ESTABLISHED 1866. The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1915. RUSSIA'S ROUTES TO BERLIN.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIX, Issue 21, 26 January 1915, Page 4

ESTABLISHED 1866. The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1915. RUSSIA'S ROUTES TO BERLIN.

R-ecent cablegi-ams liave hinted at tlie probability of some new and farreaching offensive movement by the Russians. The Grand Duke Nicholas is, it is said, quite satisfied as to the safety-of-Warsaw, this safety being assured, we read, by the field fortifications consisting of "six rows of supporting trenches, superbly built, and practically impregnable." Should yon Hindenburg persist in trying to break his way through to Warsaw, all the worse for him. The more Germans who immolate themselves uselessly against these entrenchments, the better for the Russians, for there will be correspondingly fewer of the foe to oppose a Russian forward movement at some other point. It is not likely, of course, that tUie Russian Comma nder-in-Ohief will take the world into his confidence as to the exact route by which, eventually, the Tsar's batt.nlions—-"those fresh armies •, lv op?rate in a solcotecl rogion" of

! which the cablegrams speak—will enter Germany; but everything points to that advance being made through western G-alicia and Bohemia. Two other routes, one through East Prussia through the Masurian lakes district, via Marienburg and Koenigsbefg; the other, the central direct route westwards from Warsaw, via Thorn >and Posen, have been much dis*cussed since the war began; and in tlie opinion of some English, and French journals..this latter route is the one which the Russians have still principally in view. On each, of these routes, however, there exist the most formidable obstacles to block the path of the would-be invader. In East Prussia there is a vast area of lakes and marshlands-; on the Thorn route there are three great rivers, the Vistula* the <>der > a; nd the War La,, to be crossed, and immensely strong fortresses to be either captured or masked. Even when the Russians had 'got across the last of the three rivers there would still remain the marsh and lakeland of the Spreewald to be traversed. On the map the Thont-Posen or. so-called direct route looks much the shortest of the three. Nevertheless, we cannot bring ourselves to believe that it is by this, route that the Russian armies will march, who are destined, sooner or later, to give to the arrogant Berliners an. intimate acquaintance with the horrors of invasion. It is, we feel convinced, by the Cracow^ and Silesian route, with, in all probabilrfcy, a supplementary invasion through Bohemia and-along the course of the Elbe, that the Russian armies will eventually penetrate to the Prussian i capital. lit must be remembered that Germany's real objective;'when she first entered the field, was to crush, the advancing Slav power in Central and Southern Europe. The struggles between Germany and Belgium, and even Germany and England, are but by-products, as it-were, of the war, gigantic in their, interest as they liave now become. Germany desired to crush the chief Slav power, Russia, before the military strength of the latter power had become so great as to make such a task impossible. France, as Russia's Ally, had, of course, to, be crushed at the same time; but this was merely a secondary consideration. That the original aim of Germany in.declaring,war was to crush the Slav power, and that a consideration of the aim will provide a solution of the problem of the best route to Berlin for the Russians to take, has recently been very ably explained' by Mr V James Baker, F.R.G.S., an Englishman who has travelled muck in eastern Austria and has written several books on that country. Mr JBaker points out that the Slav power threatened to throttle Germany; that it was slowly closing in upon* Berlin from.many sides. The organising power of the Slav peoples that was at length co-ordinating and ranging in line all the Slav peoples emanated, lie says,, from., Bohemia. "A reference .to',.the..map will show how Bohemia, is linked, with. Moravia and Galicia, and, with German Silesia intervening, with•'the Polish parts of the province of East Prussia, and this is further linked, wiibh the districts of the Spreewald, where also is a Slav population that .reaches nearly to the gates of Berlin. 'Southward and eastward this linking went on—-eastward to Galicia. and the Bukovina, where all are Slavs, and southward in Carniola and down-;]th«pf? Dalmatian coast and in Bosnia Herzegovina;."1 Taking Mr Baker's to study tllie map, we 'have before us an ethnographic 'map of J Austria-Hungary (map No. 46 in ihe. Times Atlas) arid! it is thereby easy, to see, that a huge Slav wedge in Moravia and Bohemia cuts in between the Germans of Silesia and Saxony and the Germans of Upper and Lower Austria proper. What does this mean,? Simply that whereas in stead of through a country..where every man would be against, them, as .:• would be^ the case were either-the East Prussia or the. Thorn^Posen routes adopted, a Russian host. invading, 'Germany1 from the south-east would pass through -^a country -.•nominally Austrian but in reality inhabited by people who are racially allied po the invaders. The Cracow-BTOslau; route would leadl the Russians into one of the richest-in-dustrial provinces of Germany. Should1 numbers ipermit.-'si.;.-supplementary |mvasion to that alorfg' the Oder might not improbably be made up the Elbe. A wi'iter in the Paris Figaro states that never have there been so many cannons of heavy calibre amassed in a fortress as the Germans have gatlherto together at Cracow. But. he continues, "Cracow''once in the hands of the Russians and $he routes to both Brunn and Breslatf'are open; on the Breslau route there would still be one or two natural obstacles; to Brunn none, and, the Sudetes passed, the Russian invasion, would sweep on as a flood,";. Throtifrhout Slavonic Austria—that is, in Moravia and Boliemiaj^ as well as Galicia—the great Slavonic organisation; the "Sokol," has been at work/WThe "Sokol." Mr Baker explains, is a "drill-atbletio organisation." It's;ave a wondrous demonstration at .'Frague, the Bohemian capital, in 1911, "when, 200,----000 Slavs were gathered from all parts of the world.to see the 'Sokols' or 'Falcons' drill, 11,000 men as one.'! Not only are the members organised for drill, but also to hold meetings and organise developments to benefit and to cohere the Slav folks in all kinds. v Wherever the Russians may go in Slavonic Austria they will find a friendly organisation ready to help them. From Cracow onwards through •Moravia, to Bohemia and the German Saxon frontier tlie route would be first over plains, and then over low hills, much-easier to traverse than the mountainous Carpathians. From the Bohemian frontier to Dresden is but some "sixty miles; from Dresden to Berlin another hundred miles; whilst from Breslau to Berlin is a good hundred and fifty. Two vast hosts of Russians entering Germany, one by the Breslau (the Oder) route, the other—as we have shown is quite likely—through' Bohemia and up thfi Elbe, "would pioce* an almost irresistible'pressure on the enemy. The attack would be on Gertniaiiy's richest industrial provinces (excepting Westphalia); it would spell ■an immediate and complete paralysis of German mnnufacturine and commerce generally..; it would inevitnbly be t-h-p. beginning of the end. But first Cracow must be either taken or heavily masked. That is the nut for tTie Grand' Duke Nicholas to crack. That the Germans are fully 'aware of the danger ahead is proved by the rmnovpd organising:, of an army of 400.000 mon +n make a "new invasion of Servia" ! What good could be gained from such a move by either Aus- | tria or Germany? 'So long as the Servians do not seriously take the offensive against Auptria the -Iptter j can well afford +o let the Balkan wasps' nest severely atone. No, the ir.ay fairly assume, intended to cope

with a coming resumption, on a larger scale than ever, of the Russian attack on Cracow. It is to the eastern theatre of the war that we must look for those great events which will * presage the much-dosired consummation, the invasion of Germany, the fall of Berlin and the debacle of tlie = Hohenzollern despotism.