Land & Water 
August 8, 191 8 
Leinberg-Tamopol Railway. They left tlieir trenches of 
their own accord at 10 o'clock in the morning of that day, 
and refused service. The reserves ordered to move up 
refused to obey, appointed committees, and began a dis- 
cussion. Before evening a gap of 5 miles had appeared ; 
by noon of the next day a gap of 25 miles. The enemy was 
pouring through, and, to quote the words used in these 
columns in our issue of July 26th, 1917, the event was the 
most significant of the whole year. It might easily have 
proved the most significant of the whole war. . 
Reaction in the West 
To understand what followed, we must ])ut into its proper 
perspective the great British offensive which filled the 
summer months thereafter. That offensive was directed to 
the wearing down and ultimately to the breaking of the 
German front in the extreme north in front of Ypre?. Its 
immediate object was the Passchendaelc Kidge, and had it 
early mastered tiic defensive which the Germans had organised 
in depth and with the novel system of isolated concrete 
shelters for machine-guns, this victory in the West would 
have been gained in time to undo the effect of the Russian 
collapse. But this great offensive did not achieve its end. 
There was not sufficient superiority in numbers or in tactical 
method, and a series of blows dehvered continuously riglit 
on into the autumn slightly extended the line without 
approaching to a nipture of the German system. Two main 
positions — the Houthoulst Forest, in the north, and the 
heights in front of Gheluvelt, in the south — were pillars of 
resistance maintained throughout all the operations by the 
enemy, and when the effort had exhausted itself, the two 
antagonists still stood facing each other upon a fine only 
ver>' slightly modified from the Alps to the North Sea. 
During that same summer and early autumn, while the 
Italians successfully continued their pressure — but with no 
sign of breaking the. line— upon the Isonzo, the enemy 
seemed to us who watched him from the West curiously 
inactive against the now certainly worthless Hne of his 
Russian opponents. He occupied Riga, indeed, without 
serious opposition in the middle of September, and in the 
beginning of October easily cleared those who were still 
nominally his opponents out of the islands which cover the 
gulf named after that town, destroying the Russian ships in 
the process, and mastering all the shore at his ease. But he 
did nothing more. He did not seriously annoy the now vast 
dissolving army in the trenches opposed to' him ; he allowed 
fraternisation between his soldiers and the Russian elements 
they faced ; he watched complacently and without pursuit 
the desertion in great masses from the front to the interior 
of the country which went on- all along the Russian line 
from the Baltic to the Rumanian border. 
Those of us in the West who watched this strange situation 
speculated as to whether therp would or would not be 
ultnnately an advance on the capital, and bpon whether 
there was anything in the extremely doubtful chance of 
some reaction, especially in the south. Meanwhile what 
was reaUy happening (as we now know) was of quite another 
significance. The enemy had appreciated, as we could not 
the full significance of that disintegration of the Russian 
Army, which had iully appeared on July 19th, and had 
spread with such rapidity throughout the summer He 
grasped, as a plain fact, what was for us no more than a 
speculation : The truth that one-third of the German Army 
and a sum ar proportion of the Austro-Hungarian forces was 
now free for action in the West. He came to the fixed 
pohtR-al conclusion-and quite rightlv-that it mattered 
hardly at all what forces were left upon his Eastern iront 
since that front had ceased to be belligerent. Whatever he 
might choose to lea^ve there, he would leave for purely political 
work of policies and administration in what could "be at any 
moment what he chose to regard it, a conquered country par- 
titioned out at his will. Only one point of real resistance 
remained, and that was the Rumanian Army between the 
Danube and the Carpathians. This, whenever the enemy 
should choose to confirm his conquest of the Russian marches 
would be isolated and at his mercy "«"-iitb. 
Under these circumstances the Prussian Higher Command 
whic^ had now virtually the ordering of all Austrian move: 
nients, as well as o its own forces, dehberately prepared a 
new system of warfare which was to bring it in the next 
STesf '''""^ '" ""'""" ^" ^'' "f ^"'^•^'^'^ victory in 
mi,!fT'* ''['*> *"? •■'''^'"'^' appreciated that this new instru- 
ment depended ultimately upon superiority of number It 
The fiTld' Th?^ '' ^"^"-'^ '"^'''^ ^y g---^ superiority n 
iiight of men ^'^1"''"'°^^ 'T'- ""^^ gained by sheer 
weight ot men. But the sudden ehmination of all pressure 
upon the East, the sudden release of such vast masses for 
other work, was the governing condition which permitted a 
new tactical instrument to be devised, planned, and trained. 
To take the German Army alone, apart from the Austrian, 
it had until the Russian breakdown two distinct portions : 
The first, some two millions in organised fighting units upon 
the West ,\ the second, one million upon the East. The 
Austrian proportions were much the same, and here was 
the enemy finding himself with the unexpected and, as he 
rightly judged, unhampered power of using finely any pro- 
portion he might choose of this great body upon the East 
for new work on the West. The use he made of such an 
opportunity was this : He trained for weeks and months, 
under conditions of complete security and repose, selected 
divisions which were to act by shock against successive 
points of the Western hne. That which the Western Allies 
had never been able to do because they had never possessed 
a sufficient preponderance in men he could do at his leisure 
with the fullest and most minute details of organi.sation. 
The security which he now enjoyed upon the East was 
essential to such a pPan, and he exploited that security to 
the full. 
Before noting what were the first effects of this new instru- 
ment thus forged by the enemy secretly and silently during 
the summer and early autumn of 1917, we must postulate 
a certain conclusion of his in which he appeared^ justified 
until quite the last few weeks of the present summer. This 
conclusion was that the rate at which trained American 
units could appear in the Western field was not such as 
seriously to disturb his calculation of victory. He estimated 
that when the new tactics which his leisure and preponder- 
ance had permitted him to develop should begin to reap 
their fruits in the spring of 1918, the actual numbers of 
American troops in the field could not be more than a division 
or two. He further estimated that the formation of a larger 
force would be at once slow and insufficient through lack of 
experience, especially in its ^taff work. To such a con- 
clusion he perhaps added the idea that the mere transport 
of men and material across the Atlantic would break down 
when it was attempted on a very large scale ; but, apart 
from this, he - deliberately judged that the long period of 
special training required by the new contingents^ after they 
had crossed the Atlantic and landed in France, and the 
absence of any prepared organisation to deal with great 
numbers, would prevent the American contingents, either in 
large numbers or in formidable quality, affecting his plans. 
I repeat, he appeared to be right up to as late a date as last 
May. The miscalcularion was only one of a ffew weeks, but 
those few weeks have proved of terrible consequence to 
himself. It is further true that had he obtained a decision 
as early as perhaps he hoped to— had he, for instance, got in 
between the French and the British armies by the beginning 
of last April— his idea of the rate of American recruitment 
would have been justified. 
The Italian Front 
With so much said upon this capital matter, let us turn to 
the first manifestation of the .use the enemy had made of 
the troops released from the Eastern front, and of the leisure 
and security in which he had been able to train them. 
It is an elementary rule of strategy when your enemies are 
divided, either morally by variety of civilisation or physically 
by geographical circumstances, to take them in detail and 
defeat them one by one. Following that rule, numerically 
inferior forces have often defeated their superiors. Much 
more does there seem a certitude of victory when it can be 
applied by a larger force against a smaller. 
It is a further rule, not sufficiently understood, though ' 
surely obvious, that when your opponents are separated into 
various groups, an attack upon the weaker rather than upon 
the stronger section is with a certain qualification advisable 
I he qualification is that the weaker section of your opponents 
must at least bear some considerable relation to the total 
of your opponents. 
Supposing, for instance, you have eleven men to your 
enemy s ten, but his ten are divided, for whatever reason 
into groups of 5, 4, and i. It would be foolish to overwhelm 
the group of one by a concentration even if you brought 
two men against that one. You would still be leaving nine 
against his nine, and he might take the opportunity to attack 
and even when you had got rid of his one you would not 
have greatly changed the difference in strength between the 
two parties. 
But if his ten is divided into, say, 4, 3, and 3, then it may 
be well worth while to attack that one of the groups of \ 
which is most separate from the rest, for when that is got 
rid ot you leave him very seriously inferior— 7 against 11 
