5 
LAND & WATER 
September 13, 1917 
and marsh— apart from the lake— becomes exceedmgly 
difficult of passage, l-ur a distance greater than the old 
Dwina line, a broad river, a large and long lake, and then a 
tangle of forest, marsh and shallow lakes bar the access to 
wliat was long the modern capital of Russia— is the chief 
centre of anarchist and pacifist ettort to-day. 
If we had onlv to consider an ad\ance by land, we might, 
I think, decide that a late autumn march upon Petrograd 
is impossible in the face of any measure of oppositujii. worth 
calling opposition, but this advance by land is not the only 
opportunity offered to the enemy, there is still the sea, 
still open "for months ; and of the present Russian capa- 
bilities of defence by the sea we know nothing. 
If the Gulf of 1-inland cannot be defended, and if Kron- 
stadt itself is now a .-;ham, then Petrograd would certainly 
l>e at the mercy of the enemy, even with his restricted forces, 
and even though the great water-line of the Pskov or Peipus 
Lake, continued bv the Narova river, stand firm. 
More than that' cannot be said. It has been suggested in 
the Press that the loss of the Dwina line was due, not to any 
bad breakdown in the moral of the defence, but to "the 
enemy's superiority in artillery." The phrase is meaning- 
less. The Russians have been supplied with artillery superior 
to that which they possessed at the moment when, two years 
ago, they checked the advance of the enemy upon the line 
of the Dwina. A great mass of new and heavy guns has been 
further supplied, with a corresponding mass of munitionment, 
and if gun-power were lacking at the critical point, it could 
only have been due to a political breakdown behind the lines. 
In "other words, the loss of the Dwina line and of Riga is 
due to exactly the same political weakness as caused the loss 
of the lines in Galicia and the German-Austrian advance to 
Tarnopol and to Czernovitz. nor can the situation be restored 
in any other fashion than by a political restoration of discipline. 
Until such a restoration is eifected the defeat of the Allies 
upon this front will continue uninterrupted, and limited 
only by the enemy's now regularly diminishing numerical 
power to take advantage of his opportunities. 
The Italian Front 
The Italian front of the Isonzo continues to be the chief 
point of interest in the West. 
Upon the southern end of that line the enemy has made 
good. The great massive of the Hermada has held, as it held 
last May. It is the critical piece of the defensive covering 
Trieste. It has neither been carried nor turned. At the 
moment of writing it is not threatened any more than it was 
since the beginning of the new Italian defensive. 
But on the north things are otherwise. The Northern 
front was really broken when our Allies carried the line of 
TrxsentTronf 
w 
GORIZIA 
% 
5 PLATE A U or J 
'^ M San. C;iii)rieU 
'lilt':,. 
-T^iLe 
heights north of the Kuk summit, and the symbol of that 
considerable event was the turning of tiie-Monte Santo by the 
Italian armies, producing for a moment a war of moveinent 
upon the Bainsizza plateau and the occupation of the summit 
of the Monte Santo. There still remains in this region one 
capital point in the hands of the enemy, the mountain of 
Saint Gabriel, which is as it/were the twin "of the Monte Santo, 
standing to the south of it^ bevond a " col," and overlooking 
all the Italian positions south and west. If the .'^aint Gabriel 
goes, the Saint Daniel hill next to it will go too, and the w^hole 
line of the heigiits will be lost to Austria-Hungary. 
The accounts are confused, but it would seem that the 
summit of the Saint Gabriel mountain was reached by the 
Italians early cm Friday of last week, the 7th, and lost again 
the same day to a strong counter-attack. It is not. so far 
as the despatches reaching us in London by Monday go, yet 
securely in Italian hands ; but our Allies are working round it 
by the north, and the interest of the situation lies in the 
answer to the question whether the Italians can so far 
penetrate down ttie Chiapovano valley as to turn the position 
of the Saint Gabriel height. We have no indications of the 
. precise distance to which our Allies have penetrated down 
this ravine, but we can say, roughly, that the Saint Gabriel 
hill is now in something of the position that the Monte Santc 
was at the end of the May offensive. It is not surrounded by 
any means. There is not even a half -circle drawn by the 
offensive round it from the west. It is threatened, and that 
is all. On the other hand, the Italians are not held here by a 
solid line, as they were after they captured the Vodice four 
months ago. They are still exercising strong pressure and 
they are still compelling movement, and the chance of the 
occupation of the Saint Gabriel summit is considerably greater 
than was the chance of the occupation of the Monte Santo in 
the early summer. 
There is, of course, in all this a;i element which we cannot 
weigh because we have not the facts yet before us, and that is 
the element of the enemy's moral at this point, to which one 
might add the element of his mere numbers. He was badly 
defeated on the line of heights jabove the Isonzo a fortnight ago. 
He has lost, altogether, over thirty thousand prisoners ; 
the pressure against him continues ; the weight of artillery 
is now, at last, heavily in favour of the Italians, and their 
air work is altogether superior to that of their opponents. 
But whether the blow will be fully driven home or not still 
depends upon w hat the enemy can put in line against them 
upon this Julian front, and of that we do not know nearly 
enough to speak. H. Bellog 
K second edition of Blessed are the Dead, an anthology com- 
piled by Mr. A. K, .Manning Foster to bring comfort to tuourners, 
is now issued by Messrs. Cope and Feiiwick (3s. net). The idea 
is an admirable one, and although the selection, like all such 
selections, is very open to criticism, on the whole the compiler 
has done well. In so far as words can bring relief in the black 
liours of bereavement, these written thoughts by men and women 
of all ages and kindreds will succeed. 
There is much amusement in T/ie Pacifists at the St. James's 
Theatre, the farce which Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has written in 
ihe form of a parable. The local' butcher is the Hun who by 
force would conquer Market Pewbury, including Susann.nh Pee- 
body, the virtuous wife of Mr. Pacifist Peebody. It came as a 
shock to find Miss Ellis Jeffreys as cockney lower-middle class 
uncertain of lier aitches and not altogether sure whether she 
lircy'ers being insulted by muscle and strength or defended by 
weakness and argument. But it is an amusing evening's enter- 
tainment, though the parable scarcely gets across the footlights^ 
The Whitehcail Aircraft Aerodrome, near Richmond, but in 
the midst of country scener\-. is one of the great centres of war 
activity- ; from small beginnings the output has increased until, 
at the present tinre, Whitehead Aircraft has a hu^e list of ma- 
chines to i'ts credit, and every week see.s that list increased. Its 
aerodrome is one of the largest in the counti-y. and yet its 
capacities are fully taxed in the testing of new " Whitehead " 
machines, while the factory- front which these machines emerge 
is aLso one of the largest yet devised for the work. Mr 
Whitehead's establishment is, in even,' respect, an ideal factory- 
its welfare schemes have been enthusiasticallv worked out. 
