December 23, 1915. 
AND AND WATER 
bridges. What the length of time may be before 
heavy shell can be supplied continuously to the 
enemy's front before Salonika only the experience 
of the near future will show ; but it would be an 
error to coimt too much upon this delay, or to be 
guided in this matter by the analogy of past wars. 
Throughout this campaign the great industrial 
countries, the Western powers as well as the 
enemy, have repaired damaged railway lines at a 
much faster rate than calculations based upon past 
experience allowed ; for modern industry has 
changed the whole character of the problem in a 
generation. Even a great girder bridge across a 
broad and deep river is a thing the reconstruction 
of which is allowed for and prepared long before 
the date of its destruction by a retiring foe. The 
sections are all ready and waiting. We may in the 
future have occasion to prove this in the case of the 
Rhine. The Germans have already proved it in 
the case of the Meuse, the Vistula and the San, 
and the French upon the Marne, the Somme and 
the Oise. 
SUMMARY. 
To sum up then :— Salonika is defensible along 
a horse-shoe of positions, AAA, reaching round 
the upper gulf from shore to shore, first following 
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2." -met 
a mountain ridge and then the Vardar line. Its 
most vulnerable sector is the open 10 miles or so 
indicated on Sketch II by a double line. 
Besides this "Horse-shoe," the position may 
be further protected by works and batteries strung 
out along the " Line of the Lakes," BB. 
POLICY OF "TORRES-VEDRAS." 
It is clear that the determination to hold 
Salonika at all is part of a policy which is often 
called in this country that of " Torres- Vedras," 
from the line established by Wellington in 1809 for 
the defence of the seaport of Lisbon. These lines en- 
abled him to keep open his entry into the Peninsula 
whence, upon the weakening of Napoleon's forces 
through the efflux of time and campaigns elsewhere, 
he was able to issue and gradually to obtain the 
mastery over his opponents. 
The strategics of such a plan may be formulated 
exhaustively as : — *' The Strategics of a base 
possessed of ample and secure communications 
and lying upon the flank of the enemy's main line 
of action." 
Let us see what the elements of such a position 
are. 
(i) The base must be impregnable to attack 
within those limits of time beyond which the 
enemy's strength in the region affected is calcu- 
lated not to increase, and afler which it is calculated 
that his strength will decline. 
No fortiiied position is tenable foran mdefinite 
length of time ; the problem is always dynamic 
and not static. Indeed, it is the inability to 
recognise so elementary a truth which leads to the 
foolish talk of " stale-mate " in connection with 
the trench-warfare in the West. Sooner or later 
one of the two opponents proves unequal to his 
task ; the besieged line is broken by the besiegers, 
or the besieged succeed in raising the siege. And 
this is due to the simple fact that all armies are 
subject to wastage and no army can command 
indefinitely large recruitment. 
The first requisite, therefore, of this policy is 
that there shall be a reasonable certiitude of being 
able to defend the point of entry until an offensive 
movement from it shall be possible. 
(2) The next characteristic of this policy is 
that the point so held shall he upon a flank of the 
enemy's main action. 
It is clear that the holding of a single Port 
against the enemy's main forces in a great war, 
under the inability to do more for a long space of 
time than so to hold it, would be futile. It would 
leave the enemy complete initiative and full 
liberty of action anywhere except upon one short 
sector. For the policy we are discussing the 
enemy must be principally occupied elsewhere ; 
that is, the main direction of his action uniting his 
own bases with his principal objective must be 
such that the point held lies on the side of it 
mazniizie ofacfton . • 
(Sketch III). Only thus does this subsidiary 
operation (for it can never be more) disturb and 
threaten his main action. 
(3) The lines so occupied defending a Port must 
not themselves be susceptible of containment by a 
comparatively small proportion of the , enemy's 
total in that region. ; , 
For instance, I may occupy solidly the neck of 
an isthmus defending a Port and make certain 
that for such and such a considerable length of time 
my lines will never be forced. But if the ground 
is such that the enemy, drawing parallel lines 
against mine, can hold them with weak forces, that 
is, with a small proportion of his total forces in 
that region, then the holding of the Port is of no 
use to me. The enemy does not feel it to be a 
menace. 
(4) Lastly, it is obvious that the whole value and 
meaning of such a policy entirely depends upon the 
security and fullness of the communications behind 
the fortified point. 
In the case of a Port those communications are 
communications by sea. But the sea is at once an 
