Septemtjer 25, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER. 
THE RETREAT FROM VILNA. 
By HILAIRE BELLOG. 
NOrC-Thi, article has been submitted to the Pre,, Bureau, Hhi.h doe, not object to the pubUcatioo .. cea*,,ed. and Uke. a. 
responsibility lor the correctness of the statements. 
In accordance with the requirements ol the Press Bureau, the position, of troops on Plan, illustrating this Article must only b. 
regarded as approximate, and no d^Bnite strength at any point is indicated. 
BY far the most important news of this week 
so falls that it has reached no conclusio!i 
at the moment these lines are written. 
The Russian armies are (or, rather, ireie 
on Saturday and Sunday, to which days tho 
Tuesday communiques refer) retiring from the 
salient of Vilna. A judgment based upon the 
map and the nature of the enemy's action to the 
north inclines one to decide that the retreat will be 
successful, and the enemy's whole object, the cut- 
ting off of these forces, denied him. But at the 
moment of going to press — on Tuesday e\ening — 
nothing certain is yet known. 
It is probable that we shall have such a con- 
clusion confirmed before these lines are published ; 
but the analysis I am here occupied upon must be 
concluded by the late afternoon of Tuesday. Sep- 
tember 21, and at the moment of writing all we 
know with regard to the retreat of the Russian 
armies in Vilna salient is the gravity of the 
problem it presents. 
For we are dealing with a march of sixty 
miles. And the last Russian rearguards were only 
out of Vilna and. falling back along the Minsk 
road in the afternoon of l?.st Saturday. 
As will be seen in a moment, when we come to 
analyse the elements of the situation, the last units 
of the Russian forces within the salient could 
hardly be extricated earlier tht^n Tuesday, the day 
upon which these words are written. Should the 
Austro- Germans be successful in cutting off any 
large portion of the retre?.t, we might hear the un- 
favourable news at any moment ; but the complete 
accomplishment of a successful retreat, should it 
be achieved, must be a matter of some days. 
All we can do, then, with the information 
before us at the jiresent moment, is to state the 
nature of the problem and the only two possible 
solutions which it presents. One' of them, the 
envc'lopment of even a portion of the Russian 
armies, would form the first real strategic success 
of the enemy on the Eastern front in all these 
months. The second would be a failure no less 
marked, and perhaps convince the enemy that his 
whole effort had failed. 
But for the news that will tell us which of 
the two solutions has been arrived at we must 
almost certainly wait until these lines are in 
print. 
THE SERIES OF SALIENTS AND THE 
ENEMY'S FAILURE TO ENVELOP 
IN EACH CASE. 
The conditions under which the Vilna salient, 
with its threat to the Russian army, was produced 
are those repeated perpetually in this campaign. 
They are the sole strategical conception of the 
enemy. 
It has been insisted upon ovfer and over agaia 
in these columns as the deciding factor in the 
Polish campaign that the enemy's superiority in 
equipped numbers and munitions permits him afc 
certain rather distant intervals, the length of 
which IS determined bv the rate of bringing up 
heavy shell, to push back the Russians upon any, 
selected short sector. 
If he chooses two such sectors at some dis- 
tance one from the other, say, fiftv or one hundred 
miles apart, he will there determine two retire- 
ments and will leave behind each a bulge or salient 
m the line. This operation is but a preliminary 
His object is not merely to make the Russians fall 
back, though this has a political value which we 
will discuss in a moment. His object is to destroy 
as much as possible of the Russian armies. In a 
mere slow retirement, followed by a mere (and 
equally slow) advance of the enemy, an army is 
not destroyed. It loses heavily, but then so does 
the advancing force. Strategically, therefore 
(apart from all political effect), it is the business 
of the pursuing party, not simply to occupy terri- 
tory, but to encelop or to scatter as much as he 
can of the retreating party. 
In the case of the Russian armies, spread over 
a space of 800 miles, there can be no thought of a 
single general envelopment. The hope of scatter- 
ing them has also ceased to exist since it failed 
between the Dunajec and the San four months 
ago. There remains the chance of partial envelop- 
ment. The enemy, at intervals longer than he 
would like, but inevitable from the immobility im- 
posed by dependence upon hea\T artillery, uses his 
superiority in that arm and its raunitionment to 
strike on two sectors fairly wide apart, and create 
a salient— that is a '• bulge " — between them. 
This first step accomplished (and he can 
accomplish it virtually at will), the second step, 
which is the gist of the whole operation, begins. 
He tries to cut the neck of the salient, striking 
down from one side, and up from the other, and 
thus to isolate by envelopment — that is, surround- 
ing — the men aiid the guns within the salient. 
This is the one manoeuvre open to the enemy, 
in the Polish campaign, because he has not better 
men or better generals or better mobility or better 
handling of troops or arms or better anything, ex- 
cept superiority in the number of his rifles and 
of his heavy pieces and their shell. He cannot 
hope for success upon any other lines than these 
partial envelo[)ments, and upon these lines he has 
attempted to succeed over and over again, and 
iCopyrighl in America by "The New York American."l 
