GERMAN "NUT-CRACKER"

_A Petrograd dispatch to the London Morning Post said on July 15:_

The Germans have opened a new campaign for the conquest of Russia.

Their plan is to catch the Russian armies like a nut between

nutcrackers.

The German line of advance from the northwest lies between the

Mlawa-Warsaw Railway line and the River Pissa and from the south from

the Galician line. On paper the German scheme is that these two fronts

shall move to meet one another and everything between them must be

ground to powder. But the nut to be cracked is rather a formidable

area of space and well fortified, the kernel sound and healthy, being

formed of the Russian armies inspired not merely with the

righteousness of their cause, but the fullest confidence in themselves

and absolute devotion to the proved genius of their Commander in

Chief. The area referred to cannot be less than eighty miles in

extent, north to south, by 120 miles west to east. That is the mere

nucleus and minimum area, as contained between the Novo Georgievsk

fortress in the north to the Ivangorod fortress in the south and the

Russian lines on the Bzura in the west to Brest-Litovsk on the east.

[Illustration: The German battle line on July 24, in Russian Poland.]

The Germans have an incalculable amount of fighting to face before

they win to that area, the nut to be cracked, and then the cracking is

still to be done. It is all sheer frontal fighting. The Germans have

been twelve months trying frontal attacks against Warsaw on a

comparatively narrow front, and in vain. What chance have they of

success by dividing their forces against the united strength of

Russia?

New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 · 第 144 / 310 题