SYDNEY SUN MESSAGES

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 6 September 1915, Page 5

SYDNEY SUN MESSAGES

LONDON, Sept. 3. Colonel Repington, commenting on the advance of the Austro-Germans in Galicia, after eight weeks' comparative inactivity, says that this implies a desire to turn the right of General Ivanoff's armies, and seize Lutzk and Koano, depriving the Russian commander of an important group of railway communications, including the chief line traversing the Pripet district south and north. If this is effected, General Ivanoff will be more than" ever cut off from the Russians to the north, with scanty railway communcations. If retiring eastwards to Kieff, the two main groupings of the Russian armies will endeavor to keep in touch by using bodies on the right of the troops in the Pripet region, which is unsuitable for the operations of large forces, and will shortly be impassable. If the Russian armies now round Vilna can hold their ground, or retire slowly, for the next ten days, then they are out of danger. With winter near, the German armies will shortly be in a disagreeable position. The Russians are retiring into the forest swamps and into vast spaces of solitude in the interior, awaiting the soring for the hour of her rev«*iigo. Tlie renewed threat of an Austro-Ger-m-an invasion of Serbia merits respect. It would be a big thing to disarm Serbia, and chain Bulgaria to the Germao chariot, breaking the way to Constantinople, in order to fall into the arm® of Enver Pasha and his crew, but it is a good deal to ask us to believe that those Balkan States which are owing their existence £o Russia and her friends are ready to become, instrumental victims of Teuton domination. There is no doubt of the greatest desire on Austria-Hungary's part to wipe out memories of their defeats at Serbian hands, but winter approaches, and the Austro-Germans are deeply involved in more important operations. Germany, with unconquered enemies on two fronts, and her source of recruiting unable to stand the heavy demands caused by immense casualties withoutenlisting those above military age, may well dread the Balkan adventure.