iAND AND WATER 
September 18, 1915. 
np big guns in such a country by comparatively 
few roads and railways, and because in between 
ieach action they require some days for re-accumu- 
lating ammunition. In the last stages of such a 
movement the enemy always loses great numbers 
of men. For, however thorough the artillery pre- 
paration, he must at last launch his infantry, 
and when he does so he meets the one form of 
munitionment in which the Russians are his 
equal. For there is a sufficiency of rifles to pro- 
vide for these local actions. 
The enemy being thus able, with his vast 
Buperiority in hea\y artillery and in munition- 
ment, to compel a Russian retirement on any one 
comparatively small front, is also able to achieve 
jthis effect in more than one place. 
If he finds a sector of the Russian line ex- 
tended irregularly as from A — B, over, let us say, 
0.00 miles of front, he is always able, wherever 
there are hard roads and railways, to concentrate 
his superiority in heavy artillery in one or two 
Email areas, as along the arrow 1 and as along the 
arrow 2. 
in 
o 
As a result, the Russian line is bent back upon 
(either of these points, as is the dotted line in 
Sketch III, The result is the creation of a salient 
or bulge in the portion shaded upon the above 
(sketch. 
It is within the power of the enemy to create 
a salient of this kind whenever and wherever he 
chooses, subject to certain modifications to be dealt 
with in a moment. 
Now such a salient being created, it is obvious 
that if the enemy's advantage could be rapidly 
pressed, the enemy, by striking still further 
against either side of the neck of the salient, as up 
towards E and down towards D, may hope to cut 
off the men and guns within the salient, and to 
achieve, locally, at least, a decision. He may hope 
with such rapidity of action, to destroy an army. 
It is a simple point underlying the whole of the 
Austro-German operations in Poland and fre- 
quently made in these columns. 
Such has been the method of the enemy, 
without one single exception, ever since the first 
hurried Russian retreat stood at bay on the San 
River on May 12, but particularly since that day, 
June 21 last, when, having failed to pierce the 
Russian Armies and divide them, he turned north 
from Lemberg and made one attempt after 
another to enevelp portions of the retiring 
Russian forces. 
Why has he hitherto failed to envelop any 
portion of them whatever ? 
To answer that question w^e must consider 
those modifications of the phrase " whenever and 
wherever he chooses," to w^hich modification 
allusion was made above. 
The enemy, with his superiority of heavy 
artillery, its munitionment, and every mechanical 
appliance, can, indeed, create a salient thus w^hen- 
ever and wherever he chooses, but the word 
" wherever " is limited by the presence of hard 
roads and railways, and the phrase " whenever " 
is limited by the necessarily slow accumulation of 
heavy shell for the use of the great pieces and the 
necessarily slow movement of the same pieces. 
Sooner or later the enemy will bend in the 
Russian line in front of the arrow 1 and the 
arrow 2, and will create a salient between the two 
so long as the arrow 1 and the arrow 2 are each 
provicfed with roads and railways. 
But those words " sooner or later " are the 
essence of the business. An excessive dependence 
upon artillery is paid for in the coin of time or 
" mobility." It is a truth which every student of 
the Polish campaign, worthy of a moment's con- 
sideration, has insisted upon throughout the Press 
of Europe, no less in the enemy's Press than in 
that of the Allies : that the German game has all 
along been a gamble upon the advantage of abso- 
lutely immediate effect locally from a superiority 
of heaA^ artillery, as against the uncertain and 
perhaps excessive tardiness with which troops 
dependent upon such artillery might advance. If 
the former outweighs the latter, they win. If no£, 
they lose. 
Hitherto in every case where the Germans 
have attempted to create a salient during the last 
three montns — that is, since they turned north 
from Lemberg, and behind it in the third week of 
July — they have succeeded. They have created 
Bucn a salient. But also hitherto in every one of 
their attempts to cut it off at the neck they have 
failed. 
Let us now turn to the examination of what" 
has been achieved in the first two weeks of 
September. 
A fortnight ago, at the beginning of the 
month, the general line of the enemy was that 
shown by the dotted line on Plan IV. It ran 
just in front of Riga, included Kovno, but not 
Grodno, and ran down nearly north and south, 
east of Khobryn, and so to the Roumanian 
borders. A fortnight's effort has modified this line 
so much as to put it into the shape and position 
expressed in the same Sketch IV. by the full line. 
That is the measure and the mark of the two weeks 
at the end of the Polish campaign. At its broadest 
point the movement is one of forty miles east- 
ward. At its narrowest point — as, for instance, 
in front of Riga — it is zero, iThe belt covered 
B 
