September 25, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
regard such successes as insignificant to the course 
of a campaign. Speak of military operations as 
one does of a game of chess which hurts no one, 
frightens no one, and disturbs no one, and it does 
not matter a snap of the fingers whether the 
Austro- German line runs through France and 
through Russia, or through Westphalia and Bran- 
denburg. All that matters is the relative disarma- 
ment of the two opposing forces. For the sum- 
ming up of all strategic and tactical objective is 
the disarming of the enemy in a larger ratio than 
you are yourself disarmed by the effort, and the 
only purely military definition of victory is the 
disarming of your enemy in such a degree that he 
can look forward in the future to nothing less 
than a total disarmament, while you remain, in 
spite of your losses, still armed. 
But not only to civilian, nor only to unin- 
structed opinion, to the organism of the nation 
and its vitality as well it makes a vast difference 
whether over such and such a space of time the 
enemy lines include national territory or no. 
Those who are invaded need to display rarer 
qualities, qualities far more difficult to maintain, 
than are needed by those not invaded. 
The Austro- German occupation of Poland 
(which is now complete), the Austro-German 
advance, slow and visibly hampered, possibly 
Hearing its term, on to the frontiers of 
Russia proper, means strategically nothing 
except in so far as that advance disarms 
our Ally more tlian it disanns the Austro- 
Germans. There is no natural obstacle against 
which the Russian armies can be thrust ; there is 
indefinite space through which they can retire. 
They have behind them in mere numbers, if time 
be granted, an ample margin for recovering. But 
this continued advance, which is also an invasion, 
with its capture of populous cities, its ruin of vast 
countrysides, its torture and enslavement of those 
left behind, has upon the nation resisting and 
retre^.ting a moral effect the degree of which we 
do not laiow. It has even upon certain indi- 
viduals in other more favoured nations a moral 
effect also. We find the enemy calculating upon 
a disarray in the national organisation of Russia; 
we find him noting with pleasure ?.nd quoting 
widely by Government orders through his Press 
the panic which has fallen upon men of the baser 
sort in this country. 
What the measure may be of the political 
effect achieved upon Russian society we cannot 
judge. We know that there has been a change 
in the higher command. We know that the new 
experimental Parliament of Russia has been pro- 
rogued for a couple of months at the most, and 
may be recalled at any moment. 
That these effects of the invasion have had 
any reflex action upon the armies we see no trace. 
It is not certain at the moment T write that 
the retreat from Vilna has been successfully 
accomplished, but it is probable, as we have seen; 
and ii it is so, then the armies so saved have 
f)assed through the severest possible test of discip- 
ine, endurance, and homogeneity. The dis- 
appointment and true strategical defeat of the 
enemy in his aim steadily pursued for two full 
weeks in this region will, in that case, be cruel 
and perhaps final. 
We cannot, I say, measure the political effect 
of the enemy's advance on tiie Eastern front. 
We know that it exists; we -see that it 
has not affected the military situation as 
yet. We hope that it will decline. What we can 
do is to control, by public authority and through 
our own private wills, any corresponding political 
effect in this country. If, here, the one territory 
of the three great Allies not invaded, any insanity 
of fear be permitted, or any still baser motive of 
saving private fortune by an inconclusive peace, 
then the political effect at which the enemy ia 
aiming will indeed have been achieved. 
These things are contagious. We must root 
out and destroy the seed of that before it grows 
more formidable. If we do not we are deliberately 
risking disaster. But be very certain of this : 
That if by whatever lack of judgment, or worse, 
an inconclusive peace be arranged, this country 
alone of the gi'eat alliance will, perhaps unsup- 
ported, be the target of future attack. 
As a mere military recital we discover that 
the enemy's great offensive through Poland, begun 
on April 29, has now, in the last week of 
September, failed, and failed, and failed. It has 
caused the retirement of the Russian armies. It 
has not broken them ; it has enveloped no portion 
of them. If it has cost a little more to our Ally in 
men than to the enemy (which is doubtful), it has 
cost to the enemy, in proportion to his means — in 
men — vastly more than it has cost to Russia. If, as 
I am inclined to conclude, on this Tuesday after- 
noon, in spite of absence of final news, the retreat 
from Vilna has been decided in favour of the 
Russians, no more significant lesson has been 
afforded in all these months upon the Eastern 
front of the enemy's inability to win. 
It is not enough to know these things as a 
proposition in mathematics, or as a problem in 
chess may be known. They must enter into the 
consciousness of the nation; and this they will 
not do if the opposite and false statement calcu- 
lated to spread panic and to destroy judgment be 
permitted to work its full evil unchecked by public 
authority. 
RUSSIAN OPl; RATIONS 
SOUTH. 
IN THE 
I said last week that I would postpone to thia 
issue a consideration of the sectors south of the 
marshes. What has happened here is chiefly im- 
portant to our judgment from the inferences that 
may be drawn. The mere fact that the Russian 
armies have slightly advanced and that, therefore, 
their position has heartened the civilian opinion 
of their Allies is not in a strategical analysis of 
any particular importance. That advance has 
not been extended over any considerable belt of 
territory; it has been very wisely restricted, as will 
be seen when we come to the sketch of its ground. 
The fact that a total of over 60,000 prisoners 
was taken is of more significance; the fact that 
80 per cent, of the heavy artillery of one of the 
German divisions at work fell into Russian hands 
is again of importance, as is the further fact 
that two whole German divisions, including ono 
of the Guard, were surrounded and completely 
destroyed. But more important than the numeri- 
cal estimate of the success is, as I have said, the 
inference to be drawn from it. Which is that, 
while the Russians suffer from their present, and 
necessary, future division into three groups, each 
with its own independent sujiply and communica- 
tions; while this svstem — imposed upon them by 
