October 9. 19lo. 
LAND AND WATER 
trialised Europe — all save England and Lom- 
bardy and a very small patch of France — is in 
his hands. Look at a map on which metallic in- 
dustry is specially marked, and you will see at 
once the enormous advantage in production of 
munitions which the enemy still enjoys. He 
has the machinery of all that is industrial 
in Poland and the most valuable territory 
of all for the purpose of metallic production, 
Belgium, and the iron fields and coalfields of 
Northern France. He has these huge resources 
over and above his own, which, even before the 
war, were upon a larger scale than of any other 
of the greater industrialised countries in propor- 
tion to population. In forcing the war as a war 
of machinery he must fight it under the condi- 
tions which his successes and reverses impose. He 
suffers the disadvantage of being unable to import 
shells, . though he has been allowed to import 
cotton freely — and cotton he could not have got at 
all from within, whereas shell he can get. On 
the other hand, he enjoys the advantage which his 
successes by land in the earlier part of the cam- 
paign gave him, of being able to lay his hands 
upon nearly all the machinery of Continental 
Europe. The French alone, with a tenth of his 
original opportunities in machinery and skilled 
labour, are already producing not far short of 
half his total. Had he but the adaptability and 
creative energy of the French he would have been 
able, though cut off from American industrial 
resources, to improvise an immensely larger pro- 
duction of shell and of guns ; he would never have 
lost, even in the West, the numerical superiority 
which has now passed from him. But he has not 
that adaptability and creative power. Fie never 
had. He preferred " efficiency " and " organisa- 
tion," and he must pay the price. 
Granted, however, that he is unlikely to 
recover a superiority either in men or in muni- 
tions upon this Western front, there remains the 
factor of time. 
The questions which the Higher Command is 
putting to itself at this moment and the questions 
which every student of the war is also putting to 
himself at this moment in connection with the 
Western front are these three : 
'■ What proportion of the accumulated muni- 
tionment destined to the great offensive was used 
in this first blow ? 
" In what delay will further concentration of 
men and a further accumulation of munitionment 
permit a second blow being delivered upon the 
same model as the first, and presumably with the 
same results? 
" When it is delivered, will its main effect 
be looked for in the same sectors as have already 
been attacked, or in new ones, and, if so, in what 
new ones? " 
Now to those three questions an answer can 
only be supplied by the Allied Higher Command 
in the West. No critic or student can presume to 
answer tliem, or would if he could. F'or upon the 
inability of the enemy to guess the ansv>er 
depends the campaign. 
The answer must come in the actual develop- 
ment of the war, and only by that development 
shall we know in what further delay the next step 
will be taken and where. 
Biit it remains true that the power to take 
this next step lies now absolutely with the Anglo- 
French Command; that the enemy has not remain- 
ing to him a power of counter-attack sufficient to 
prevent it, unless he shall find some way of main- 
taining himself in the East without disaster and 
yet with lessening forces, and by transferring to 
the West from the East a margin of guns, shell, 
and men which he has hitherto found necessary 
upon the East. 
II.— THE EASTERN SITUATION. 
I say the W^estern Front is now the thing of 
the Allies. They can act when and where they^ 
choose, unless the enemy shall set large reinforce- 
ments free from the East. 
But the state of affairs in Lithuania does not 
seem to promise anything of the sort to the 
enemy. 
It is a very old story, and one pretty obvious 
from the map, that he could, if he would, have 
held with lesser forces, at a moment when he still 
had very large reserves, the line on the Vistula 
and the San. 
I will not repeat the arguments with which 
my readers are fully familiar — the railway system 
of Poland, the tangle of the Masurian Lakes 
thoroughly studied and profoundly organised, the 
nature of the Vistula obstacle. All these made an 
almost perfect system for the purpose of defence. 
The line from the Carpathians to the Baltic 
was a short one. It was capable of prolonged 
resistance, and it would have released very great 
bodies of men who were attempting a decision in 
the West. That opportunity the enemy refused. 
He refused it as long ago as last June. He pre- 
ferred to go forward over the whole of Poland 
and into the marshes of Lithuania, because he wag 
led by two quite separate objects. Each is pos- 
sible. Both are difficult of achieveinent. The first 
was the military object of achieving a decision 
by dividing the Russian armies, or at next best, 
of surrounding some portions of them, or at third 
best, of wearing down the Russians by perpetual 
losses of men and rifles until Russia should no 
longer be able to go back to the attack. The second 
was the political object, of impressing Russian 
opinion by his advance so that Ru.ssia should give 
up the game and accept a separate peace — to 
which was added a secondary political object of 
impressing neutrals by that advance, in which 
latter he has been fairly successful. 
Now the enemy, having determined last June 
not to accept the Vistula line, but to go forward, 
would seem to have condemned himsdf to an in- 
determinate offensive. It is certain that lie cannot 
hold the line Riga — Lemberg in the fashion that 
he could have held the line of the Vistula. He may 
be able to put up a prolonged defensive against 
the very gradual recovery of the Russians, but it 
will be a defensive requiring very much greater 
bodies of men than would have been required by 
the holding of the Vistula line. He cannot merely 
entrench from north to soutli for three reasons. 
The first, that the nr.ture of the ground forbids 
him to hold continv.oudii in this fashion; the 
second, that he has not the communications and all 
the other conditions of an old and high civilisa- 
tion to support such a sy^^fcni (as he has in the 
West); and, thirdly, that the climate and 
geographical conditions interfere v/ith any such 
continuous line. He could hardly establish it, if 
he should begin to do so now, during the autumn 
rains. He cannot establish it at all if he waits 
for the frost. . 
And with all this there is the consideration 
