
The current number of the Asiatic Review contains, 
among many excellent contributions, an article on "The 
United Balkan States," by Oliver Bainbridge, in which the 
author points out the advantages that would accrue to all 
the minor Powers of the near East from union. Another 
contribution worthy of note is the conclusion of the literal 
translation of the quatrains of Omar, which gains interest 
from comparison with Fitzgerald's rendering. 
In " A Study of the Development of Infantry Tactics " 
a shilling manual issued by Messrs. George Allen and 
Unwin, the historical development of infantry tactics is con- 
cisely related, and in addition to this the book forms an 
up-to-date and useful manual on modem infantry formation?. 
In non-technical language the author traces the evolution of 
modern infantry work, and compares the French and German 
methods; the book will be found very useful by infantry 
officers, who will find here not only the way in which certain 
things are done, but also the reasons for them. 
