LAND & WATER 
July 12, 1917 
defeated force fell back, and before nightfall the Russian 
cavalry at some points had already reached the Lukwa. 
The exact line upon which the retreat " crystaUised " we 
ha\e not yet any evidence to trace, but the obvious line 
upon which the enemy should rally is that of the river 
Lomnitza — no very good obstacle, but the only one in tlie 
neighbourhood, and one with a clear field of lire in front 
of it. For the wood ceases before the Lomnitza is reached. 
l^urther. it is clear that there has arisen a very interesting 
dislocation in the enemy's position upon the north and the 
south of the Dniester respectively. His front to the south 
of the river is something like seven miles back at its furthest 
point from the prolongation of his front on the north of the 
river ; Halicz is threatened now both from the east and from 
the south ; and it will be of interest to see whether in the 
next few days-thc enemy will be compelled or no to fall back 
upon the north of the river, in order to straighten his line. 
Careful attention devoted to certain points in the various 
short communiqui5s that have reached us, give us a few im- 
jHjrtant conclusions. In the first place, we may be fairly 
certain that the sector attacked was for the moment held 
mainly by Austrian troops, and probably for the most part 
by troops of Slav origin. The Berlin version of the affair is 
careful to tell us that the reserves hurried down from the 
north to stop the rout, were German. The Austrian com- 
munique is vaguer. It simply uses the term " our " reserves. 
Now this conclusion, if it be justified, I mean that the 
shock fell mainly upon .Austrian troops of Slav origin, is 
important, because it shows us upon this front an element 
which has long been noticed upon the Italian front. The 
heterogeneity in race and political object, in which is the 
weakness of the Austro-Hungarian army, is making itself 
felt here as it was felt earlier this summer on the Isonzo. 
The commanders of the German, the French, the British, 
the Italian forces, concentrate at will from any portion of their 
command. But the Austrians, and the Germans, where they 
happen to be working with the Awstrians, are compelled to 
consider not only the numbers, but also the racial character of 
)the troops to be used upon a particular operation. It means 
that they cannot always reinforce from the nearest units.but 
may have to bring men from a distance. It also means that 
what are politically their most reliable units, have to be sub- 
jected to constant movement with the correspondin g strain 
that involves. We saw this machinery at work very clearly 
during the recent Italian ofte.nsive. Hungarian troops had to 
be moved down from the north to the Carso, and did not come 
into action for more than 48 hours after the first positions on 
the Carso had been lost. It would seem as though the same 
forces were in play in Galicia. 
Anothtr point to notice is the situation of the sector upon 
which this attack was delivered as regards communications. 
Of lateral communications by which the enemy could 
support his line when it was attacked, there are none. 
There is no road, railway or even hard path of any .sort 
nmning through the great wooded mass from north-east to 
south-west. But, on the other hand, the communications for 
advance after victory on the part of the Russians are excel- 
lent. The railway running through the woods from the junc- 
ture above Stanislau was probably of no service to them, but 
the numerous parallel " rides " through the woods of which 
I speak, all lead in the direction of the retreat and the pur- 
suit, so does the main road from from Ciezow towards Halicz. 
The only obstacle to the bringing forward of the guns will be 
the shallow Bystrizyca on a small section of the front. On 
all the rest of it between Zagwozdz and the Dniester there 
is nothing at the present season to forbid the advance of the 
tractors up into the woods and through the forest. 
What the fuU consequences of the victory may be we shall 
not know for a day or two, though perhaps th« public may 
be in possession of them when these lines appear. It may 
create such a gap between the enemy armies -north and south 
of the Dniester as to compel a considerable movement of 
retiremerit. It may result in no more than a slight shifting 
of the line backwards — though even that would involve 
the loss of the Dniester bridgehead at Halicz which covers 
Bothmer's right. In any case, it is proof that the Russian 
armies are capable at will of asserting superiority on the 
Galician front. H. Bexloc 
"i""- 
The Air Defence of London 
By F. W. Lanchester 
As T sit down to write on the recent air raids, the 
/^ first line of an editorial in one of the leading London 
f ^k dailies catches my eye : " There must be air 
^ J^reprisals." We went through a period of Zeppelin 
raids, there was a cry for reprisals, a public clamour for the 
building of a fleet of airships to bomb German towns. Let 
us thank those who had the direction of affairs in their hands 
that such councils were not listened to. The Zeppelin as a 
menace has been mastered by direct defensive methods. 
Probably it would stUl be possible for the Huns to bomb 
London by Zeppelin. With luck they would do some damage, 
and with luck some of them would get home again, but the 
plain English is that with our present means of defence, 
attack on London by the big airship does not pay. Here we 
have the essence of all methods of defence ; in military 
matters it is rarely, if ever, that the means of defence or the 
means of attack entirely flatten out the enemy — the question 
is whether or not any particular method of defence involves 
a greater expenditure in the attack than the results justify, 
and whether in the reverse problem the attack gives results 
commensurate with the expenditure of the means by which 
it is conducted. 
Let us not go into the question of whether air attack 
on London is justified from an ethical standpoint or not. 
Ethics in warfare is secondary to facts. The enemy of to- 
day, and I venture to believe the enemy of future times, is 
not concerned with what is ethically right or wrong — he 
concerns himself with what he thinks will pay. Thus he 
has decided that London is worth bombing, and he has at 
least shown that he has some appreciation of the regions which 
may be bombed to the best advantage. 
Ihave discussed the question of attack upon a capital city 
such as London at length in my Aircraft in Warfare. 
Chapter ig, and have given many reasons why we must be 
piepared to admit such attack as legitimate warfare ; not 
the least of these reasons is that any act in warfare will in 
practice be considered legitimate if it holds out prospects 
of success from a mihtarj^ standpoint to the enemy. No 
amount of talking or moralising will dispose of this fact. 
When we hav(; to consider, as we undoubtedly have to 
consider, our means of defence, it is essential to take into 
account the object which the enemy has in view, so far as this 
object is disclosed by his actions. If London were attacked 
by a powerful force of aeroplanes such as we have not yet 
witnessed, say 500 or 1,000 aeroplanes taking part, it would 
be fair to assume that the object of the enemy is the destruction 
of the city by fire ; especially would this be the case if his 
tactics should lend colour to the suggestion, if, briefly, he were 
to follow an initial attack conducted with explosive bombs 
by a second attack in which incendiary bombs were employed. 
Against such an attack nothing but direct defensive measures 
could operate with effect. But the recent raids have not 
been conducted with such overwhelming or staggering forces, 
probably for the very good reason that the enemy has not 
such forces at his "disposal They have been conducted 
with a dozen or score of aeroplanes whose operations have 
been localised, so far as we can judge, intentionally on certain 
chosen sites. That his intention has been to cause fires and 
do the maximum local destruction may be taken for granted, 
but he can have been under no illusions as to the purely local 
effect of his attack. Manifestly his object hitherto has been 
no more than was the case in the Zeppelin raids, primarily 
to shake the nerves of the public and thence react through 
political channels on the efficiency of our military organisa- 
tion. That his previous efforts in that direction, "raiding by 
Zeppelin, were to a small extent successful, is an open secret, 
that the success was only partial, and microscopic at that, is 
due to the fact that in spite of much froth and blowing off of 
steam in Parliament, and in certain sections of the press, 
the Englishman's nerves arc hard to shake ; for every one whose 
nerves are shaken there are a dozen whose nerves are steeled 
and whose teeth are set. 
Of the various methods of defence against raids such as 
those we have experienced, that is to sav, raids on a small 
scale., as history will, I think, record them, that of direct 
defence by a screen of aeroplanes, or possibly concentric 
screens of aeroplanes, is the most extravagant and the least 
appropriate. Wc do not know when or exactly from what 
direction the attack may be launched. We have no certain 
means of securing an adequate warning. If the attack be 
launched under weather conditions favourable to a raid, the 
enemy, flying screened by a stratum of clouds, may remain 
as invisible as a submarine totally submerged. To be effective 
a direct defence founded on a screen or screens of aeroplanes 
would require to be sufficiently strong at every point to meet 
a possible enemy, and a warning of at least half an hour or 
thereabouts would be required in order that our machines 
should be in the air at sufficient altitude to give battle. It 
