PROGRESS OF THE WAR ITALY'S SERIOUS WORK

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 151, 28 June 1915, Page 8

PROGRESS OF THE WAR

ITALY'S SERIOUS WORK

AUSTRIA SENDS MEN. ; IMPORTANT POSITIONS IN THE BALANCE. Austrian reinforcements in considerable numbers have been sent to the Italian frontiers. According to a Borne message, Ihey are from France and Galicia. The bringing of Austrians from France, where an undefined number has been engaged almost since the beginning of the war, especially with the big 12-inch Skoda howitzers, will probably not make very much difference to the position in the west. If they take their big guns away with them_ the Frenchmen will be relieved of a noisy, though not particularly deadly, element in the combat of entrenchments. The Austrian units will probably be replaced by Germans. The withdrawal of Austrians from Galicia is much more important. The present t line occupied by the contending armies' in Poland and Galicia is very little shorter than that of two months ago ; and it is not any condensation of front which releases the Austrians. It is a double recognition that the Russian offensive power has probably lost much of its threat, and that the Italian is coming into real existence. • Sooner or later Austria must detach armies to attend to the Italian invader ; and now, at the culmination of the Galician blow, is the best time. But Italy, realising the coming blow, has gone carefully, and is now face to face with the Austrian defences, not in loosely-placed positions, but in entrenchments, and ready for a struggle on the latest lines. ( <• A report from Milan, as yet unconfirmed, states that. Gorz has been captured. This is the town which was recently described as another P.rzemysl, whose early capture was essential to the Italian march over the Isonzo. It sits upon the Udine-Trieste railway, and is in a most influential situation with regard to the whole of the Italian plan for an eastward advance. There are other messages referring to the positions about Gorz, and it is quite possible that the town, which has been subjected to attack for some time, is by now in Italian hands. Another point of considerable importance is Tarvis, which is east of the end of the Carnic Alps frontier, and practically due north of Monfalcone. It stands on the 1 railway which runs from Venice to Klagenfurt and. Vienna, and is not far from Villach, where this. railway cuts the line running down into the Trentino. The Tarvis advance not only threatens an important invasion of Austria, but to cut the rear' lines of supply of the Austrians. * SURPRISE AT RUSSIA'S STAND. That the Russians are still battling close to Lemberg has occasioned surprise to the Cologne Gazette. The sudden pulling up of the enemy's offensive must, indeed, have caused surprise even outside Germany and Austria. It was clear that the Russians, though defeated in a phase of a campaign, were not conquered. Their great retreat was at the time wracked with the signs of complete disaster. The armies fell back fighting, and they never lost their soundness of formation. But their splendid conduct of _ the retreat does not explain their ability to hold up the enemy on the front. Had the ability to stop the Austro-Germans existed earlier, it would have been exercised on the Wislok or ! the San or, at latest, at Grodek, not east of Lemberg. This Russian retirement was not the bait of a trap. It involved a tremendous territorial sacrifice; it was too costly to be used for bait. It was a retirement which could not be avoided, and_ if the Russians are enabled to strike again it will not be because they have retired, but because they have power which would have been just as available without the. retirement. The ability of the Russians to make a stand within Galicia has\ probably important causes which lie with the enemy, and not with the Russians. There is very little difference in the total length of the various fronts which haVe been occupied. But there has been an increasingly emphatic need for Auetrians to go to look after Italy. As the Russian front < within Galicia has rapidly decreased in length, till it is now not much more than half the length it. was in April, it has been lees and less the personal affair of Austrians to remain in Galicia. On the other hand, the German part of the line has correspondingly increased in length, so that, just as fast as Austrians have departed, Germans have had their work increased. That this process has gone on is shown by the Italian reports of large reinforcements from Galicia. x MENTION OF WARSAW. Even more may be at the bottom of the Russian resistance. We must always be prepared for, though we may not expect, a new German attack. Today there is a statement that a large number of guns have left Essen for the Bzura, for a renewed attack upon Warsaw. There is no special reason to believe that those guns are going to the Bzura, because the Germans would not allow it to be known if they were. But they < may be 'going somewhere else in Russia ; and there are several points in the great Eastern front where the enemy have lately been active, and where a heavy offensive may be suddenly undertaken. These considerations show that too much must not be, taken for granted with regard ,to the German offensive. _ The Russian situation in the meantime, as far as Galicia is concerned, is as satisfactory as can be expected after recent events ; and the compulsion upon Austria to divide her forces, coupled with Germany's extension of front, distinctly encourage a belief that the end of the Russian retirement is near, if it has not arrived. A Very optimistic message from Petrograd dwells upon the unbroken state of the Russian armies, upon the small losses sustained in comparison with the huge casualties of the pursuing enemy, and upon the plight of •the. enemy upon the Dniester. With regard to the (latter, it is interesting to note that the message anticipates "a series of inglorious reverses.". This is a careful distinction from a wholesale defeat, which in the circumstances it would be very unwise to forecast. The Russians may be able to continue, and probably will continue, their trying attacks upon the enemy's Dniester armies. Such attacks, even if they do not result in any material advantage of position, will damage seriously tile prestige of the German arms. THE ADVANCE IN ALSACE. The French report upon the capture of Metzeral has a special interest, . because it shows how unreliable some classes of war newg are. The Germans reported recently that it was abandoned "in accordance with a pre-arranged plan," and without any enemy pressure. That lie is nailed down by the description of the fierce fighting in a town which was a veritable fortress, every step through which was defended. But even one of the French reports described Metzeral as having been set on fire and evacuated by the Germans. The French seizure of the village gave them control of an important part of the valley of the Fecht; and the result is seen in the clearing out of civilians from villages further east, in the Munster Valley, before the approaching wave of battle on the itoep hilli which