September 18, 1915. 
LAND AND JV, A T E B 
Poinif where 
Etwny reached , 
the Kailwaxf 
(his objective) 
last Sunday. 
W 
KKMKKH 
Form of the •- 
Grodno salient in, 
its most dangerous 
phase Sept. S -10. a V 
Lemben 
Thsitions aJtbegimdm 
Thsitions OjteridaF 
Rowno 
ubno 
®TarnopoI 
Jo 
as an average is about twenty miles — that is, it 
has been at an average one and a half miles a 
day. 
Upon the same sketch it will be seen how far 
this advance has come to the control of the lateral 
railway, which is expressed upon the sketch by the 
usual convention. 
Now this advance has been achieved in the 
combined effect of what are, roughly, five opera- 
tions. I do not mean by thus sub-dividing them 
that five groups of armies have been involved. 
Only three groups of armies have been involved 
upon either side — the Northern, the Central, 
north of the Pinsk Marshes, and the Southern, 
south of the marshes. But I mean that if we are 
following the groups of operation, the locally co- 
ordinated movements, we find five such groups. 
Thev are to be tabulated as follows : 
(1) The movement against Riga. 
(2) The movement for the isolation of Vilna, 
which includes the attack upon the railway^ 
between Vilna and Dvinsk, the creation of thi 
Grodno salient, and the attempt to annihilate the 
Russian Army within that salient. This second 
section is far the most important, because it is 
here that the lateral line Riga-Lemberg has first 
been reached by the enemy (in the course of Sun- 
day, September 12), because it is here that the 
greatest point of peril arose to our ally during his 
retirement from Grodno. 
(3) The third sector has a very simple task 
(and one to which much less men and guns are 
allotted). It is that of keeping up with the more 
northern movement, and of backing up the attempt 
to cut off the Russian armies to the north by press- 
ing forward as fast as possible along tne rare 
roads and the single railway to the north of and 
through the marshes. .With these first sections I 
deal this week, leaving over till next week the 
following : 
(4) A fourth sector concerns the advance 
along the Kiev railway, and the approach to, and 
attempt to seize, Rovno and the junction just 
beyond it, which is essential to a control of the 
whole railway from Riga to Lemberg. 
(5) Finally, the fifth section concerns the 
front just north and south of the town and rail- 
way junction of Tarnopol and the lines of the 
Rivers Sereth and Strypa, parallel tributaries of 
the Dneister. 
I have in the above Sketch IV. put down the 
line as a whole, dividing it into its sectors, and I 
will next deal with each sector one by one. 
The operations as a whole may be thus co- 
ordinated. A thrust in the extreme north towards 
the beginning of the month, threatening the sector 
between Riga and Dvinsk, coupled with a fairly 
rapid advance between Vilna and the marshes, 
produced a salient at Grodno — a salient to which 
the Russians were more tied from the fact that 
the evacuation of Grodno proved apparently, 
longer than they had expected. This salient 
having been produced by the enemy's action, every 
effort was made to cut off the Russian Army round 
about Grodno by applying the most violent 
pressure to the north-east, and south-east of that 
region, but the effort failed, and the Grodno army, 
like so many others in this Polish campaign, was 
saved through the immobility imposea upon the 
enemy by his very advantage in the heavy 
artillery upon which he absolutely depends. 
Meanwhile, as we shall see next week, to the 
south of the marshes, Mackensen's force was 
trying to create yet another salient by pressing the 
northern part oi the Russian line there back east- 
ward, until the centre should bulge out. He would 
thus compel the retirement of the whole, and put 
it for some time in jeopardy. But the Russians 
were able here to effect a counter-stroke. They 
struck hard upon their left in front of Tarnopol 
and north and south of that town, put out of 
action and nearly destroyed a whole German army, 
corps, which included a reserve division of the 
Guards, and also defeated upon the Sereth larger 
Austrian bodies which had the task of there con- 
taining them. 
This local southern success accounted for the! 
strength of something like a division in enemy, 
prisoners, nearly all the heavy guns of one Ger- 
man division, but only nineteen field pieces. It 
has to some extent been followed up, but not very. 
