November 20, 1915. 
LAND A N D W A T E R 
THE RUSSIAN FRONT. 
By HILAIRE BELLOC. 
NOTE. — This Article has been submitted to the Press Bureau, which does not object to the publication as censored, and takes no 
responsibility for the correctness of the statements. 
In accordance with the requirements of the Press Bureau, the positions of troops on Plans illustrating this Article must only be 
regarded as approximate, and no definite strength at any point is indicated. 
A GOOD general idea of the Eastern front 
is A'aluable at this moment for two 
reasons. First, that it illustrates all 
those main points upon the present state 
of the campaign with which instructed opinion 
is concerned ; secondh', because the Russian front 
is, and will remain, mobile; that is, fluctuating. 
Let us develop those two points. 
As to the first : that the Russian front es- 
pecially illustrates the present nature of the 
campaign in its main elements. 
The elements in the present situation of the 
Great War upon which all instructed opinion re- 
poses may be thus summarised : 
(i) The enemy has risked the Balkan adven- 
ture mainly with the object of dividing the AUies 
and of producing a poUtical effect. He has done 
so in the hope that this political effect may have 
strategic results in bringing in certain neutral 
forces upon his side. In this hope he has been 
already gratified in the case of Bulgaria. 
(2)3 He has been compelled to make this diver- 
sion because the end of his efficient reserves was 
in sight. He had already, in Germany, warned 
all men up to fifty-two years of age ; in Austria- 
Hungary he had actually taken great groups of men 
up to fifty-one, and had already put some of them 
into the field. He was falling back upon men im- 
perfectly cured and men who had several times been 
rejected by the doctors. He had of a really 
efficient reserve nothing but the classes of '16 
and '17. 
(3) But he estimated his chances of holding 
out through the winter (even with inefficient 
recruitment) as at least even chances because (a) he 
knew that on the Eastern front nothing could be at- 
tempted on a large scale by the I^ussians until 
their great lack of rifles began to get made up, and 
(b) even were the re-equipment of Russia to be 
completed before the end of the winter, the climate 
would forbid a really great Russian offensive to be 
undertaken before the early summer (spring in 
that land being worse than early winter itself). 
Now the whole interest of "the Eastern situa- 
tion hes in the future discovering to us whether 
the enemy's calculation here is sound or unsound. 
And even as early as this moment, the middle of 
November, that drama is beginning to be played, 
and we are beginning to see the effect in action of 
the calculation the enemy has made. For we are 
witnessing (i) the growth of his inefficient recruit- 
ment ; (2) the gradual re-arming of the Russian 
forces, and (3) the beginning of local oft'ensives,at 
least upon the Russian side. 
The line is familiar to the readers of this paper. 
It runs to-day from the Gulf of Riga just West of 
Kemmern, then bends back north and east of 
Mittau to Olai and curls round, striking the Dvina 
near Dahlen Island. It follows the left bank of 
the River Dvina, now touching it. now a few miles 
off, until a point some ten miles from Dvinsk, 
where it falls back north and south, leaving the 
junction of Baranovichi to the enemy and the town 
of Pinsk in the same hands. South of the Pripet 
Marshes this fluctuating line takes the form of a 
struggle for the crossings of the river Styr, the course 
of which it follows until the neighbourhood ol 
Kolki. Thence it runs roughly southwards covering 
Tarnopol and Tremblova to the frontiers of the 
Bukovina. 
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■ ■ ' ' 
l^fUes 
Now as to the second point: the mobile or 
fluctuating character of the Eastern front. 
We should form a very false conception of 
this line if we imagined it to be what the lines are 
in the West. The characteristic of the Western 
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