July 6, igi6 
LAND & WATER 
The Final Phase 
By Hilaire Bclloc 
[The following commcntayv on the militarv situation 
was telegraphed by Mr. Belloc jrom the Italian Front 
on Monday, July yd. It is neccssarilv incomplete. 
His full and detailed analvsis of the Allied Offensive 
on the Western Front will appear next week.] 
IF we look upon the war as a whole we shall see that 
there is so strict a co-ordination between the various 
parts of the Allied higher commands that every- 
thing which has taken place since June jrd, ex- 
actly a calendar month ago, forms part of one plan. That 
plan IS already fairly understood bv the general public, 
which has been wisely admitted to a larger measure of 
confidence than it has enjoyed in the past. 
It was known everywhere and was indeed the common 
sense of the situation that the Russian offensive in Volhy- 
nia and on the borders of Galicia and in the Bukovina 
was the preliminary and the calculated preliminary to 
action elsewhere. What was not known and what could 
not be known, because such things are not calculable, was 
the measure of success it might attain. But it was clear 
that whatever the measure of that success might be, the 
first of the summer attacks upon what are essentially the 
works of a besieged fortress, would be followed when once 
their effect began to develop by corresponding movements 
upon other sectors of that immense interrupted line which 
runs from the Baltic to the Roumanian frontier across the 
Southern Balkans from Monfalcone, all along the Italian 
Alpine front to the Ortler, and then after the neutral 
territory of Switzerland from Belfort to Dunkirk. 
Action upon the westernmost front was not designed 
by the Alliance to be delivered until a full month after 
the first effects of the Russian pressure should be felt, nor 
was it certain where the first consequences of that pres- 
sure would show themselves. As a fact' they showed 
themselves, as we all know, in the Trentino. 
The Russian attack has succeeded — I will not say 
beyond the Allied expectations, for I have no knowledge 
of what calculations were made — but certainly beyond 
anything which the enemy had thought possible. We 
know from many sources of information that the enemy 
had staked everything upon the supposed sufficiency of 
his defensive line between the Pripet Marshes and 
Roumania. 
The Austrian effectives detailed to the defence of the 
line between the middle Styr and the sector in front of 
Czernowitz, together with two or four German divisions 
lent in aid, were calculated upon that normal minimum 
of somewhat over three thousand men to the mile, in- 
cluding of course the local reserves which had been 
thought essentially sufficient for the works prepared 
under German guidance in this southern half of the 
enemy's eastern front against Russia. Within three 
weeks close upon half these original effectives had dis- 
appeared. 
More important than the local advances effected by 
the Russians was the tremendous depletion of the enemy 
strength between the marshes and the Roumanian fron- 
tier. With new bodies of men the Germans could help their 
aUies but little, and when the Russians had formed their 
great salient round Lutsk the Germans countered the 
danger by massing heavy pieces along the middle Styr 
and upon the Stokhod, both below and above the place 
where that marshy stream is crossed by the railway lead- 
ing to Kovel. There the Russians held and hold the 
bridge-head of Svidniki. 
At that bridge-head the Russians remained. East of 
it up the Stokhod, across the narrow belt between the 
Stokhod and the Styr and so down the Styr past 
Godomichi and Kolki, they still remain upon the western 
bank of the river. But the newly concentrated German 
heavy artillery holds them there. 
What the Germans had not the strength to do even m 
guns let alone in men, was to produce a smular check 
upon the southern half of the Hue. Upon the extrenie 
left of the southern portion of the Russian advance, that 
advance proved continuous. The Austrian army at 
Czernowitz was broken into two portions. One retired 
upon Kolomea and one upon Uorna Watla just beyond 
Kimpolung, both of these places defending the foot of 
the Carpathian passes into Hungary, the first the Jab- 
lonitza, the second the Borgo. But of these two the first 
was by far the most important, and the Russian threat to 
Kolomea, now just occupied, has been the concern of the 
enemy for a fortnight past. 
Meanwhile this first breach in the outworks of the great 
siege, this disaster suffered by the enemy in Volhynia 
and in the Bukovitia, was followed by the abandon- 
ment of his adventure in the Trentino. 
I pointed out last week the fact that the Austrian 
offensive in the Trentino was essentially a German move. 
The Austrian units there were closely overlooked and 
ordered even upon the divisional staffs by (ierman ofiicers. 
The whole plan in its larger lines, as in its details, was a 
repetition of Verdun. It had absorbed i8 divisions and 
between two and three thousand guns, half of them heavy 
pieces. It had been undertaken with only the single and 
difficult line of supply reaching from the fortified junction 
of Franzensfeste to Trent to feed it, because it was 
thought certain of success. It failed. The ItaUans 
concentrated men against it with an ease and celerity 
which I hope to describe in my article upon the Italian 
front in a week's time, and at last the Austrian retire- 
ment was ordered. 
The moment was one of capital importance in the 
history of the war. It marked the beginning of those 
straits for men, of that necessary' shortening of the front 
which has been the necessary and calculated result of the 
Allied operations since first the enemy lost his ad\ antagc 
of mere numbers, and still more since his advantage in 
munitions began to fall to a parity with our own. In a 
sense, the withdrawal of the Austro-German division 
from the Balkans was an earher manifestation of the 
same tendency, and Bidou, whose anonymous work in 
the Dihats of Paris and whose admirable signed 
study of Verdun has made him deservedly famous, 
pointed it out many weeks ago. 
But the abandonment of the Trentino offensive, the 
steady pressure of the Italian pursuit, and the immediate 
connection of these with the Russian advance, were the 
first clear example of a shortening of front, of an anxiety 
for men and resources, apparent upon the map to the 
public eye. The enemy retirement from the enclosed 
basin of Asiago, his occupation of new defensive lines, 
roughly corresponding to the old frontier, his obvious 
intention of withdrawing as rapidly as possible through 
the narrow neck of the bottle of the men and guns he had 
so foolishly packed beyond Trent, was hardly in full 
swing when the third act of the great drama opened and 
a general bombardment was remarked against the enemy 
along all the front held by the British between the 
Somme and La Bassee. 
F'or some days this preliminary, the significance of 
which was a matter of open comment upon all sides, pro- 
ceeded. It was accompanied by what the French call 
" soundings." that is, the feehng of the enemy's lines by 
what would be called in open warfare (and has been called 
by the enemy even in this siege work) — reconnaissances 
These had a double object of discovering the enemy's real 
strength all along the line and of forbidding his move- 
ment of units. 
Such preliminaries were followed by the first blows, 
the results of which arc only just coming to hand as I 
write. It is no overwhelming stroke upon one sector, 
such as were the earlier and inconclusive offensives of this 
war, that is intended. It is a policy which the French 
despatches and semi-official reviews of the war have well 
defined by the metaphor of " crumbling." The enemy 
has gambled upon striking hard at an immense expense in 
men upon one very restricted sector of his western front, 
that of Verdun. 
For cjov nyorv six months the Allied Higher Commands 
