LAND & WATER 
September 
1917 
some policy of isolated position?;. It takes innumerable 
forms, according to the nature of the war -blockhouses, or 
guerilla posts, or what not. These new isolated concrete 
machine-gun positions are only a particular example of the 
general truth. There has never been a siege in history which 
at its close did not take the form of bastions still strongly held 
attempting to prevent the piercing of the increasmgly weakly 
held curtam IxHween them. There has never been a defeated 
defensive in historv which in its last stages was not of its 
nature increasingly patchy. The advantage and disadvan- 
tage of such methods are quite obvioas. The advantage is 
the power to hold, of to attempt to hold, the outer shell of 
tlie defensive zone with less men. The disadvantage is the 
lack of continuitv in the defensive line. The pill boxes are 
not some wonderful new idea which gives a longer lease of 
life to the enemy than was expected. There is nothing 
unexpected or of genius in the construction of very thick low 
concrete protection for isolated maciiine-gun positions and 
the substitution of these for continuous trenches which can 
no longer be held or even kept in being under the perjjetually 
increasing lire power of the British siege artillery. The only 
question put by this last method of the defensive was whether 
the lack of continuity in the defence which it presupposed 
would be compensated for by the strength of the isolated 
posts ? That is the question whicli all siege devices present. 
The que5^tion has been solved in this case almost immediately 
in favour of tiie offensive, and we may conlidently -expect 
tliat the future will show what fruits "the answer to that 
question gives us. 
You cannot have your caike and eat it too. The moment 
you begin to rely upon small isolated posts you postpone in 
some degree your timing of counter-attack. You interfes^ 
with your power of lateral movement, and you create a front 
line wliich is more brittle than the old. Perhaps also, if we 
are to judge by reports, you lower your power of inflicting 
loss upon the attacking troops. 
The .Line of the Dvina 
With regard to the line of the Dvina, what we have' to say 
is unfortunately only too simple. It is lost. 
The town of Dvinsk, or Uunaborg, is at the enemy's dis- 
posal, whenever he chooses to occupy it, and the whole of 
the defensive system of which the river Dvina was success- 
fully made the nucleus during the past two terrible years ot 
strain has gone to pieces. 
Whenever you have an obstacle in warfare you hold beyond 
that obstacle (if you have any hope of ultimate success)what 
are called " bridgeheads," that is positions on the enemy's 
side beyond the obstacle the possession of whiclvwill allow you, 
when the time comes to advance, to cover the passages of the 
obstacle . in your own favour. The Russians, in making 
the Dvina their defensive line in the north, held a continuous 
belt of bridgeheads from the gulf of Riga right upstream to the 
lake region in front of Dvinsk. 
licobstadtr 
LiwenhcC 
*d -'-MLZes 
The Germans, during the whole of the last two years, and 
especially at the beginning of that period, made everv effort 
to reduce this bridgehead belt. So long as the Russian 
political system and its army were intact they failed. In 
their efforts of the last few Weeks they have completely suc- 
ceeded. First they carried the bridgeheads immediately above 
Riga, turned the position of that town and occupied it. 
Now in the past week they have driven in the bridgehead 
still further upstream, occupying Jacobstadt, and reaching 
the river as higli upas Liwenliof. The line of the Dvina is gone. 
The Russian Revolution and the French Revolution. 
IN the course of the present war, historical parallels have 
constantly presented themselves to the public mind. 
Where they haye been very general and very distant, they 
have been, if applied with ciution, and with due elimination 
of detail, serv'iceable. 
For instance, the parallel between the present struggle and 
the second Punic war, though there are vast differences in 
scale, both of time and space, and in object, has furnished 
one great invaluable lesson, the lesson of tenacity. In the 
one case, as in the other, the party ultimately doomed to 
defeat enjoyed every preliminary success, invaded tlie terri- 
tory of its opponent thoroughly, and only failed at last through 
the superior will and tenacity of the apparently conquered 
party. 
There have been certain other historical parallels which 
have proved valuable, for instance, the parallels between (or 
the identity between) the Prussian neglect of international 
morals under Frederick the Great, with his invasion of Silesia, 
and the Prussian neglect of internalional morals to-day 
with its invasion of Belgium. 
The parallels of the past, of blockcide by sea, have also 
invariably held. 
But there have been many more parallels drawn from 
the past which have been misleading; and more than mis- 
leading, highly dangerous from the fact that the secure and 
known history of the past has made men forecast the- imme- 
diate future with a sort of certitude, as though they were 
following a map. 
The worst of these, -uundoubtedly, has beeji the parallel 
from old wars of movement. It has misled the best brains 
and the most practised students of wax in Europe. This was 
especially the case in the autumn of 1914. Then the new trench 
warfare unexpectedly developed upcai its present enormous 
scale in the VVest, 
There have been other of these false parallels, of which one 
of the most striking was the supposed parallel between the 
German invasion of Poland and the pnt-cedent of 1813. But 
the most dangerous at the present is undoubtedly the parallel 
between the Russian Revolution and the French creative 
movement of a hundred and thirty years a go.which transformed 
F.urorv. If we allow that jiarallel to dqaninate our thought. 
we shall lose the war. It is misleading in the highest degree, 
and it misleads us preecisely in those points where we most 
require discipline, tenacity and vision and makes us hope that 
of the Russian as the French, there. will come in wisdom. 
Let us first observe the superficial points of resemblance. 
Both movements are an attack upon, and the successful 
oversetting of, a political monarchical machine. Both have 
for their motive power the discontent of a whole population, 
largely an economic discontent, and both use the same phrases 
with regard to political opinion, thougli the second is merely 
a copy of the first in this respect In both movements there 
is an appeal to ideals floating in the general mind of Europe, and 
as yet, undeveloped. It is fair to add that both movements, 
regarded apart from their military aspect, have more in com- 
mon than the opponents of the present Russian Gc/vernment 
upheaval might be willing to grant. 
But it is the military aspect which practically determines, 
because it is for us a matter of life a«nd death, and when we 
come to that military aspect, the differences are fundamental. 
To begin at the beginning. The French Revolution was 
undoubtedly in its origin, and even at its height, the move- 
ment of a whole people generally united and homogeneous. 
This truth has been defined by foreign observers and students 
as a whole, and by many native historians as well. It is 
true that the direction of tlie French Revolution was in the 
hands of a minority. It is true that the orderly process of 
direct and universal voting by plebiscite or referendum did 
not control it. But it is equally true that the nation as a 
whole had been thoroughly permeated before the revolution 
broke out with the ideals which that revolution set out to 
realise, and it is worthy of remark that, with the exception of 
western and highly localised rebellion in Vendee and Brittany 
every reaction against the revolution was effected in the name 
of the revolution and was an honest attempt to realise its 
creed. The Girondins would have defined themselves as the 
heirs and better representatives of the revolutionary creed 
than the Mountain. The Cffisaristic conclusion of the whole 
affair was thoroughly alive with its general tendencies, and 
the poet who called Napoleon Robespierre on horseback was 
talking sense 
Now the Russian Revolution has not such a united nation 
