this contrast is no mere recoil due to the war; it has long been apparent to those who preferred European history to Teuton mythology. Its solidity can be proved by the fact that the contrast holds in the weaknesses as in the merits of England.

That Prussianized Germany is supremely efficient is indeed widely asserted and often taken for granted. When I remarked elsewhere on the spiritual insanity of modern Germany, a critic ruefully expressed the wish that the German rulers would bite some of our own. I am far from saying that the German rulers may not bite somebody; one never can tell where true scientific progress may lead. But I am prepared to maintain that in the plain test of positive battle, their biting has been much less effective than General Joffre's nibbling.

German discipline seems to be the science of repeating a mistake. It would really seem as if the concentration of the mind on mechanical triumphs made the mind itself mechanical. The essence of all machinery is recurrence. But though the engine must repeat itself to be a success, if the engineer always repeats himself he will be a bore. The wheel is always returning and beginning again; but we do not want the coach to be always going back and starting again. Nowadays it does not seem so much to be the North Germans who make a machine that repeats itself; it is rather the machine that makes them repeat themselves. The fanciful might think they had really found perpetual motion, the impossibility-which has passed into a proverb; and that they had found it, like so many things mysteriously forbidden, a disaster for the sons of men.

Those who talk as if the English tradition of liberty or looseness were an unmixed weakness are perpetually reminding us of the fiasco of Gallipoli. The English abandoned the effort against Gallipoli. The Germans have not abandoned the effort against Verdun. To them it will probably appear a paradox, but it is a very solid truism, that the Germans have therefore suffered a

much more crushing defeat than the English.

But there is a much wider area in which the truth is supremely true and supremely important. I mean, of course, the English tradition of a liberal adaptability in the problems of colonies and dependencies. Here again a mere jingo optimism merely swamps the honest objectivity of the claim we can really make. England has done many things which I, as an Englishman, deplore or detest; she has done some things which all Englishmen deplore or detest. But what is strictly and scientifically true about England is this, that wherever the English influence is present, men feel that it has something which I can only call the flexibility of a living thing. The vital point is not that these things were done; it is that they were done and undone; that the men who made the mistake were alive enough to see the mistake. The strength of the Prussian, not by our account, but by his own account, lies in his inflexibility; and there are not wanting at this moment advocates of panic and persecution to urge this foreign fad upon the Government of England.

The truth is that amnesty and compromise have been for England a strength in the very strongest sense-that most athletic type of strength that goes with activity. A wooden leg is not stronger than a living leg, because it does not flinch and draw back when it steps on a thorn. The strength of the English influence has been that at the extremest limits of its sprawling limbs it has been at least alive, and knew the nature of what it touched. People complained of it, but they also complained to it; for they knew it had strength enough to move and mend. But the wooden leg is planted firmly in Belgium today; and we shall not waste our time in complaining to a wooden leg. We shall do so the less because the wooden leg is in truth adorned and completed by a wooden head; and the whole is one huge wooden idol carved like Hindenburg, which the limbs of living men shall lift and cast into the fire.

T

The sudden naval engagement in the North Sea supplied that need.

As to the naval battle, its facts and figures are set forth fully elsewhere. There now seems to have been very little difference between the respective casualties. The great difference in the naval resources of the Allies and the Central Powers, however, makes such conditions a German defeat. If it were a German victory, Germany needs but few more such to be eliminated from consideration as a naval power.

It is clear that the battle of Verdun is not going in a way that tends to instill confidence in the German mind, either at home or on the firing line. Possibly, also, the Balkan nations are commencing to wonder whether the world's verdict on the German possibilities is not, after all, a mistaken one. There have been rumblings from the Reichstag for some time over the progress, or rather the lack of progress, of events. The German people were led to believe great things of the Verdun attack. The failure of these things to materialize has caused, first, surprise, and now apparently some little resentment. It was necessary that something be done to draw public attention from Verdun and focus the public gaze

An intelligent reference to the situation created in Italy's fortunes by the attack of Austria in Trentino requires a brief preface of the general Italian plan. The original plan was for an offensive on only one front, that of the Isonzo. The entire western and northern Austro-Italian border is heavily buttressed with almost impassable mountains, the Isonzo front alone being open and offering the necessary elemental prospects of success. In Trentino, however, these mountains are penetrated by several valleys, which, if left open, would have nullified any attempt to operate against the Isonzo line, by providing a very ready passage for Austrian troops, who would then take the Isonzo line in the rear. The Italians, therefore, at the very beginning, attempted to close these gaps as a measure of defense on the Isonzo line. In this defensive operation in Trentino they advanced some distance up the principal valleys, until they were at the gates of Rovereto and Riva and were seriously threatening both cities. At this point, however, they were content to rest and spend all their energies on the eastern front. For some months there had been almost absolute quiet in this field, which was the situation when the Austrian offensive started.

The Austrian move was dictated by a very ambitious plan to invade Northern Italy, penetrate beyond the mountain

barrier into the plains, seize the railroad lines crossing these plains and running to Venice, take this latter city itself, and paralyze the entire Isonzo operation. As an incident to this success, the entire Italian line in the north of Italy would be taken in the rear and would either have to retire south of the railroad or be captured through being cut off. The area embraced by the Austrian attack can best be roughly described as a rightangle triangle, the base of which is a line forty miles due east of Borghetto and whose altitude is thirty miles due north along a line drawn from the point thus reached. The hypotenuse of this triangle will thus approximate the boundary between Austria and Italy. The object of the attack was, as noted, the control of the railroads crossing the northern Italian plain. There are two such roads serving the Isonzo front, one passing through Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, and Treviso, and the other through Mantua and Padua. The latter is the more important, as it reaches the more important industrial centres and depots of Lombardy and Piedmont. It is apparent that if the Austrians could take the more northern of these lines the Isonzo front would be imperiled, and if they took both it would be completely cut off.

The two principal exits from the Alps to the northern Italian plain are the Val Lagarina, which is the valley of the Adige, and the Val Sugana, which is the valley of the Brenta. These carry the two main roads and the only railroads of this part of the Trentino country. One, if not both, must be in Austrian hands before it can be said that they have done anything seriously to hamper the Italian operations. The critical points in the two valleys are Valstagna, in the Val Sugana, and Borghetto, in the Val Lagarina, as from these points south the character of the country begins to change from the altitudinous Alps to the plains below. The Austrians drove the Italians back on an average of about ten miles over the entire front, taking position after position in the most difficult country imaginable, and captured a great number of men and quantities of material. They advanced with the towns

of Arsiero and Asiago as their immediate objectives to within about five miles of either place. The importance of these places, particularly Asiago, relates only to the Val Sugana. From Asiago to Valstagna is but seven miles. A successful fight for the latter town would give the Austrians complete control of the Val Sugana and turn the entire Italian position in this valley.

It is to be noted that the Austrian success was made possible by a very heavy and entirely unexpected concentration of men and heavy guns, utilized to their utmost ability by an attack in which surprise was the dominating characteristic. To this feature of surprise and to their heavy artillery the Austrians owe the measure of success they have so far attained. As they advance, however, owing to the extremely difficult nature of the terrain, the transportation of guns and munitions becomes an operation increasingly difficult. This shows itself in the fact that for several weeks now the Austrians have been halted almost in place.

The indications are that the Austrian blow has spent its force and that the Italians are taking the offensive. If this is so the Austrians have but little to 'show for their effort. They have reconquered a small amount of territory and have, indeed, carried the war to Italian soil. They have also captured a large number of prisoners and a number of guns. The only loss that the Italians will feel, however, is the loss in artillery, which may well prove serious. Judging from present indications, the Austrian effort is a plan that died a-borning, and that as an offensive movement it is purely local in character and effect.

The feature of the month has been the inauguration of a great Russian offensive, which has taken in the entire front from the Gulf of Riga to Czernowitz, on the Pruth. This movement has created great surprise in the minds of all followers of the war. In the first place, the Russian march through the Caucasus and along the Black Sea seemed so pregnant of important possibilities that Russia was expected to devote most of her energies to that campaign. In the

second place, it has only been a few weeks since an offensive on the southern part of the western front was begun and crushed. Finally, it was not considered that Russia had had sufficient time to recoup her losses in men and material incident to the terrific drubbing she received from Germany last Summer.

The time for such a movement was, it is true, propitious. Austria is known not to have any too many men. She has called to the colors her 1918 class and has already warned the 1919 class. The Russians hold almost as many Austrian prisoners as the Germans do Russian prisoners. Owing to the calamities that overtook her in the early days of the war, her losses have been out of all proportion to Germany's, or even to Russia's. When the offensive against the Italian Trentino was started it was but natural, therefore, to wonder where Austria obtained the men. Her reserves were certainly not ample for the purpose, and

even if they were it would not seem a very wise policy to use them in such an enterprise. They could not have been taken from the Isonzo front, as the Austrian forces there were under constant pressure from the Italians and the front could not be weakened without giving the Italians free passage of the river at the Gorizia bridgehead. The only other place the men could have come from was that section of the Russian line between the Pripet Marshes and the Bessarabian frontier. And as the Russian offensive progresses it is becoming evident that this is where they did come from.

Apparently the Austrians, having beaten Russia back, felt that the enemy would not strike there soon again. But Russia did strike, and struck with tremendous impact, which broke the Austrian lines as they had not been broken since the first months of the war, when Russia conquered all of Galicia. In vain did Austria call for German assistance.

The Germans were firmly hooked at Verdun. They had been pouring troops into the Verdun area since February, and France would not let her go. Moreover, Russia was active also in the Dvinsk sector, and Germany did not dare weaken this front for fear that the Russians would break through here. Consequent-. ly Austria has had to fight the fight alone, with such meagre help as the Germans in the Poliesse region could give.

Conjecture as to the Russian object is unnecessary. The direct object of the attack is certain-the railroad centres, first of Kovel and then of Lemberg. The Russian movement was admirably planned, the time selected with unerring reasoning, the strategy perfect in conception. In the first days of the attack Kovel was apparently deemed the all-important point. Accordingly, the full force of the Russian blow struck first at Volhynia. The Volhynian triangle is the crux of the entire situation in this section. Lutsk and Dubno fell into Austrian hands early last Fall. With them went most of the area included in the triangle. Along the Ikwa and the Styr ran the Austrian lines in heavily intrenched positions. But in one June week both of the western fortresses fell, and the Russians were overrunning the entire triangle, capturing prisoners by the thousands. In the south, on the west bank of the Sereth River, the Russians also drove forward, but it seemed that their object was merely to prevent any transfer of troops to the threatened section. As matters have developed, however, the Austrian lines here also were weak, and have been driven back in some places to the Stripa, and in some places across it and almost to Zlota Lipa. Czernowitz, the capital of the Austrian crown land of Bukowina, is almost completely surrounded and cut off, the bridgeheads of the Dniester to the north are all forced and in Russian hands. At this writing the Russians are fighting within three miles of the city. Unless the force of the Russian attack is suddenly spent, it seems that nothing can prevent the fall of the city.

In the north, west of Volhynia, the

Russians have advanced to within less than twenty miles of Kovel and are still pushing rapidly forward. As they move west their progress will be seriously retarded by the fact that the lines of communication of the Austrians become shorter, and their troops, because of Austro-German control of the railroads, can be shifted much more quickly. But the speed of the Russian attack has carried them far beyond the last line of Austrian intrenchments, and the Austrians are not being given the opportunity to prepare new ones. They are being rapidly pursued by the Cossacks, who have taken great masses of war material of all kinds.

Because of the rapidity of their advance, however, the Russian lines are becoming very irregular and somewhat broken. Their consolidation will take some little time. At the same time, the Austrian position is very precarious. Deep salients are being created in their lines about Kovel, so that the flank of their line further north is being vitally affected. If Kovel falls the entire line, at least as far north as Pripet, will have to fall back, as it is dependent on the railroad running through Kovel for supplies.

The extent of the Russian success cannot yet be determined. They have captured so far about 150,000 prisoners and have completely disrupted the entire system of Austrian defense. At least onethird of the entire Austrian force in this section has been put out of action, and each day Russia reports thousands of additional prisoners. The Germans have attempted to relieve the situation by an attack along the Dwina, but the Russians, without diminishing the force of their blow against Austria, have answered with a heavy attack in the Lake Narosc region to the south. In ten days the Russians have retaken many more times the area that Germany has taken about Verdun since February, have taken five times the number of prisoners, though operating in a much more difficult territory and on a much more extended front.

In other theatres but little has happened of interest. The Germans are