LAND & WATER 
August 3, 1916 
The Crisis on the Eastern Front 
By Hilaire Belloc 
TE are approaching or have reached upon the 
/ Southern half of the Eastern front a critical 
TT 7 
^^^^ moment which may pro\'e decisive of the 
T T whole campaign. 
By tliis I do not mean, of course, that we have reached 
a moment, in time after which decisive events will im- 
mediately appear. This puerile fashion of judging mili- 
tary events by the immeditate future is responsible for 
half the misconceptions which the public is apt to 
entertain. 
The essential points to note in military as in many other 
affairs — but especially in military affairs— are the events 
or the circumstances which change and determine the 
general course of things. It is the moment of causation 
that is of interest ; not the moment in which the ultimate 
effect appears. 
The greatest instance of all in this campaign was of course 
the Battle of the Marne. It stamped with a general 
character it has never lost the whole further course of 
the war. The ultimate result of that great action has 
been delayed far beyond the expectation of anyone in 
Europe at the time it was fought. But that does not 
affect its magnitude and supreme interest to the student 
of military affairs. 
Just as it was clear (to take a point of detail) that the 
entry of the Russians into Kolomea was a turning point ; 
that the possession of that junction made certain — no 
matter in what delay — a host of secondary effects (chief 
of which was the cutting of the main railway into Hungary, 
which took place, I believe, a week later) so on the most 
general of all issues — to wit — the final phase of the great 
war — the present week, or at any rate the immediate 
future upon the Eastern front may prove the critical 
moment of causation, the ultimate result of which will 
not be apparent until the breakdown of the enemy's 
defensive. 
What peculiar character have the events of this week 
to justify so strong a statement ? 
They have the following character : , 
There has been decided a test of the most important 
and fundamental kind, one for which both the Russian 
and the German Higher Command were in an.xiety ; one 
which both the Russian and the German Higher Command 
were prepared to regard as almost final. 
General Brifesilov, with a success quite unexpected 
b}' the enemyjhad broken the southern part of the enem5''s 
Eastern front in two placesduringtheearly days of June. 
He had broken it in front of Czernowitz, and he had broken 
it in front of Olyka. He had begun to create two bulges, 
the large one in the North called after Lutsk, which was 
more or less in its centre; the smaller one in the south 
which corresponded with the occupation of the Bu- 
kovina. 
This success had been obtained against a certain mini- 
mum number of Austro-German troops averaging no more 
than two men to the yard run. A blow so unexpectedly 
powerful and successful left unparried would simply have 
decided the war then and there. A big breach would 
have opened in the perimeter of the besieged fortress ; 
the enemy's lines would no longer have been intact and 
the end would have come. It was obvious that no such 
disaster could be contemplated . The enemy immediately 
pushed in, for the holding and more than the holding of 
the lines on which he had retired, every available man 
and gun. 
The resources 'were not enormous, for the Austrian 
Empire possessed no true strategic reserve ;* the German 
Empire only a few divisions which have since all been 
brought into play. 
• I must repeat that the term " strategic reserve " signifies here 
a number of complete divisions, fully equipped and trained, kept far 
from any scene of action, and ready to be thrown here or there at the 
will of the Highly: Command to support or decide the end of a struggle. Of 
reserve of man power in the shape of Class iqi8 and the remainder of 
10 and '17 and the convalescents there is still, of course, an available 
kupply. 
When we say that every available man and gun was 
rushed up we mean 15 to iq divisions : 4 (possibly increasing 
to eight) from the Trentino ; eleven added by the Germans 
to this part of the line, and taken at some peril from the 
North, the West, and an unknown proportion from 
what was left in the interior. 
More important than this concentration of men was 
the concentration of heavy artillery. There the enemy 
had a very great though no longer an overwhelming 
superiority, not only in the number of his guns but in their 
calibre and, most important of all, in their munitionment. 
Now with such rapidly added forces (and the counter- 
concentration was very well done, smooth, quick, and 
apparently sufficient) the German Higher Command (for 
they had taken over the whole affair) proposed to stop 
the Russian pressure for good and all and not only to put 
an end to the Russian advance, but to return the pres- 
sure so as to threaten later an ad\ance of their own. 
At first it looked as though the enemy would succeed. 
The Russians were everywhere severely pressed. They 
were not only held upon the line of the Styr ; they 
were in places forced to the further bank of that river. 
The great Lutsk salient which they had formed was thrust 
back also upon its western and its southern faces. From 
the neighbourhood of Gorochow it lost ground nearly half 
way to Lutsk itself. The enemy centre in front ol 
Tarnopol held ; and even to the south the Germans 
sent two whole divisions which could not save Kolomea, 
but still form part of the armies which on Monday last 
were just covering Stanislau. 
Much more than this, of course, was intended. While 
the Russian Higher Command was counteracting, by 
renewed, but as yet unsuccessful pressure, to the right 
and the left of the Lutsk salient — attempting, as it were, 
to press back the very great and increasing pressure 
of the enemy— the German Higher Command proposed 
when they should have had time to bring up a great head 
of shell, to use their superiority in heavy artillery and to 
strike a great blow at the centre of the salient from due 
west of Lutsk eastwards and all along the line which 
forms the southern half of the salient up to the Upper 
reaches of the river Styr. In their concentration here 
their forces formed a full third of the whole enemy army, 
and it was the sector containing the largest proportion of 
German units and heavy guns. 
It is at this point that the critical importance of this 
week's news appears. Just before the German blow 
was delivered Brussilov put into action, after a rapid 
regrouping, that superiority in men and in the quality 
of infantry — the actual fighting power of the individual 
soldier — which was his asset against the Austro-German 
mechanical superiority. 
It was, I repeat, a clean test between two methods of 
war, and upon the issue of that test the future of the war 
■in the East would probably turn. 
In the result the test was wholly in favour of the 
Russians and against the Germans and their Austrian 
Allies. The elaborately planned enemy offensive was 
not onjy forestalled, but destroyed. The Russians did 
almost simultaneously three things upon a large scale, 
all of which three things combined very greatly to extend 
the Lutsk sahent, and what is much more important than 
any such territorial gain, modified for the future the 
whole plan of the war in this cjuarter. 
First, they forced the line of the River Stokhod on 
which the Germans had put a full defensive organisation. 
Secondly, they broke through and pushed back in 
disorder the forces due west of Lutsk upon the road to 
Vladimir Volhynsk. 
Thirdly, they completely broke down in the south 
the Austro-German resistance in three rapidly succeeding 
actions : Michailowka ; Berestecho ; and the last one 
in front of Brody which led to the occupation of that 
town. They captured in all tli*se operations combined 
40,000 valid prisoners ; over 100 guns — and among 
