LAND & WATER 
August 3, 1916 
southward to the Lutsk salient against Brussilov, but it 
failed to lay hands on the important railway junction 
of Baranovitchi. 
It was upon Sunday, the 2nd of July, that the first 
great Russian infantry attack following upon the bom- 
bardment, was delivered. By the next day, the 3rd, the 
Russians had carried the ist and 2nd line of the Austro- 
German trenches, had taken eight guns, not quite 3,000 
prisoners, and were estabhshed in the village of Ekim- 
ovitchi. The success was considerable, but it was not 
tinal at all. It put the junction just under possible dis- 
tant gun fire, but not usefully so. 
All that week, then, on until the Thursday, the struggle 
continued, slightly extending to right and left as it did 
so. But with the' Thursday (the 6th) the counter-concen- 
tration of the enemy was fully effected and his counter- 
attacks began. 
In the night between the Thursday and the Friday (6th 
to 7th of July) the Russians retired to about the level 
of the village of Odchovtchina at on Map IV. During 
the succeeding four days up to Monday the loth, the 
Austro-Germans' counter attacks were still pressed with 
very heavy losses but without further result. They were 
particularly severe in the neighbourhood of Liuranitchi, 
(at L) and the last of their efforts in the night delivered 
between the 13th and 14th of July, was in the same neigh- 
bourhood. It had no effect upon the Russian line, but, 
on the other hand, the total result of these actions, and 
especially of the strong counter-offensives which had tilled 
a whole week, was to prevent General Evert from seizing* 
the Baranovitchi Junction, his main objective. He has 
even got it under fire (I think) at long range and he 
stands apparently on the line of the River Schschara. 
At the same time the Russian right wing was attempt- 
ing to occupy a point of subsidiary and yet of consider- 
able importance in front of Smorgoni. 
This point was a hill from which complete obier^-ation 
was had by the enemy of all our Ally's positions. This 
observatory formed a sharp salient in the enemy's fines 
and was on that account vulnerable to the Russian efforts. 
The first bombardment, M'hich was very intense, was 
delivered simultaneously with the Baranovitchi attack 
upon the 2nd of July, in the morning. At a quarter to 
ten three Russian mines, prepared upon an unusual scale, 
were exploded under the hill ; the infantry was launched 
immediately afterwards and the hill taken, its Saxon 
garrison being totally destroyed with the exception of 
the remainder of two companies. For the three follow- 
ing days violent German counter-attacks succeeded each 
other against the hill, but what fate they have exactly had 
it is impossible to say, because the accounts published in 
the German Press have been almost as confused and con- 
tradictory in narrative as they have been theatrical in 
language. At any rate, somewhere about the Wednesday or 
the Thursday following that Sunday (July 2nd) on which 
the hill was captured, it was shared by the Russians and 
the Germans, who were holding as best they could one 
against the other the craters of the mines. 
As an observation post the position is lost to the enemy, 
but it has not, 1 think, been wholly organised and retained 
by our Allies. ^ 
The three weeks that have passed since that date have 
shown no further development in this region except a 
small local affair in which certain German trenches near 
the village of Martochi, north of Smorgoni, fell into 
Russian hands upon the 21st of the month. 
The Somme Offensive 
The characteristic of this week's news with regard 
to the great offensive on the Somme, is the power of the 
Allies to advance continuously. It is only a continuation 
of what the whole month has taught us. A superior power 
of concentration, both in men and in gims, and probably 
superior value in the personnel, is doing its work. The 
best way in which we can judge the nature of that work 
is by comparing it with the parallel story of Verdun. Take 
calendar month for calendar month ; look at the German 
situation at the end of the first month in front of Verdun, 
compare it with the Allied situation at the end of the first 
month on the Somme, and you have your contrast 
graphically presented. There is, of course, much more 
than this, for there is the immense and sustained loss 
which the superiority in fire upon the Allied side is imposing 
upon the enemy at the moment when such numerical 
loss is for him disastrous. But the mere graphic repre- 
sentation of the contrast is sufficiently striking. 
The Germans before Verdun, like the Allies upon the 
Somme, made in the first few days a vigorous advance 
over a belt of territory varying from one to four miles. 
I have already pointed out that they made it upon a 
shorter front and against lesser forces. But while there 
is in the first days a great similarity between the two 
operations, the Somme can be proved the superior of the 
two. It is not in this first week, it is in the following 
three weeks that the contrast begins to show ; all those 
three weeks the Germans on the West of the river were 
stopped dead. Some of their units, at least one division 
of the i8th corps and both divisions of the 3rd,, to our 
knowledge had actually disappeared. They held the 
outer houses of Vaux ; they stood within a few yards of 
where they had originally stood on Douaumont; they 
had not gained an inch upon Pepper Hill. Upon the 
left bank they had occupied the triangle of land repre- 
sented by the lower course of the Forges Brook and were 
half in possession of the Crows Wood. Those three 
weeks had been marked by slight fluctuations backwards 
and forwards of the line, the greater part of Which 
remained intact. 
The story of the Somme has been utterly different. 
You have had the French pass through successive periods 
from four to six days long, in which they were losing hardly 
any men and were accumulating for the succeeding 
step. Each time that step has been taken it has 
been immediately and entirely successful. Hardecourt 
was taken in something like half an hour. The 
news this week is of the same character. A short, 
intensive bombardment and the carrying at once in a few 
hours and with surprisingly low casualties of all the 
trenches in the valley and beyond th6 light railway up 
to the edge of Maurepas. The British front, against 
which the enemy effort has been more violent, has been 
the scene of very tenacious and continual conflict, most of 
it close fighting, all of it without exception ultimately 
turning in our favour. That advance has cleared the 
whole, of the Delville Wood and now occupies, I believe, 
a small belt of the open country beyond upon the Flers 
road. In the centre it is in occupation of half the 
Foureaux Wood and there, I understand, some elements 
already overlook the slope beyond. 
Upon the left all Pozieres has been carried, and though 
I have not seen any confirmation of the occupation as yet 
of the highest point, where the windmill used to stand, the 
British forces cannot, at the present moment, be removed 
from it by more than three hundred yards or so. 
The great point of interest in all that action now is 
the fate of the German 3rd line. The 3rd line has been 
described in communiques to be in what the French call 
contre pcnte, upon a principle which has been several 
times described in this paper. The French applied it, 
for instance, upon the Cote du Poivre and elsewhere 
round Verdun, and it would seem to be an almost universal 
method taught by the experiences of the war. Upon this 
principle a trench system is designed not upon a summit 
or just beyond a summit, as would have been the case 
in the old days, but upon the further and falling side of 
the hill. It has the disadvantage that observation 
must be taken from posts ad\anced beyond the line, 
but it has the advantage that fire upon such a system 
of trenches must be indirect, and that fire which is not at 
a high angle cannot reach the trenches, because it passes 
over the summit of the hill and the curve of the trajectory 
is not sharp enough to bring the shell to earth until a 
point beyond the trench line. When the French trenches 
were first established upon the Cote du Poivre, the greater 
part of the German shell passed over them. The instance 
of the Cote du Poivre at Verdun is not an exact parallel, 
because the hill is much steeper and the trenches corre- 
spondingly better secured than is the case on the very 
