THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 1916. THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16268, 29 June 1916, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 1916. THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE.

The Germans are making very great efforts to check before Kovel the Russian advance. They realise the disastrous effect upon their eastern battle-front of any continuance of Allied success in this quarter, and are endeavouring to make a stand which may prevent the consummation of the Russian plan of campaign. The Russians' strategy evidently aims at the holding of Hindenburg and Mackensen in the northern sphere of the eastern theatre while they drive a wedge between the German and Austrian armies through Kovel, in Volhynia, and Lemberg, in Galicia. Already the German forced operating in and north of the Pfipet marshes are in danger of being enveloped from the south. If the Austrians are separated from the Germans, the former, already ,disorganised, would be forced to retreat from Volhynia, and the rolling up, of the latter from the south should become possible. The

Russian advance to the Carpathians, in Bukovina, has turned the extreme right flank of the Austrians, whose hope of . staving off further disaster appears to depend upon a general retreat of their armies on the Strypa. It remains to be seen what further effect the Russian advance may have upon the general military situation in the east and in the west.

The extreme right of the Germans' eastern battle-front rests on the Gulf of Riga at a point nearly "throe hundred miles from Insterburg, the principal junction of railways in the eastern part of East Prussia. It will thus be seen that Hindenburg's armies which are operating against Riga and the line of the Dvina are a considerable distance from their sources of supply in Germany, and that any movement of the Russian armies towards those sources of supply must necessarily embarrass the German General Staff in its direction of the German armies operating east and north of the Niemen. Heretofore the German General Staff has doubtless depended on the general strength of its battle-front north of the Pripet country, and on a presumed inability of the Russians to break its line in Volhynia. With the debacle of the Austrian the German forces south of the Pripet have been forced to give way until their line from the neighbourhood of Kovel to Pinsk is now form'ed on a front running to the north-north-east instead of to the north. With accelerated and increased pressure Russia may force the Germans in this region to retire their right flank until it is at right angles to their front north of Pinsk, in which case they will have placed themselves in a position which is gener- i ally accepted by authorities on strategy and tactics as being untenable. Any movement to the west by this section of the German ! forces would expose to danger the sources of supply from which are drawn ammunition and war material for the armies of Mackensen and Hindenburg, who are operating east and north of the Niemen. The Russian successes in Volhynia may thus have a direct and important bearing on the general military situation, and may affect not only the armies immediately opposed to the Russian advance, but also those forces which form the northern wing of the German armies in the east. General Brussiloff's success has also had a considerable influence on the situation in the Trentino, whence the Austrians have been forced to withdraw troops to reinforce their shattered armies in Galicia, and must have materially affected the military situation on the entire western battle-front. We have been told that one hundred troop trains recently passed through Liege, bearing troops from Belgium eastward.

The average troop train carries about a thousand men, so that this transference alone represents some five divisions, or one hundred thousand men. Incidentally it may be again pointed out that such movements of troops suggest the pending exhaustion of the German armies reserve, for it is not in conformity with the principle of economy of force to transfer troops from Belgium as reinforcements for the east if there are available armies of reserve at, say, Magdeburg, Dresden, or Breslau.

A careful scrutiny of current events strengthens the growing belief in the gradual 'weakening of the Central Powers. They have disclosed a palpable inability to withstand the assaults of the Russians, and it is plain that only by considerably amending their plans of campaign can they hope to meet the new situation created by the imminent danger which has arisen through the failure of the Austrians in Galicia and Volhynia. It is at this stage of tho war that the enfemy must begin to feel the disadvantages which arise from the extreme length of its battle-fronts and from the distance of those battle-fronts from the bases upon which they depend for supplies, not only of munitions and reinforcements, but also'of food. So long as matters went well with the Central Powers, and so long as their armies of reserve were large, they were able to maintain their strength on their widely extended and remote battle-fronts. With evidently weakening supplies of men, their military leaders must find it increasingly difficult to maintain those battle-fronts along lines so vast and so far from their bases. To contract those lines means retreat ; retreat may mean the failure of their essential plans and the ultimate victory of the Great Alliance.