LAxND AND WATER 
September 25, 1915. 
hitherto he has always failed. The bodies of men 
and i;uns within the salient have invariably 
e.scaf)ed him, and in their deliberate retirement 
have inflicted on him losses approximately equal 
to those suffered upon their own side. The 
examples of these Anstro-German failures are 
familiar to all readers of this jouinal. 
Counting this last one of Vilna, they are five 
in number. 
They begin on May 13 with the creation of 
and attempted enveloi)ment of the salient at 
I'rzemysl. For a fortnight the enemy fights 
furiously, throwing away men Avithout regard to 
iiumljers, to cut off that salient. He arrives at 
last at a stage wheie the neck of the salient is 
only twelve miles broad, and when the shells from 
his heavy guns arc dropping upon the only rail- 
way by which the material, stores, guns (and 
many of the men) from the Przemysl salient can 
he evacuated. He issues to the European Press 
as he prepares to enter a statement that he will 
shortly give an account of the booty captured 
within the salient. He gives no such account, for 
there is none to give. On June 1 he enters the 
salient and finds it absolutely empty. Very small 
rearguards have l^een left to cover the last units 
of the retreat. Some of these he captures — 
wounded ; but w-ithin the bulge of Przemysl, w hich 
he has been fighting a fortnight to obtain, there 
is nothing — no guns, no stores, no men. 
Thi-ee weeks later, the beginning of a similar 
situation before Lemberg melts away because the 
Russian evacuation of that place called for less 
time. The enemy has begun his dent on the north 
of Leml^erg ; he is still fighting to create one on the 
80uth, when, on June 21, the Russians retire and 
straighten out the line. 
With the last week of June a third attempt 
on a much larger scale is begun. 
More than a third of all the enemy forces in 
the field attack the line from. Ivangorod to Cholm. 
Simultaneously, as this attack develops, a good 
fourth of his armies begins to strike upon the 
line of the Narev, and there is created the great 
palicnt of Warsaw. The whole of July is taken 
up in the attempt to narrow the neck of that 
pahent with sufficient rapidity to envelop the 
great mass of the Russi?.n armies within it We 
all know what happened. The Russian armies 
escaped absolutely intact; the neck of the salient 
wa.s defended with a sufficient power of resistance 
to forbid Its being cut, and when the line was 
straightened out and the salient had cea.sed to 
exist (by the middle of August), the third 
«^/J^ g^'eatest of these manoeuvres had again 
After a long interval, a smaller salient, the 
lourth, was created once again round Grodno 
The enemy pushed in to the north of that town 
over the IViemen, to the south of it along the 
B.alystok-.slonira railway. Again he had hope of 
cutting oil the troops within the bulge so created 
thttSd'Ltd""' "'^" "' *'^'"™''"- '■^ f™""' 
^/.r'^T' ^? ^l^"^ ^^^^ ^^^'° ^^^^ks J^e has created the 
^/^A sahent the fifth in the series of manceuvres 
eAeiy one of which has hitherto failed; every one 
of which has cost him a heavy toll in men; every 
one o± which, when it fails, condemns him to a 
turtJier progress eastward, and leaves him without 
a decision; every one of which means, on an 
average, nearly a month in the dwindling asset of 
) 
time and at lea.st a quarter of a million men out 
of the dwindling asset of numbers. 
This fifth "salient — that of Vilna — presents 
no\el features advantageous to the enemy, and 
also has developed into a shape equally advan- 
tageous to him. In other words, the opportunities 
for the Russians to achieve once again in the 
salient of Vilna during these days the feat they 
achieved so often in the earlier part of the cam- 
paign, are more restricted, the peril more acute. 
On the other hand, if the Russians should succeed 
(as everything now points to their doing) in bring- 
ing their armies out, the strategical discomfiture 
of the enemy will be proportionately great. It is 
probably his la.<t opj>ortunity of creating such a 
situation. Because, when he shall possess the 
whole line, Riga. Dviosk, Vilna, Lida, Baranovici, 
Lunminiec, Rowno, Lemberg, on which he is 
advancing, the country opens out before him, com- 
munications diverge, and he will no longer be 
attacking a continuous chain of positions, but 
separate armies, his own armies equally and 
necessarily separated mo.-e and more if he goes 
forward. 
It would be too much to say that if he fails at 
Vilna he has failed in his last big chance of the 
campaign, because prophecy of this kind is im- 
possible in war. But it is true to say that if he 
fails at Vilna he would himself regard the failure 
as much the worst in all this series of strategical 
failures, which has marked his slow advance 
through Poland during the last four months. 
Let us turn novi- to an analysis of the salient, 
showing how it was produced, and in what shape 
3lB^ 
vinsk 
II ii 
H O to UO 3C 40 so 
^ English Miles 
<«• 
