August 10, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
II 
enormous armies bunched south of the bottle-neck of 
one single mountain railway could feed only on its accu- 
mulated provisions and could not properly be supplied 
over any great length of time by that one railway alone. 
On the other hand, as at Verdun so in the Trentino, a 
rapid success would achieve immediate and grave results. 
The stroke could not be delivered until the season 
was sufficiently advanced for the mountain roads to be 
cleared of snow. The offensive was launched in exactly 
the middle of May. It proceeded with difficulty for one 
fortnight. In the first days of June it had occupied the 
last upland overlooking the Plain upon the Asiago 
Plateau. But meanwhile the Italians had with astonish- 
ing celerity used their inner lines and brought up a 
great concentration to hold the rim of the upland. On 
June 4th it was clear that the Austrians could advance 
no further. They were hampered in three ways so 
severely that success was clearly beyond their reach : 
In the first place their only two roads and railways 
for branching down on to the Plain were strongly held 
upon either flank by Italian forces, which they were 
unable to break, the one on the Adige, the other on 
the Brenta valley. In the second place they were coming 
to an end of their accumulated stock of provisions (though 
not of munitionmcnt) for their enormous concentration of 
heavy guns ; in the third place they suffered [grievously 
from lack of water. The Asiago Plateau always suffers from 
this in summer in spite of the melting of the snows upon 
the mountains, because of its permeable lime stone charac- 
ter. There followed a week of hesitation, when from_ 
June 4th to June nth the new Italian concentration on 
the rim of the upland basin securely held the enemy 
and forbade his descent upon the plains and his cutting 
of the Italian communication. 
Somewhere about the 15th of June the enemy's neces- 
sity for a retreat was decided upon. The Austrians 
could no longer maintain themselves in such vast numbers 
in these arid uplands. Their retreat was conducted with 
skill ; they lost hardly any artillery ; their huge concen- 
tration permitted them to cover the falling back with a 
dense screen of troops. But the falling back was in full 
swing before the end of the month and the Trentino offen- 
sive had failed, as every single strategic plan emanating 
from the Prussian Higher Command in this war has 
failed. In a word, the Prussian mind is mechanical, and 
therefore fails. ' 
The consequences of this particular failure were more 
immediate and dramatic than any other with the excep- 
tion of the Marne. The Austrian concentration upon the 
Trentino had left the southern half of the Eastern or 
Russian front, that is the half between the Marshes of 
Pinsk and the Roumanian frontier, limited to the strict 
minimum necessary and beHeved sufficient to a defence. 
The rule of thumb of two men to the yard run had been 
observed, and upon a Hne which in all its sinuosities must 
have counted considerably over 300,000 yards from 
600,000 to 700,000 men, mainly Austro-Hungarian, but 
in part German were stretched in a cordon. 
The Russian General Brussilov attacked that cordon 
upon June 4th, 1916, after a preliminary bombardment 
comparable to, but less intense, than the corresponding 
Anglo-French bombardment upon the Western front in 
the autumn before. The Austrian line gave way. A 
huge gap opened in it in front of Lutsk and another smaller 
one in front of Czernowitz. Cavalry came into play ; 
surrenders were free and upon a very large scale. In 
the very first effort, in the first few weeks, something 
like half the original force was out of action, and more 
than a quarter remained as prisoners in Russian hands. 
The scale of the disaster, significant as it is, is less 
significant than the index it. formed to the revolution 
which had come over the whole nature of the war. It 
was clear that from this moment onwards the enemy 
had lost his initiative and would now be defending 
himself against the ever-increasing pressure of the Allies 
The Germans put together every man they could to 
save the situation. They scraped up altogether the 
equivalent of 11 divisions, but the Russian tide, checked 
spasmodically by such reinforcement, still went on. 
Even at the moment of writing the fifth of its advances 
has secured another 40,000 prisoners in a few days, m a 
local break through in the Lutsk salient, and close upon a 
hundred guns. A new Russian offensive developed m 
the centre against Baranovitchi Junction did not reach 
its objective, but it prevented further reinforcements 
going down south. A fortnight later, before the end of 
July, yet another smaller offensive developed in the 
extreme north in front of Riga and at its first onset 
acquired a belt of twelve miles from the enemy. 
It was already clear with the end of June that the whole 
structure of the Great War had changed, when, with the 
last hours of that month, there suddenly broke forth the 
general bombardment along the northern part of the 
Western front, followed by the Great Offensive, the 
infantry of which was launched upon the ist of July in 
Picardy along the Upper Somme Valley, driving straight 
at the heart of the main German communications, by 
which is held the big salient terminating near Noyon 
which has, for nearly two years put the enemy in occupa- 
tion of this belt of Northern French territory and of 
nearly all Belgium. 
This offensive is still in progress at the moment at 
which I write. It has in just four weeks of effort 
accounted for some 30,000 unwounded or shghtly 
wounded prisoners ; for much more than 100 guns ; for a 
belt of territory over five miles in its extreme breadth 
and, what is much more important than any of these 
numerical and local calculations, it has proved itself 
capable of continuous effort against all the concentration 
which the enemy has been able to bring against it. The 
British who formed the larger part of this offensive have 
in particular during the last days of it, fought their way 
up to the watershed beyond which they will be possessed 
of observation posts and a falling country towards 
Bapaume. Here, as on the Eastern front, the thing has 
the nature of a tide halted for the moment upon lines 
designed to check it altogether, then overflowing those 
lines and proceeding to a further advance. 
What further fortunes this novel and probably con- 
clusive phase of the war may bring only the future can 
show. But the situation is already clear. The Central 
Empires no longer possess a true strategic reserve ; they 
can still draft in their class 1918, only part of which has 
been used as yet by Austria-Hungary, none of which has 
yet been put into the field by the German Empire. 
They have a certain number of the balance of classes 
1916 and 1917, who have been hitherto put back because 
they were immature ; they have the convalescents who 
are released from the hospitals. Their superiority in 
munitionment has disappeared. They are probably 
already inferior to the Allies as a whole in this factor ; 
they must necessarily be inferior to the Allies as a whole 
in this factor increasing as time proceeds. Their 
superiority in numbers has long disappeared, and what 
remaining chance of a decision remained to them has been 
thoroughly thrown away in the Trentino and at Verdun. 
In such a posture we leave the enemy at the close of 
this second year of the war. It is not an enviable one. 
It still admits of large reserves of men as drafts from the 
categories just enumerated, the convalescents, the German 
class 1918, part of the Austro-Hungarian class 1918, and 
certain balances of the hitherto rejected in the classes 
'16 and '17. But it has against it a numerical tide upon 
the side of the Allies which is constantly rising, and a 
power of munitionment upon their part which is rising 
in even more rapid proportion. 
The third year of the war will be determined not by 
military factors — so far as these are concerned, the issue 
is now mathematically certain — but by political factors, 
A complete success depends upon the strict co-operatiort 
of the whoie AUiance, and in particular upon a determina- 
tion to exercise a true military, execution against the 
aggressors who, in their original formidable superiority, 
believed themselves free to break every convention of 
honour and tradition among Christian men. If through 
any weakness in cohesion or in sternness of purpose the end 
be not achieved, if, though every military factor is now 
in our hands, a complete victory and complete punish- 
ment is not achieved and exacted, we have before us 
after victory only the recrudescence of struggles in which 
our civilisation will disappear. There can be no folly 
more inept in character, more criminal in its ignorance;, 
than the folly of sparing those whom we now hold, or of 
giving them to believe that the infamies which they do* 
not threaten but increasingly perpetrate shall go un- 
punished. The more they fear, not the greater resistance 
shall we find, but the greater disorder in their plans. 
H Bei LOC 
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