TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MILITARY SITUATION.
WE see no reason to alter the view which we took some three weeks ago, when Germany seemed at her strongest, as to the appalling difficulties which confront those who have seized a wolf by the ears. If we were hopeful then as to the final outcome of the Russian campaign, we are still more hopeful now. There will, of course, be many disappointments, many anxieties, many set-backs, and the "doubtful battle" will sway first to one side and then to the other, but the final result will, we are convinced, be a deep disappointment, if not indeed a crushing disaster, for Germany. To support the faith that is in us, and to show that there is no cause for despair in the Eastern theatre of war, we would point, to begin with, to the date. To-day we are half-way through the first week in September. That is the con- trolling fact of the situation. It is too late for Germany to be ambitious. If she had reached the point which she has now reached in the beginning of July instead of the beginning of September, things might have been very different. As it is, she has only got before her a pre- carious four weeks of departing summer. Then come the autumn and its rains and ruins—for autumn in Russia is a very different thing from autumn in England or in Franco. It is in Russia not " a season tenderly illumed," but the beginning of the yearly tragedy in which man and Nature struggle for victory. The pace of the German advance has already slowed down very greatly owing to the fact that the enemy is getting further and further away from his splendid system of military railways, and is passing through a land which has been swept bare in order to throw every obstacle in his path. When to these diffi- culties and to the need of keeping open long lines of com- munications in a hostile and empty country are added the difficulties first of rain and mud and then of frost and BMW, we may form some idea of the troubles in which the German Army will be involved in November and December—provided that its leaders maintain their present plans. What those plans are is of course largely a matter of guesswork, but we should not be at all surprised if the Petrograd correspondent of the Morning Post were right when, telegraphing to Thursday's issue of that paper, he suggests that the German General Staff has formed the grandiose plan of aiming at two objectives—Petrograd and Kiev. If his view is the true one, and the facts certainly seem to bear him out, the Germans intend with their northern and western army, that is, with their left, to take Petrograd, and with their right to seize Kiev, one of the " holy places " of Russia. The plan, if it is the plan, is so bold, nay, reckless, from the military point of view as almost to take one's breath away. Most strategists when they are scheming to strike with both hands at once try so to arrange things that their armies shall ultimately converge. The further they press on in their scheme of invasion, the nearer will the two armies that started from bases wide apart get to each other. Every twenty miles traversed will tend to bring them into touch. If, however, Petrograd and Kiev are in truth the objectives, the German armies will be diverging not converging forces. The further they go and the more successful they are, the more they will be getting out of touch with each other and the longer will become the distance between them. Possibly it will be said that the Germans can assemble a great central force which will be able to fill the vast hole made by the divergence. But even granting this, the situation, if there should be anything like exceptionally bad weather, will be one of tremendous anxiety.
We shall be told, no doubt, that the flank of the army which is marching through the Baltic provinces in order to capture Petrograd will be secured by the German command of the Baltic. But this security must depend upon two things (1) The destruction of the Russian Fleet ; and (2) the keeping open of the ports in the Baltic provinces. Translated into the language of practice, this means the possession of Riga. But the Germans have not only not yet got into Riga, but apparently are a long way from its possession. In our opinion, the world was quite justified in holding the failure of the German Fleet in the Gulf, even though the details of that failure may have been somewhat exaggerated, as of the greatest moment. Even if the next German attempt—for such an attempt will of course be made—succeeds, the month's delay must have the gravest consequences. Again, no doubt, the apologist for German strategy would tell us that the advance on Kiev is guarded by the reconquest of Galicia. Possibly ; but nevertheless our enemies will be fighting with the Carpathians in their roar.
It may of course turn out that the Germans have really no designs of this sort, and that they are going to be content with driving the Russians back and making it impossible for Russia to invade, or even threaten, Germany for another seven or eight months. In other words, they still hope to be able to catch large portions of the Russian field armies and inflict on them, if not a complete disaster, at any rate damage so great that those armies will not be of any further account in the war. Russia would be obliged to undertake the complete reconstruction of her military forces—a task which would occupy 'her for the best part of a year. We admit that if hero German hopes were not to prove liars, and the Russian field armies wore destroyed instead of being kept in being, the situation for the Allies would be a very bad one. Time Germans would either be able to bring back large numbers of troops to operate in the South, and so join hands with the Turks, or else to put so huge a force upon the Western frontier as to strain the resources of France and Britain to the uttermost. If, however, as in our opinion will be the case, the Germans are not able to destroy the Russian field armies, but merely to drive them back, then our dilemma, comes into play. The Germans will not be able to let go of the wolf's ears lest it turn and rend them. At the worst they will be in deadly peril. At time best they will have to sit down and dig themselves in and main- tain some eight hundred or a thousand miles of trench warfare in a Russian winter—a task which will not leave them very many troops to transport to Flanders, or to employ in a winter campaign in the Serbian mountains.
All discussion such as that in which we are now engaging comes back in the end to the question whether the Germans can or cannot destroy the field armies of Russia. If they can- not, but merely inflict heavy punishment on the Russians while also receiving heavy punishment themselves, then, though no doubt they will have accomplished a good deal in pushing the Russians so far away from the German and. Austrian frontiers, they will have really achieved nothing to ensure ultimate success—nothing which will make them victors in the true sense. They will have delayed the inevitable end, but no more. Probably the next ten days or a fortnight will show whether we are right or wrong in predicting that the Russian armies will not be destroyed but will remain in being. If they do, the Germans, as far as we can see, must in self-defence go on butting against them. Then what will probably happen is this. The Russians will continue to retire till a point is reached where the Germans have attenuated their armies, as advancing troops are always attenuated, and where the Russians feel strong enough—since falling back means concentration just, as advance in an enemy's country moans attenuation —to attack them, and to inflict such injuries that the Germans must either retire or dig themselves in and hold a semi-fortress line. The first of these alternatives might moan a Napoleonic disaster for Germany. Time second would be an immense danger. We do not say that it is impossible to sit down in the mud and hold on to the wolf's ears grimly for several months, but it is a process which no Generalissimo can contemplate with anything but the deepest misgiving. We have been speculating somewhat in yam°, but we cannot leave the subject without expressing the unbounded admiration which we feel, and which we know the whole British people feel, for time splendid. military qualities which have been shown by the Russian Army, the Russian General Staff, and the Russian Commander-in-Chief. Nothing in military history has been more magnificent from the moral point of view, and more wonderful from the point of view of strategy and tactics. But to say this is not all. The Russian people and the Russian Goverument have nobly backed up the efforts of their Army. In Russia, from the Emperor to the peasant, there is now but one spirit—the spirit of determination and of self-sacrifice.
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