The trouble about the Napoleonic strategy is that the enemy
will not always play the game—that the wedge does not always divide them sufficiently, that their line meioses too quickly, and that armies that appear to have been driven apart may be even quicker in movement than the penetrating army, and so catch it in a deadly grip. These disagreeable facts about penetration are, we imagine, what the Germans are now learning in Poland. By the irony of fate, the Power which has always based itself on enveloping tactics is apparently going to suffer from envelopment. We say " apparently," for we are not going to commit the supreme folly of being over-confident. It may be that the masses of men who are now said to be "wandering about in the rear of the Russian line," or the large surrounded force which, though heavily pressed, is for the moment refusing to surrender, may by some lucky accident be able to give a good account of themselves, or, again, that some new German force now in the rear may be rushed to their rescue. In all probability, however, none of these things will happen. Events will probably take their normal course, and by next week we shall be able to record a Russian success, with large captures of men and guns, though, of course, in no sense a final victory. It will, however, be a victory which will put great heart into the Russians, demand tremendous sacri- fices from the Germans to replenish their armies, and in all probability will also force them to go back to a line in their own country, and may throw open the road to Posen.
