LAND & WATER 
July 5, 1917 
The Russian Effort 
By Hilaire Belloc 
UPON the ist of this month, last Sunday, the central 
portion of. General Brussiloff's armies struck the 
first blow delivered by the Russians since the 
Revolution of last March had produced its enor- 
mous effects with, among others, the necessity for recon- 
struction upon every side. 
The divisions engaged were of very different origin. They 
included troops froni Finland, from Central Asia and from 
Russia proper. They attacked upon a total front of some 
l8 miles ; their chief effort being concentrated upon a sector 
of about half this, to wit, nine miles or so, which will be 
presently described. 
Before describing the geographical details of the stroke we 
may note its largest aspect. 
It was delivered against that part of the enemy's forces 
which contains his best units, the very heart of the forces 
under Bothmer covering Brzezany. the southern approach to 
Lemberg and the double shield both of Lemberg and of 
Halicz to the south. ' 
The mere fact that it was delivered at all puts an end at 
once and for good to the system developed by the enemy 
increasingly throughout the last four months, of using 
the Russian front as a " rest camp." 
It is an error to believe that the enemy, and in particular 
the Germans, have weakened their Eastern front. The num- 
ber of men holding it is the very minimum required for the 
task even of passive occupation and defence. The enemy 
began to take away divisions amounting to nearly 20 (or the 
equivalent in smaller units) the moment the pohtical state 
of Russia began to be uncertain ; but he soon came to the 
limit of this depletion and he is numerically as strong between 
the Baltic and the Danube as he was three months ago. None 
the less the uncertainty of the Russian situation has hitherto 
been of the greatest value to him, because he could send to 
the Eastern front as to the quietest of quiet sectors divisions 
which have had to be withdrawn from the fighting upon the 
West and, within a certain measure, he could establish a 
rotation, bringing fresh divisions from the East to replace 
the tired troops worn out by the extreme pressure in France 
and Belgium. So long as this opportunity was open to him, 
the Russian situation was of real value to him and a corre- 
sponding anxiety to ourselves. With the offensive delivered 
last Sunday, the consequences of which are not yet fully 
developed, this system comes abruptly to an end. 
We must further remember that the German Government 
in particular has gambled upon the asset of a continued 
security towards the East. While necessarily keeping a 
certain riiinimum number of units between the yEgean and 
the Baltic (the German divisions have never fallen to less than 
76 upon tins front), it has at the same time depleted its 
artillery and its stores of munitions therefor. To recon- 
struct a full concentration of material is a much longer and 
more difficult business in this war than to reconstruct con- 
centrations of men, and the new Russian attack is of the 
more value on that account. 
There is one last feature more important than any other 
attaching to that new attack ; and it is this : 
Once more the enemy's Higher Command is faced with the 
complexity of two active fronts and of all that this duality 
of effort imposes. Everything depends, of course, upon the 
continuity of the pressure which our Allies shall exercise, but 
given such continuity the recrudescence of activity on the 
Eastern front is of the very best augury for the immediate 
future of the war. 
With so much said let us turn to the details of the action. 
Its strategical elements are of the simplest. The main 
railway and the main road, the great trunk communications 
which lead up through the heart of Galicia, go along a water- 
shed between the basins of the Dneister and the Bug. The 
reason of this that under the cHmatic conditions of the 
country, with the imyossible roads of autumn and spring 
and the floods of winter, the dry watershed is. and has 
been for centuries, tiie best and often the only approach. 
The great city of this watershed, the political occupation of 
which is so important, and the strategical value of which is 
also important because it is a nodal point whence many rail- 
ways and roads radiate, is Lemberg. To cover Lemberg and 
the road and the railway reaching it was the chief effort of the 
jermans last year when they came to the succour of the 
Austrians and poured down their 41 divisions to make good the 
enormous gaps created by the wholesale Austrian surrenders of 
last June and July. Bothmer was the German General put in 
command of tliis most critical sector. He had under his orders 
the best of the German units — I think, writing simply from 
memory, nine divisions — a somewhat smaller number of 
Austrian divisions (but these of the best material), and even 
summoned to his aid and obtained, two Turkish divisions which 
by the way, fought well and were not the least factor of his 
strength. This army under Bothmer lay in front of and re- 
posing upon the Zlota Lipa, one of the main rivers running 
south from the watershed. The chief town upon his line, Or 
rather just behind it, was Brzezany. 
When General Brussiloff determined to attack this season, 
it was clear that his advance right upon Lemberg by the 
watershed, being in the nature of a frontal attack along the 
line which the enemy was compelled to defend wth the 
greatest concentration of his troops, would have but doubtful 
fortunes. In other words, the positions in front of Lemberg 
must be turned by the north or by the south. 
To turn them far towards th^ south was increasingly 
difficult the further. off from the watershed one made the 
attempt, bec.a,ijs? tKe; further south one went the deeper grew 
the ravines cut by the rivers in the plateau and the broader 
the streams an^|their adjacent marshes. It is also true that 
the country fifirther south is more thickly wooded and its 
obstaclestherefor.errjore numerous and formidable. 
The Chosen Sector 
Our Allies had therefore to compromise between a direct 
attack along the Lemberg railway and road, foredoomed to 
failure, because the enemy hid covered that vital point most 
thoroughly, and an attack far round by the south (the enemy's 
right, their left), which, the further off it were attempted the 
more difficult it would prove. The sector chosen as likely to 
give upon the balance the best results was the sector in front of 
and just north of Brzezany. The rivers so high up hs this are 
hardly formidable obstacles : the ground is fairly open and 
the lateral railway which feeds the Austro-Turko-German 
front here, running down the Zlota-Lipa valley, has its chief 
depot at Brzezi^ny itself. 
On the 1st and 2nd of July (beyond which the news does 
not carry us at the moment of writing), the Russian attack 
had had the following ground for its manoeuvre and the fol- 
lowing results. 
The general line of the Zlota-Lipa in the neighbour- 
hood of Brzezany with its road, railway and river 
obstacle, is, roughly speaking, 1,000 feet above the sea. 
To the east, parallel with the Zlota-Lipa and about 
four miles away from it on the average, runs the small 
sluggish stream called the Ceniowka, which falls into the 
Zlota-Lipa at the village of Potutory. In between the two 
streams are heights occasionally wooded, but generally bare, 
rounded in contour and reaching at their highest points 
summits of about 300 feet above the water levels to east and 
west. The enemy had drawn his lines covering what may be 
called the Ceniowka positions. He held, that is, the villages 
of Potutory, Zolnowka, Szybalin, the course of the stream 
up northwards to the confluence of the Korf, a brook falling 
into the Ceniowka and, on the extreme north where the stream 
was becoming insignificant, he held the large bare flatfish lump 
called Mt. Sredniaga, not quite 300 feet above the water. 
Along the stream at the base of this large bare hill, lie the 
wooden huts of Koniuchy village. 
What the Russian effort accomplished in tlie two days 
which alone we are able fo review at this moment was this :" 
It carried on fhe north the whole of Mt. Sredniaga, the 
burnt ruins of Koniucliy', and reached as far as the Kori 
Brook. Whether' 'it carried all the line of»tIie Ceniowka to 
the south we are not told. The northern effort was chiefly 
the work of troops from Mnland ; Siberian regiments carrieil 
the lower portion of tlie Ceniowka, including the ruined 
villages of Szybalin, Zolnowka, and, most interesting of all, 
Potutory at the confluence of the Ceniowka and the Zlota- 
Lipa, directly thi-eatening Brzezany and the lateral railway, 
was approached. At the moment of writing the advance 
upon Brzezany from this direction, the most threatened of 
