LAND cV WATER 
July 20, 1916 
and my readers may remember how I later pointed out in 
contrast with the fighting round Verdun, the enem\' 
depended upon the resisting power of his first line. What 
dcx's this mean in the case of such an offensive as the 
present ? It means that the success of the operation 
is to be tested not only in the concentration it compels 
upon the enemy, the sucking up of his reserves and the 
losses inflicted upon the concentration once effected, (the 
triple numerical effect of an offensive), but in the extent 
also to which one can prevent, by the rapidity or the 
violence of one's further blows as one advances, his formu- 
tian of new lines. 
If you either advance with such rapidity or strike with 
such weight that your total offensive effect is rising more 
rapidly than your enemy's defensive powei can recreate 
itself, then you are upon a curve which leads straight 
to victory, and that is what every offensive is trying 
to do. There have in the present case been unavoidable 
factors opposing our success ; much the chief of these has 
been the weather. The enem\' has had more time than 
he otherwise i would ha\'e had to dig himself in and to 
create new lines in the place of those he has lost . Never- 
theless, in spite of this ad\crse factor of the weather in 
the situation, the progress of the offensi\'e has been 
singularly regular. The inability to check it ; the lack 
of a serious reaction against the alternate bombardments 
and advances as yet has been by far its most marked 
feature. The enemy, it must be remembered, had nearly 
two years in which to create that " crust " which has 
been broken to pieces over an extent of 14 miles from 
the fields just outside Villers to the fields just south 
of Thiepval. We may be certain that all the energy 
he can now command is being furiously concentrated 
upon the consolidation of his third line, along the ridge, 
and whatever new work he is beginning beyond. But he 
is doing that work under such a fire as he never knew 
before, and within limits of time exceedingly restricted. 
I do not know whether anyone has been at the pains of 
contrasting what has happened here upon the Somme with 
what hapix>ned when the (Germans delivered their first 
great blow against Verdun. At any rate, I have not seen 
the thing tabulated in any part of our Press, so it may be 
worth noting here. 
No matter what test you take-Uie number of un- 
wounded prisoners taken, the number of divisions against 
which the blow was delivered, tiie accuracy, the rate, 
and the weight of the artillery preparation, the expense 
in men necessarj' to the result, the artillery captured, or 
even the acreage of territory over which the advance has 
proceeded, the offensive on the Somme has shown itself 
tn every single point superior to the German effort upon 
the Verdun sector last February and early March. The 
blow was struck against forces more numerous than the 
forces holding the line from Ornes t6 the Meuse. It 
struck against a wider front ; captured more ground more 
quickly ; took far more prisoners and far more guns. 
By any test you like to apply it was at once the greater 
and the better of the two operations. It is a curious proof 
of the way in which the war ma\- be misunderstood that 
such a contrast has not generally ocrurred to the public 
mind. 
It will be interesting to note the effect of the general 
offensive to which the enemy is now subjected upon his 
official casualty lists. The result will be a very good 
measure of his present confusion. 
I do not mean that we shall learn \ery much by noting 
the numbers of casualties admitted, because such numbers 
are invariably false. The enemy admits less than the 
truth. But i mean that a certain object which he now 
has clearly in view each time he ecUts his lists will be 
more necessary of attainment than c\'er it was before, and 
if he is not able to attain that object fully, it will be a very 
striking proof indeed of the disarray into which his present 
embarrassments ha%e thrown him. That object is the 
continued deception of a great and important body of 
opinion in this country. 
Nowhere else throughout the Alliance are the German 
casualty lists taken seriously. The French possess 
positive proof of their incompleteness, and the Russians 
have also been able to apply tests proving the same upon 
their s^de. 
But in England, especially during the last few months, 
the enemy has unfortunately attained in some measure 
the end he had in view, and he has got not only a con- 
siderable section of opinion, but an influential one to 
accept his figures as accurate. 
The Russian Offensive 
WHAT has happened upon the Russian front 
in the past week is this : Bothmer still stands 
advanced in the centre with his large Austro- 
(iennan army. In the south, at X and V 
on .Map III., the Russians threaten the Carpathian roads 
into Hungary. 
In the north the enemy has been compelled from 
lack of effectives to fall back upon the left hand side (at 
A on Map III.) qf the great Lutsk salient exactly as he 
was compelled the week before to fall back from the 
right hand side (at B) and to abandon the line of the 
Styr for that of the Stokhod. 
In other words the real importance of the news is 
not so much that the enemy has had to give ground as that 
he has had to give ground because he is anxious for the 
strength of his line and cannot at the moment sufficiently 
reinforce it. 
It is an exceedingly important matter, for it is upon tlie 
general anxiety of the enemy proceeding from such a 
cause that the whole character of the campaign depends 
at this moment. 
How can we be certain that it was anxiety for the 
strength of his line which made him thus retire upon the 
left hand side of the great Lutsk salient ? The statement 
sounds paradoxical, because by so retiring he actually 
added to the mileage which he had to hold : for it is clear 
ihat every enlargement of a salient increases in length 
the sector to be defended. 
Nevertheless, we are certain that he retired from 
penury of men by noting the nature of the retirement. 
It was, in his own words, unmolested. In other words, 
after having suffered very heavily numerically kom 
prolonged action, he withdrew the remainder of his forces 
at night unpressed by his foe and he fell back from a 
position more or less open to a position naturally defended 
which, though somewhat longer in actual mileage could, 
for a breathing space, b: held by less men. 
In order to understand this let the reader glance at 
the accompanying sketch, which contains, of course, only 
the bare elements of the situation, but which is sufficient 
to explain it. 
Here on the south-western or left hand comer of 
the great Lutsk salient, the line lay as does the line A..\.A. 
on the accompanying Map III., and for many days there 
had been an undecided and furious struggle going on from 
the Styr at one end to the bend near Swiniuty at the other 
over a distance of about sixteen miles. The left hand of 
the enemy's line, that is the part in front of and near 
Pustomity was largely reinforced by tiermans. It is the 
furthest point south to which the (iermans have been able 
to send reinforcements directly in aid of their ally since 
the great Russian offensive began. For the two (ierman 
