LAND & WATER 
August, 9, 1917 
is cut with isolated woodlands. A similar advance beyond 
the objectives assigned took place on the part of the English 
along the Roulers Road at Fezenberg. At this point certain 
English troops penetrated to the line where the enemy had 
withdrawn his field guns, and put nearly a score of these out 
of action before falling back. To the south of Frezenberg, in 
the wooded country which begins at W'esthoek, the fighting 
was very stubborn and the resistance of a strength corre- 
sponding to the enemy's opportunities for defence in such a 
region. But the line even here occupied aU the enemy's 
first defensive organisation, and by the early afternoon, the 
first phase of the operation ended. 
At that moment the rain, which had threatened all morning, 
began to fall. The wind also had risen, and it was in some- 
thing like a storm that the next phase of the battle opened. 
This phase took the form of violent counter-attacks launched 
by the enemy throughout the whole of that afternoon and 
the succeeding night. 
These counter-attacks lasted all through Wednesday, 
Thursday and Friday, and it is by their failure that the 
character of the battle must be judged. The ceaseless rain, 
which continued throughout those days, accounts in great 
part for the impossibility of following up the blow. But 
even if there liad been no rain these great counter-attacks 
would have taken place, and it is fair to say that tlie con- 
ditions to which the rain reduced the ground was almost as 
hard upon the enemy and his infantry reaction as it was upon 
the British and the bringing up of their guns. 
Of these great counter-attacks the first was launched 
against the sector between St. Julien and the Roulers railway. 
It occupied the late afternoon and was repelled with very 
heavy losses. But it was resumed with fresh troops at even- 
ing and during the night succeeded in compelling the retire- 
ment of the British troops holding St. Julien on to the rising 
ground above, to the west of those ruins. At the same time 
another ver>' strong counter-attack was launched immediately 
in the neighbourhood of the railway and to the south of it. 
This attack got a footing in W'esthoek before nightfall, but 
was forced back again during the darkness. 
The rain continued heavily throughout the night and 
throughout the following day, Wednesday, August ist. 
During that Wednesday the positions lost at St. Juhen were 
recovered, as were also those astride of the railway to the 
south. Whether Westhoek was completely recovered or not 
it is impossible to discover from the despatches sent. At any 
rate, the British troops were in the western part of the ruins. 
Thursday was full of fresh counter-attacks, the strongest of 
which was the attempt to re-take St. Julien. It failed. By 
Friday night the whole of the line stood again, as the Field 
Marshal tells us in his despatch, upon the positions occupied 
during the first advance. During the whole of that Friday 
the heavy rain still fell, turning the flat Flanders land into a. 
quagmire and making a pond of every crater hole. The 
strain imposed by such unexpected weather at such a time, 
and upon ground so torn, has been described as greater than 
that suffered at an}^ other period of the war. With Saturday 
the weather began to clear, and at the moment of writing we 
have Sunday's account of the bombardment beginning again 
against the new German line. Eight guns have been taken 
and over 6,000 prisoners. 
At this point we must leave the account of the Flanders 
battle. Upon our side it has secured the whole of the enemy's 
first strongly-organised position, including its support trenches 
over a front of 25 miles, and it is the obvious preparation for 
further blows. The enemy by representing the Allies as 
desirousof reaching much more distant objectives, can present, 
and has presented, the whole affair as a check. 
The immediate? future will decide, with proofs much stronger 
than verbal or written ones, the debate between these two 
contentions. 
The Eastern Front 
To write of the Eastern front in the ordinary terms of 
military history is impossible, because the element which 
military history always takes for granted— a certain measure 
of homogeneity and unity — is absent. You cannot weigh the 
value of disposition upon the map, nor even of numbers, when ■ 
the moral factor is not only indefinitely variable from unit 
to unit, but also from day to day. 
Nevertheless, there is one geographical point in the rjtuation 
which has been generally remarked and which rer.iins its 
importance even under the utterly abnormal condition of tlie 
Russian forces upon the Galician frontier. It is the "corner of 
Dorna Watra," tlie point in tlie Carpathians where Roumania 
and the Bukovina meet. This point is the pillar, as it were, 
upon which turns the defence of all Moldavia, that is, of all 
the remaining half of politically independent Roumania, 
which has hitherto been shielded against invasion. 
If the retirement of the Russian line compels the abandon- 
ment of this corner (and the last news shows that it is already 
shaken) the issues from the mountains into the Moldavian 
Plain are in danger of passing one after the other into the 
enemy's hands. The political result of such a catastrophe 
would be the almost complete occupation of Roumania bv 
the enemy ; the strategic result would be the loss of an easily 
defended line, that of the Central Carpathians and the sub- 
stitution for it of a line difficult of defence, requiring for the 
holding of it a greater number of men. The Upper Screth is 
not a formidable obstacle and has never, I think, been used as 
a defensive line in the very many campaigns seen by this 
region in the past. The Pruth behind it is a better line by far, 
but to stand upon the Pruth would mean the abandonment of 
all Roumania. 
The reason that this Dorna'Watra corner is so important is 
the orographical character which it bears. It is a sort of 
knot in the mountains from which the streams descend in 
radiating lines— a knot which separates the Carpathians to 
tire north of it from the mountains to the south, and there- 
fore what I have called it, a " pillar." The last good crossing 
of the hills from the Hungarian Kingdom into the Bukovina 
goes just north of this knot or pillar, but to the south of it for 
a long way the defence of the densely wooded mountain range 
is easy and has, as we know, been successfully maintained by. 
the Russians and Roumanians throughout all the vicissitudes 
of the past year. Let the Dorna Watra comer be lost and this 
easily defensible line is turned and probablv lost. ■ 
We are not acquainted with the principal element of all. 
That is, the forces of which the enemy, disposes in this region, 
hut it is difficult to see how the very advanced point now 
formed by this corner where Hungary, the Bukovina, and 
Roumania meet can long remain in the hands of the Russo- 
Roumanians,with the Russian retreat continuing as it does. 
Czernowitz was abandoned last week, and with Czernowitz 
the defensive in this quarter lost two very important assets. 
In the first place, it lost a large and important depot of stores 
and mimitionment. In the second place it lost the main road 
and railway which form the latetal communication behind the 
de/ensive, The lateral communication was the main road and 
railway of the Sereth valley. Now though the main railway 
goes on beyond Czernowitz to Halicz and so to Lemberg, and 
though good railway communication behind the Russian 
line was lost quite recently in the retirement, when the Second 
Army broke and drew back with it in a flood the -7th and 8th, 
