LAND & WATER 
May 31. 1017 
averag:e number of mon in his now depleted divisions to be a 
lull I5,ooo--which it almost ctTtainly is not—he would only 
have 045,000 men with which to watch, say, tKX),ooo yards 
of front. He has, or had (just before the pres<!nt Anglo-French 
offensive) the equivalent of just 4.] divisions between the 
Pripet and the Baltic Of these nearly all were German, only 
the equivalent of li divisions were Austrian. 
It is true that lakes, marshes and woods continually inter- 
rupt this line and save a number of men. Were it not so he 
could not dream of holding with so few men. In the west, 
lor instance, three times this number of men would hardly 
suffice for such a lepgtli of line. 
Not only is this portion of his front thus denuded of men 
but it is also thi- portion upon which he has put his worst 
(]uality of men. .Something like half his total here is l^nd- 
sturm or reserve, and the remainder shows no units taken 
from his best recruiting fields. 
It is difficult to see liow a line of that sort can Ix- further 
weakened. It is the bare minimum for merely watching. 
He^may indee<i u^esuch a district as a sort of resting ground ; 
taking from it elements which have been tried by no severe 
lighting for many months and replacing them by the fatigued 
remnants of those who have pa.ssed through the ordeal of the 
West. But it is obvious that he cannot effect even this 
mutation upon any very large sc^le. It would involve too com- 
plicated a. system of movemeni and far too nnicii congestion 
of his railway.s. TMoreover, the liuman material he would 
bring back westward by such m\itations would not be the 
equivalent in fighting value by a long way of the active 
divisions retired from the west. What the quality of the 
troops doing his j)ainful work of resistance upon the West is, 
we know from the names of those who have specially [distin- 
guished themselvesi We have had divisions of the (iuards, 
we have had the 3rd and 5th Bavarian, etc. ; we have had 
Pomeranian regiments, and other of his best selected troops. 
He has httle or nothing of that kind upon the Dwina. 
So much for the first northern halt which is being looked 
after by a single army group, that of Eichorn. It has to 
watch something not much less than 900,000 yards of the 
easiest sector (or, at any rate, a line much nfcarer that figure 
than «oo,ooo), is but only just equal to that task : no more. 
When we come to the line south of the Pripet we find a very 
different state of affairs. There is first of all, to cover the 
uninvaded portion of \'o!hyniaand Cialicia (Kovel, Lemberg, 
the roads converging on the latter capital, and the Galician 
front to the south of them), Lissingen's army group, which, 
though it has not 300 miles to watch — it has not perhaps in 
all its sinuosities as much as 280 miles to watch — counts no 
less than 4() divisions ; three more than all those employed in 
%vatching the immensely longer line north of the Pripet I 
Of these 4() divisions two are I'urkish, 24.! are Austrian, iqi 
are German divisions — and of these only 4! are reserve. The 
rest are of better material which the Genirians had to throw 
in to save Austria when General BrussilolT, almost exactly a 
year ago, broke the Austrian front and destroyed, in the mili- 
tary sense, something like 40 divisions of his opponents. 
Lissingen's group takes the line down to the Bukovina 
opjxjsite Kolomea. 
South of this comes a third army group, that of the Austrian 
Arch-Duke, which watches the' Carpathian front (densely 
wooded mountains with very lew roads), and extends to the 
lines of the SeretJi- that is, to the place where the continuous 
trenches across |thc Roumanian Plain begin. This third 
army ^roup is a small tme and almost entirely .Austrian. 
It counts only i/J divisions, of which onlv four are German. 
It is, one may confidently say, that sect«>r of the Eastern 
front south of the Pripet where the enemy feels most secure. 
But once the line leaves the Carpathian mountains, and 
begins to cross the Roumanian plain to the Danube, along 
what are called the lines of the Sereth, we come to a very 
different state of affairs. Here is something vital. To hold 
securely- what is now covered by the enemy lines from the 
Carpathians to the Danube is to hold Bukharest. and more 
than half the Roumanian corn lands and all the Roumanian 
oil fields. 
I'urther to the south again you have the Macedonian front 
which is, in the enemy's strategy as well as in the enemy's 
political scheme, the most imjwrtant of all he is defending in 
the East : it secures the Bulgarian alliance and the railway 
to Constantinople. 
All these troojis, from the Carpathians across Roumania, 
to the Danube, ands again from the .-Egean to the Adriatic are 
in some general fashion under Mackensen's command. What 
that fashion is, how the authoritv mav be divided or by what 
regulation the two minor Allies, especiallv' the Bulgaria-ns work 
with the .^ustrians and the Germans, I do not know. But it is 
sound to regard the army of the Danulx- and the army of 
Macedonia as one group : and here we find the two sections, 
each only about 100 miles in length or a little more (for the 
mountains between the Adriatic and Macedonia hardly count. 
and there is no deieiii-i' needed lieiw<'pn the l)anul)e and the 
.Egean) looke<l after by no less than 34 divisions, among the 
lx»st fighting material to lx> found on tlie enemy's Eastern 
front. There are 11 good (jernian divisions ; five Austrian, 
five Turkish, and no less than 13 Bulgarian ; and this force is 
the equivalent of far more than any 34 divisions further north, 
because the 13 Bulgarian divisions are each of them much 
larger than any (ierman. Austrian or Turkish divisions. Some 
of them are probably nearly double. 
It is quite certain that nothing can be withdrawn from this 
fourth army group so long as the Salonika force is exercising 
its pressure. 
Reviewing the situation on the Eastern front, thei^fore, 
as a whole, we find no ground for believing that any con- 
siderable diminution of the forces there can be effected — • 
as the political situation now stands. This latter proviso is, 
of course, essential to our judgment here, as in every other 
military calculation. We can only deal with things as they 
are politically for the moment. As those things are it is not 
credible that any one of these four gro\ips — Eichorn's, 
Lissingen's, the Archduke's, " and Mat kensen'*— can be 
appreciably weakened. 
It will be of great use if we now look aj the matter from 
another point of view, and see what the burden up<jn (iennany 
is in particular, as distinguished from her Allies, and to 
what situation Austria-Hungary especially has been reduced. 
."Xn analysis of the round numbers already given will make 
this clear. 
The whole Eastern front, including the Macedonian and 
taken right up to the Baltic accounts for 130 divisions. Of these 
much more than half, not less than yb, are (ierman. When 
one says " divisions," one means, of course, not only fully- 
organised divisions, but also " the et^uivalent " of divisions. 
I'or instance, the excellent Alpine troops which Mackensen 
has under his command in the 4th Army (iroup are distri- 
buted rather sp<^iadically and not organised together in any 
one division, and this is true of other fractions, botl) of the 
.\ustrians and of the Gorman forces in Roumania and .Mace- 
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