January ii, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
over the Russian armies, though they had escaped envelop- 
ment, had lost moie than a million men, and had evacuated 
territory 100 miles and more in breadth by four or five 
hundred from north to. south. In the loss of guns also — 
though the field artillery was very well preserved — one 
could note the strength and rapidity of the offensive. 
It was impossible, for instance, to sa\e the heavy arma- 
ment of Novo (ieorge\icsk or of Kovno. 
A corresponding period in this Roumanian offensi\'e 
has seen the loss of very few guns since the first retreat 
and latterly of next to none — the operations around 
l-'ocsani account for exactly three ! The hea\y artillery 
has been withdrawn from permanent emplacements with 
success, and places such as Braila containing the stores 
of wheat which were among the chief of the enemy's 
objects, have been covered long enough to permit an 
almost leisurely withdrawal of all their supplies. 
Take anv point you will in the contrast between the 
two operations, and you may read in that point the 
immense change that has come over the war in the 
interval. Whether in the number of men the enemy has 
available for his operation, or in its territorial results, or 
in the losses inflicted upon the retreat, or in the number 
of prisoners, or in the rate of advance, you find the same 
opposition between. an operation upon the largest scale, 
caiTied out with the greatest energy, and up to the very 
end — up to the formation of the salient of Vilna — per- 
petually within an ace of success, and an operation upon 
a vastly diminished scale, with energy depleted, reserves 
lacking, captures insignificant, a pace reduced to some- 
thing like marking time, and no approach to success as 
yet in any phase. 
In this connection it is very well worth remarking 
that the Roumanian offensive into which the eneifiy has 
put all his remaining stock of offensive power for the 
moment, has never once produced a dangerous salient 
in the defensive line. To those who have followed 
the Prussian method throughout the whole campaign 
(audit has never changed), this is the most significant 
point of all. In the great Polish operation of last year 
live capital salients were produced one after the other 
at the enemy's will by the enemy's immense superiority 
in offensi\e power. He could produce them almost at 
his own time and place. A month after his first advance 
began he so pressed the Russians north and soutlv of 
Premyzsl that the neck of the salient was, by the be- 
ginning of June, not more than eleven miles across. In 
other words, he could mass men and guns in superiority 
to his opponent with such rapidity and in such force upon 
two separate points chosen at will upon his lines as would 
make a bulge between, and though he failed time after 
time to cut the neck of the salient so produced, and 
therefore failed to reach a decision,' yet he could count 
right up until the autumn upon the making of these 
salients against the will of the defensive, and in conformity 
with his own will. And the last which he formed, that 
round Vilna, was the greatest and for the Russians the 
most perilous of all. 
But throughout this Roumanian retirement, no salient 
has been formed.. Every effort was made to create one 
round Bucharest, but e^•en at the most anxious moment 
the curve of the defensi\e line did not project by an 
amount equi\-alent to a third of its I ength, and save on 
that occasion there has been no appre ciable bulge formed 
anywhere on the retiring hue. The ]3attleof Bucharest 
was a Sadowa manque. 
Meanwhile the enemy's task and object are clear enough. 
He must continue to attempt to tu rn one or the other 
wing of that line which now runs fro m in front of Galatz 
to the Oituz Pass. If he could force the Oituz he would 
have a very much more iminediate and decisive result 
than he can hope to get by action 'upon the other wing 
near the Danube. He would compt^l a rapid and perhaps 
disastrous retirement, a swinging ba(.;k of the line where it 
has the greatest distance to fall bad : before it can be safe 
again, and that through bad hill country without roads. 
To turn the line by his right, the: Russian. leff that is, 
through the country between the Fruth and ,the Sereth, 
woulcl not prevent a retirement over country tliat is pro- 
\ided with two parallel railways for a retirement, .with 
two tolerable roads, and one good one. The only thing 
that would profit him in this re^^ioTi would be a really 
decisive success breaking the Russian left' here altogether. 
He has not hitherto shown anything like a sufficiency 
in offensive force for such a c'lecision. 
Meanwhile, the defensi\e Ime behind that just aban- 
doned clearly follows the line of the lower Sereth to the 
Marshes of Suraia, and thence- runs either along or behind 
the valley of the Putna till the foothills of the Carpathians 
are reached. Thence a clearly defined ridge (marked 
A.-^A on Map I.) averaging two thou.sand feet above the 
plain, broken in only two places by narrow valleys, 
wooded, carries one to those positions just east of 
the Gituz . Pass summit, which have hitherto proved 
impassable to the Austrian force under Arz, reinforced 
though it probably, has been during the last fortnight. 
. From such a line a continued slow retirement, inflicting . 
a maximum of loss on the assailant and occupying ajil his 
spare forces could still proceed, still pivoting on its right 
from the Oituz till well north of Lake Bratesul.,,, It 
would rely on the marshy Lower Pruth for a secure, left 
flank — but that would not be holding the Pruth as a line. 
There are two policies now open to the enemy. It is 
obvious that the Russians, thus retiring by pivoting on 
their right near the Oituz, are " forming a flank " : their 
line from the mountains to the Sereth and Pruth gets at 
a sharper and sharper angle to their main line from the 
north down the Carpathian ridge. Such a " square 
end " is risky — for if the enemy breaks it he turns all the 
rest of the line. The attempt to break it directly is 
ftne policy open to him therefore ; but it is a pohcy 
which he has been trying for two months, and in which' 
he has hitherto failed. 
'There remains an alternative. He can attempt a 
passage of the Lower Danube below Galatz and so come 
in behind the Russo-Roumanian flank, turning its right 
at once and ruining it. The thing is possible — we do 
not know the conditions of armament, but it is im- 
probable, because the Danube is here a very broad river in 
its sea reaches and bearing seagoing ships, and is lined 
along its southern bank by bad marshes of varying 
width. 
The Idea of Exhaustion 
One of the novel ideas which the enemy is trying to 
spread in connection with his desperate peace movement 
is the idea that the war cannot fail to end as a stalemate 
through mutual exhaustion. 
The idea is " novel " only in the sense that it has not 
been put forward yet even by the stupidest Pacifist or 
Alarmist on our side, during all these two years of war. 
We have waited for it, as we have waited for all these 
nonsensical diversions, until the enemy made us a present 
of it. Until quite lately the corresponding formuhe 
was that the war would end in a stalemate through the 
unpossibility of a modern offensive breaking a modern 
defensive ; and before that we had the only slightly less 
ridiculous theory of the war map. Before that again we 
liad the " huge hidden reserve array of the enemy," 
" the hidden two milUons all trained and ready," which 
was going to give the coup dc grace, and so forth. 
In one way this last diversion is consoling, because it 
will not be easy for the enemy to find another one. He 
has pretty^ well exhausted the category of bogies with 
which *o delude those who do not apj:)roach war as a 
study, but as third-rate and ephenieral literature. 
Let us examine this theory of exhaustion. 
The termination of hostihties through exhaustion docs 
hot mean that they come to an end " because you cannot 
go on.'' That vague idea, like so many of the erroneous 
and misleading phrases applied to war, is based upon the 
false analogy of individuals. You can put up two men to 
fight, both of them keen on fighting, and you may get 
them after a certain time into a condition in which neither 
cares tio go on fighting becau.se both are too tired. 
There may be something of this sort on the political side 
of war, but in strategics it does not exist. Strategicaliv, 
»xhaustion means " the incapacity to fulfil a gi\-en task 
through lack of men or of material or both." .Vnd every- 
thing depends upon the conditioning word " a given 
task." 
That is why a well-chosen retreat or a well-chosen 
