What are the Germans to do next P They cannot,
or rather dare not, go back to Germany, and if they make another attempt to take Warsaw they must first improve the position by getting further reinforcements. But these they cannot get of any quality worth having unless they bring them from the west. This, again, they cannot do without grave peril. To renew the attack under the old conditions would be very difficult, and probably end in another defeat. The only available course, then, would seem to be to hold on where they are, and, if they cannot drive the Russians back, at any rate to keep them from advancing. That, no doubt, would be a perfectly sound policy if we were in August and not at the end of October. As it is, holding on may mean terrible hardships for the troops. Trenches in the plains of Poland in November are not likely to be pleasant things. It is not possible to argue that if they are likely to be death-traps to the German array they will be equally so to the Russians, for the Russians will have at their back a great and well-supplied city able to furnish them with all sorts of help. Besides, the Russian peasant soldiers will unquestionably stand the rain and the mud and the misery far better than the Germans, half of whom are clerks and city dwellers, and not men inured to a hard life in the open.
