LAND & WATER 
July 19, 1917 
!i fight for Stryj, and for the moraejit until or unless there are 
developments elsewhere to the north, the fate of Stryj is the 
test of strategical success or failure here. 
Bothmer may very well choose to retire before Stryj 
is reached. He has lost Halicz, which was the shoulder so 
to speak, of Brzczany, and the Russians already at Kalusz 
are deep on his flank. Should he choose to do so he can, so 
long as Stryj is safe, retire with all hfs lines of communications 
intact behind him, and with a railway permitting him lateral 
communication to the south as well. He may determine to 
stand where he is, and we know from the shapes of salients that 
have been held elsewhere in this war with its immense in- 
crease of defensive power (the salient of St. Mihiel for instance) 
that a line which looks impossible upon the map may be a 
perfectly practicable one on the ground. But if Stryj goes 
the generaFline north of the Dniester becomes impossible, and 
that is whythe fight is for Stryj at this moment. 
There are certain other minor considerations affecting 
this region. One is that the Russians as they advance are 
leaving on their left flank upon the upper Lomnitza certain 
Austrian bodies, the strength of which we do not know, but 
wliich are resisting with the advantage of difficult ground in 
the Carpathian foothills. If the Russians get on much 
further these forces cannot hold, for if they tried to hold they 
would be cut off from their companions on the north. But 
for the mome.ut they interrupt the advance. That advance 
is also by the latest news (as I write — Tuesday afternoon) 
held up in front of Kalusz by the arrival of enemy reserves. 
Another consideration is that wet weather suddenly begin- 
ning has swollen these mountain streams, including the 
JLomnitza itself. ^ They are not very formidable obstacles in 
the dry summer weather, but like all such watercourses 
coming down rapidly from great heights, they can become 
impassable at the fords at very short notice. Meanwhile, the 
thing we want to know most about in order to understand 
the situation, is that, of course, on which we cannot obtain 
information. And Ijhat is the expense in exhaustion, men 
and material, wliich the advance as far as Kalusz has in- 
volved. For it has become one oMhe principal features in 
this war everywhere that even a local success has not only 
the novel difficulty of breaking a modern defensive front, but 
the novel difficulty of pursuit. 
In its essentials the modern battle is exactly what the old 
battles were ; a triple operation ; three things in succession : 
obser\'ation, artillery preparation, advance ; then, if the front 
be broken, a second operation, pursuit — without the success 
of which the first operation is sterile. 
But while the categories remain the same, their contents 
have changed altogether. Observation is no longer a few in- 
terrogatories of prisoners and a mass of groping cavalry work. 
It is itself a preliminary battle which must be won in the aii to 
begin with. Artillery preparation is something multiplied a 
hundredfold from what was formerly known, and correspond- 
ingly difficult to achieve is the element of surprise ; and the 
pursuit, which was a matter of cavalry and of infantry and 
guns proceeding rapidly over existing roads, is now the painful 
bringing up of a hundred times the old material over country 
destroyed by the battle itself. 
It is not too much to say that when the first great movement 
appears in this war, it will be due to the mechanical preparation 
of the pursuit and the enormous accumulation of material 
required for it. 
The Great Dune 
On Tuesday last, the loth of this month, the news coming 
too late for comment to be possible in our last issue, a very 
violent, though wholly localised action was fought at the 
place where the canalised Yser falls into the sea. It is a 
spot marked by a mass* of sandhills tufted with rugged grass, 
the highest of which sandhills is known as " TheGrfeat Dune." 
This height was seized by the French in the earlier part of the 
war and may sei-ve.to give its name to the whole of this little 
piece of ground. 
The interest of the action lies, not so much in what hap- 
pened as in why the enemy thus attacked at so very high an 
expense to himself ajid upon so small a sector for so appa- 
rently small a result. The whole of this line across which he 
ad\'anced is less than a mile, and the force which he had 
to deal with was but two battalions. Why did he act thus at 
the cost of a bombardment worthy of a first-class affair ? 
The answer to this question seems to be that the position 
beyond the obstacle of the canal and its mouth formed a 
bridgehead, the offensive value of which he dreaded. 
South of it begin the inundations ; north of it is the sea, 
and he must have argued that if this bridgehead were en- 
larged a general attack upon his line on its extreme northern 
sector would use the section as a jumping-off place for thrusting 
along the coast. Hence his determination to reduce it. 
He had a second subsidiary object, apparently, which was 
to obtain information. 
If these be the t\vo answers to the question why the thing 
was undertaken, we may turn to the answer of the question, 
how it was undertaken which, as I have said, is of less im- 
portance to the understanding of the war in its present phase, 
but of more vivid interest to the general reader. I should add 
before begmning this description that I have no information 
beyond that,provided by the pubUshed despatch and descrip- 
tions in the newspaper. 
The front between the sea and the beginning of the in- 
undations beyond Lombaertzyde, was recently taken over from 
the French by the British. Up to the point where the pools 
of water become numerous before the zone of inundations is 
actually reached the ground is a mass of sand, fairly firm 
where it is consolidated by coarse grass on the summits and 
sides of the sandhills, but very loose and difficult where it is 
drifted deep and wind blown in between the tufts. The front 
ran about 600 yards east of the canal and the part of it which 
was not complicated with water was rather more than a mile 
broad, though the distance from the sea to the inundations 
was, of course, greater than that. 
Though the attack was delivered upon a much broader front 
as a whole, the part which chiefly concerns us is the part 
immediately neighbouring the sea, the front as it ran inland 
for about 1,600 yards. For it was here that the Germans 
occupied ground, and on the extreme northern part of it that 
they destroyed the bridgehead and left their opponents at 
the close of the action without a footing upon the further side 
of the canal. This extreme left of the Allied line reposing 
upon the sea was held by two battalions, one of the 6oth, 
the other of the Northamptons, the former lying nearest the 
sea coast, and the latter inland, continuing the right. 
The enemy began an intensive bombardment, so far as one 
can make out from rather conflicting accounts, in the night 
between Monday and Tuesday. The full fury of the bom- 
bardment was only developed early on the Tuesday morning, 
soon after six o'clock. The bombardment was carried out 
mainly with the 5.9, the enemy's chief piece at this moment. 
For an hour it searched the front line, then after seven, 
lengthened range to the support line, and an hour later seems 
to have been principally directed against the further side of 
the canal and an hour later again back to the first line — and 
so forth. It was a methodical series of parallel bombardments 
carried on with the utmost intensity of concentration. This 
went on till sometime after two o'clock in the afternoon, by 
which time it would seem (again according to rather con- 
flicting accounts), that all the bridges across the canal had 
disappeared. After a pause of a quarter of an hour, the 
bombardment was resumed upon ail areas simultaneously, 
front line, support, and canal banks. Already the officer in 
command of the 60th had sent back a messenger reporting 
the destruction of the bridges and of all defences. For three 
Origuzai:3rz&sA 
Lute mtmmm^amm 
l^ew CerinaiLLaie •• 
