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Timaru Herald, Volume CIII, Issue 15742, 28 August 1915, Page 8

The abandonment- of Brest Litovsk to the enemy does not come as a surprise, .since the enemy's operations north and south of it had practically made this line untenable, and it was clear that the Russians must give more attention for the moment to the German offensive in the Dunaberg-Vilna district, whose success would threaten forces in North Poland with envelopment. The Berlin report states that the Russians at Brest Litovsk made a bold defence, but they were greatly outnumbered and retreated eastward in good order. The battle was probably a rearguard action on a large scale. The Russians would lose no time in withdrawing their main forces in this district, once the necessity was forced on them, because they have to negotiate the extensive Pinsk marshes behind Brest Litovsk, and will not have much room. for movement- The town, with a population of 54,000, is strongly fortified, but fortifications of the old type are a poof dependence in this war. Brest Litovsk is 132 miles east-south-east of Warsaw and 682 miles west-south-west of Moscow. It is a longer way, as tlie crow flies, from even Brest Litovsk to Moscow titan, it is from Belgium to Tipperary, and iloscow is just too near the west to be the centre of Russia.

Brest Litovsk contained vast magazines and military stores, which we can hope were thoroughly depleted before the Germans entered. In some ways the marshes will be a protection to the Russians in their further retreat, as they will not have to defend so long 1 a front. The sparse railways will help them in retreating-. and will not be available for tflie Germans, who aye tearing- up lines in Belgium to relay in the eastern theatre. On the jwhole front from the middle Xiemen to the Pripet, which flows east to join the Dnieper from a point- between Bresi) Litovsk and Kovel, the Russian armies are falling back, while the forces on the northern piemen and in the Baltic provinces are concerned to hold back the Germans who are seeking to cut off their retirement from the north. Hinderiburg.himself is reported to be threatening the Dvinsk-Vilna line, and Yilna is also menaced by the army pushing east from Kovno- The Russians are falling back before this army, but they claim to be holding the enemy on the Svenka, which is north- west of Vilna. _ The Russians claim to be entirely confident of their power to avoid disaster, so long as " the Germans cannot make new landings in the Baltic. If the munitions has been doubled in the last three months, as has been twice reported, their worst difficulty will have been surmounted. 'There have been no new developments in other theatres.

f ' Protracted mobility " is the name given by a correspondent to tlie Russian series of evacuations and retreats. He adds ithat the Russian people are beginning' to regard "protracted, mobility" as a "feasible military scheme."' There is, of course, as much necessity as policy underlying the Grand Duke's retirements, but the Russian theory of war has tended constantly to disregard a principle that is much by western armies—the principle o£ line defences and line attacks. 4'Worship of this precious principle," declared the Russian correspondent of the "Morning Post" some weeks apo, "leads to defence of frontiers ai>d other demarcations of niei-e space, which, after all, is only one of the factors in every strategic problem. In a war like the present, which is one of life and deatli among nations, this factor is certainly the least important of all. TsTat)oleon somewhere .says that the army which manouvres is the army that wins victories. Germany has manoeuvred with exceeding freedom. So has Russia. Germany holds to the principle of the line, like the other nations of the West- ' Russia does not.'/ He concludes that "the Russians have probably far more to'teach the world about the- art of war than ever the Germans had." If, is more safe to say that the Russians have known in the mst, and may know now, the best' way to adapt their warfare to the conditions of their enormous, most inhospitable country.