LAND AND WATER. 
February 17, 1916' 
mmiio 
VALONA 
1 
jLake 
Ostrova 
\ \ 
6 / 
2S 
IvTUes 
— J 
service during the whole campaign, the Air Service, is 
the butt of just such an attack. 
The Press has great power, for gooa or evil, but if it is 
used to distort facts, to depress pubhc opinion, there is 
grave danger that it will and so lead to an inconclusive and 
therefore disastrous peace. 
The Western Front. 
The continued attacks upon the northern part of the 
French front may or may not be preliminary to a general 
attack, but it is the almost universal opinion of con- 
tinental observers that they are ; the reason for this 
growing conviction, the value of which the future alone 
can show, is largely the similarity of the method now 
being used in the \\'est with that which preceded the 
great offensive against the Russian Front in Galicia 
last April. It is true that the conditions here and now 
are vastly different. There the enemy knew that his 
opponent was gravely inferior in munitionment and 
almost without heavy pieces - at any rate without any 
of large calibre. Here he knows that his opponent is 
his superior in munitionment and his equal in pieces. 
There he had on the whole lesser numbers opposed to 
him ; here he has far greater numbers opposed to him. 
Here he knows that a \iolent diversion could be created 
against him at any part of an open line 500 miles long ; 
there no such diversion was possible. There he had far 
the superiority in his observ-ation over the enemy's 
lines to discover any concentration on the Russian 
part and to hide any of his own ; here it is exactly the 
other way. It is we -who know more easily where and 
when he is concentrating and he who discovers less easily 
the corresponding movements upon our side. Never- 
theless we know from the past that the German Higher 
Command always tries to repeat in detail any former 
success, and it is on this that the conjecture of a coming 
attempt at a decision is largely founded. 
For the rest the little local attacks continue ; they 
rarely cover a front of more than one mile, never of 
three ; they are expensive to the enemy but worth his 
while if in the course of them he can discover points of 
weakness. They are being carried on so continuously 
that if they have not some such ulterior object they are 
already guilty of waste ; for every one of them costs 
some thousands of men and the completely unsuccessful 
ones, which arc the majority, are pure loss. 
Salonika. 
On the Macedonian front the sending of detachments 
west of the Vardar is chiefly important as showing tlic 
rapidly increasing strength "of the Allied Forces behind 
the lines of Salonika. .\s a base for a direct offensive 
northwards against the main enemy line of communica- 
tions which it is intended to threaten, the Port is badly 
handicapped. Immediately in front of it stretches the 
mass of mountains which marks the great frontier and 
through these there are but two avenues by which large 
bodies can advance — the valleys of the Vardar and the 
Struma, but, with a superiority in numbers, there is an 
obvious method of driving the enemy northward, and 
that is by attacking in Hank from the" west from Valona 
and the Adriatic in synchrony with a direct attack from 
Salonika itself. There is practicable going for troops and 
guns directly from west to east, and the whole situation 
^vere it to develop thus would exactly reverse the con- 
ditions under which the Austro-Germans and Bulgarians 
attacked Serbia in the autumn. 
They came from the north supported by a powerful 
attack in flank from the east; they had far superior 
numbers. The combined frontal and flank attack 
compelled the retirement of the Serbian army south- 
westward with a loss of half their effectives and all theii 
guns ; the .\llied counter-attack when or if it is possessed 
of similar superior numbers would come in front, north- 
ward and in flank from the west compelling an enemy 
retirement north-eastwards. But there is this great 
difference between the two operations ! First, that the 
enemy is not as the Serbians were^ — strictly limited ; he 
can reinforce his menaced front by a continuous rail 
communication ; secondly, the Allies have the power, 
which is capital in value, of creating sudden pressure on 
the Galician front the moment the enemy tries to reinforce 
in Macedonia. Thirdly, the enemy can retire intact 
(unless Koumania decides in our fa\oiir). There is no 
boundary near by such as was the Adriatic shore to the 
Serbians against which their retreat could be driven. 
But the whole of this hypothesis depends upon the 
presence of very large forces acting from tlie Adriatic 
against the Germans and Bulgarians towards Monastir. 
Failing that a direct and isolated ad\ance from Salonika 
would do nothing. 
The present movement of troops across the Vardar 
presages nothing of the kind. It is no more than the 
securing of the bridge heads where the Monastir road 
and railway cross the Vardar, perhaps the securing of the 
low hills beyond which at long range tiireaten the Vardar 
front of tlie Salonika lines, but it proves, as has been said, 
the continually increasing force within those lines. 
H. BliLLOC. 
\Mr. Belloc's analysis of the militayy operations 
oj the ueek is .unavoidably brief, owing to his tem- 
porary absence in France on a special mission. He 
icill deal fully icith several important questions next 
week.] 
