The Russian mobilization has proved, as every one expected, a
slow business, but nevertheless it has been rather more rapid than any one dared to hope. Within a week we may expect news of a serious Russian advance—an advance which will only be met by a comparatively small number of German troops, and these not the most efficient of their kind. No doubt the German calculation is that in another week or fortnight they will have so thoroughly beaten the French that they will be able to send back along their admirable strategic railways army corps after army corps, flushed with success, and ready to roll up the Russians. But then suppose things do not go quite like that, and that in a week cr ten days the French, even if the Germans do well, refuse, like the Belgians, to be beaten. Then the sending back of army corps will be a very different matter, and the Germans will be in the terribly embarrassing position of having to choose whether they will be hung up in France by depleting their army there, or whether they will leave the road open, or comparatively open, to Berlin. Berlin is not so very far away from the Polish frontier.
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