December 28, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
13 
We gazed a long time at the fire while the rain beat 
against the window panes and the ashes fell softly in the 
grate. 
" But," I said. 
" Yes," interrupted Kennedy. " I know what you're 
going to say. No ! I can't explain it. Do you re- 
member those words of Pascal ' Lcs cspaccs infmis 
m'effrayenl ? ' I thought of them to-night when I looked 
up at the moon riding the heavens. The moon and the 
stars and the heavenly bodies are not more removed from 
us than we are removed from one another. If each of 
us is separated from one another by such \ast solitudes 
in life, wliy should there be any greater separation in 
death ? Sometimes I think the dead arc nearer to us 
than we are to one another. You know those lines of 
Matthew Arnold : 
Yea in the sea of life enisled 
With echoing straits between us thrown. 
Sometimes I can't even hear the echoes. And it's 
when I'm farthest from my fellow-creatures in life that I 
feel nearest my fellow-creatures in death. D'you re- 
member the old regimental mess ? — where's the CO. 
whcre's the major, where is (iuppy and Trelawney and 
Haig-Brown ? I am the only one left." 
We were both silent for a long time. At last Kennedy 
rose to go home to his billet. " Perhaps you understand 
now what I meant by ' No Man's Land,' " he said 
quietly as he bade me good-night. " Sooner or later 
allot us have to go ' over the top '^and sometimes 
we return." 
Strategy and the Balkans 
By Colonel Feyler 
PEOPLE talk a great deal about principal fronts 
and secondary fronts. They will tell you, for 
example, that the western front is a principal 
one while the Balkan front is subsidiary. In 
some respects that is true. In point of fact, the im- 
portance of a front depends upon the importance that 
would attach to the \'ictory upon it. If, for instance, 
we put the supposition that the Germans destroy the 
Allied armies in France, they would have peace and the 
terms of peace in their hands, subject only to such 
modifications as they might be compelled to make by the 
Italian, Russian and Roumanian factors in the situation. 
Again, a (icrman \'ictory on the Roumanian front is 
disagreeable for the Allies, because it supplies the enemy 
with certain means of ])rolonging tlic struggle, but 
strategically the elimination of the Roumanian factor 
makes but trifling alteration in the general position. In 
jiarticular, it does not put (icrmany in a position to 
dictate terms of peace to the Quadruple Entente. Thus 
Prance is a principal theatre of operations for the Germans 
and Roumania a secondary one. 
But the converse is not al\va\'s true. A front which 
is vital for one of the belligerents may be subsidiary ffir 
tlie other, and circumstances might so develop ;is to 
make a liithcrto subsidiary front a capital one for both 
belligerent.-.. Let us put the case that the Austro- 
Hungarians are absolutely defeated by the Russians and 
Roumanians in Transylvania and compelled to retreat 
to Budapest, while in the west the German defensi\'e 
remains unbroken. The cpiestion might arise for the 
Allies, what would be the most advantageous way to 
exploit this new situation ? Would it not perhaps be 
best to relegate the advance to the Meuse to second place 
in the scheme in order to reinforce an offensive up the 
Danube, the influence of which would immediately be 
felt beyond, to the nortli of the Carpathians, towards the 
borders of Silesia ? If victory enables them to impose; 
peace upon Germany on the Oder as thoroughly and 
more speedily than on the Rhine, and the conditions are 
such as to render them able to achieve it, will they not 
seize the opportunity ? 
Thus in military operations everything is in a constant 
state of change because everything rests upon conditions 
of fact, and facts are in a constant state of development. 
Tlie good general, like the good government, is the one 
who foresees events with the shrewdest eye or who, not 
having foreseen them, recognises them most qiiickly 
and applies the most adequate solution to them within 
the limits of the means at his command. 
It is considerations of this kind that warrant the opinion 
that the operations of the -Germans in the Balkans may 
still eventuate in disappointment for them. From the 
strategical point of \iew, this theatre of operations can 
only procure them successes of secondary military 
importance. However brilliant the victories may be 
that they maj' win there, they will still be incomplete and 
ineffective to compel the enemy to make peace. They 
will result in the acquisition of territory and of economic 
resources, but they will not destroy any essential forces 
or touch any motive power indispensable to the activity 
(if the enemy; they cannot- deprive tlie Russians, 
or the French, or the Italians, or the English, of means of 
maintnining and reconstituting powerfully equipped 
armies capable of continuing the war in the west and in 
the east, that is to say, nearer to the vitals of Germany 
than (icrmany could approacli to the vitals of licr enemies 
as a result of her successes in the Balkans. In order to 
bring the Quadruple Entente to its knees, the Central 
Empires must deal it crushing blows, both in the west 
and in the east ; any blows that they may deal it in the 
south may hurt, but cannot knock it out. 
Here again the converse is not true. The German 
attacks arc divergent, those of the Allits convergent. 
Whether the blows are delivered from Paris, or Petrograd 
or Salonika, they are all aimed at the head, at Berlin if a 
geographical objective is desired, and consequently all 
arc in the direction of a knock-out. It is only a question 
of length of arm, that is of adequate means. If the means 
are adequate, the point of departure is immaterial, the 
objective everything. The place where German might 
is destroyed is unimportant ; that it shall be destroyed 
is the object to be aimed at. 
This illustration of the relati\e value of fronts for ojie 
belligerent or the other is very instructive. It is a lesson 
in strategy to be remembered for military schools. It is 
evidence for the truth of that axiom of military instruc- 
tion that it behoves one to beware of set theories, , of 
ready-made ideas, of fossilisation of thought. As each 
new fact emerges, observation of the general situation 
must be constantly renewed in the light of principles, to 
ascertain the application of these to the particular case, 
in other words, to discover what operation will most 
certainly and most speedily adhieve the desired object. 
Here some one may raise an objection. If the Balkan 
front is a subsidiary one for the Germans wh^^ do their 
High Command cling to it so obstinately ? VVhj^ when 
the Bulgarians are becoming an increasing burden upon 
them, do they persist in supplying them with reinforpe- 
ments, to the detriment of their m '.in fronts ? \\'hy 
did the intervention of Roumania induce the German 
High Command to resume in the Balkans an offensive, 
at the risk of weakening the resistance of the great armies 
ofjthe Entente ? The German ofiicers know their own 
business, and if they are acting so, it is not without' some 
reason or merely for the pleasure of making mistakes for 
educational purposes in military schools. 
The objection is a natural one, and an interesting one 
well worth investigation. It is of a kind to throw a fuller 
light upon questions at issue and perhaps to raise other 
questions of as vital importance. Let us look into it, 
and for that purpose let us go back to the real origin of 
the operations in the Balkans, that is to the alliance 
which brought the Ottoman Empire into the world- 
conflict on the side of the Central Empires. 
It was the Germans who desired this alliance, and from 
the military point of view it represented the concentration 
of a new army, the Turkish Army, against the Allies in a 
new theatre of opci-ations, Western Asia. 
This alliance, which undoubtedly was advarttageous 
from the point of view of Germany's political ambitious. 
