The Washington times., 1915-08-01
WARSAW: AN ANNIVERSARY

Warsaw is evacuated in prepara-
don for German occupation, to
! mark the first anniversary of the
wars beginning. With Warsaw vir-
: tually in her grip, with Poland at
her feet. Germany may we'll take
account of the gains and losses, the
successes and failures of the year.
She occupies ten departments in
the north of France, and most of
Belgium. She holds Poland, and is
carrying a movement into the Baltic
provinces Of Russia, where she has
taken Libau. She sees no enemy on
her European soil.
If wars were the sporting and
rather leisurely operations of two
centuries or even century ago,
Germany might we'll calculate that
she had come wonderfully through
the year. But against this show
ing of military achievement she has
to admit some serious losses. She
has no colony, no outpost, left on the
face of the earth; no ships of war
= or trade on the waters; no COM
merce, where year ago she had
possessed an immense foreign traf-
fic. From being a splendid competi-
tor for primacy in the worlds mar
kets, she has descended to the state
Of most intensive effort to sustain
herself on her home soil. From a
coveted and hard-won place in the
sun she has fallen to eclipse in all
save military might.
Germany has astonished even her.
self with the demonstration of her
capacity for accomplishment; for
her own authorities, before the war,
accounted it as altogether likely
that if she could not win this war
within the first year, she must be
defeated. She has not won, and she
is anything but defeated. Both
Germany and her enemies have
shown staying quality that none of
them would have believed possible
at the outset. All the world has
been astounded at the immensity of
this new scale on which war is
staged and can be sustained, SEEM
ingly indefinitely.
We shall see presently whether
Germany is to be the winner. If
she can withdraw from the east
hurl her legions once more to the
west, and finish at Paris and al
Calais, where last year she failed
-. then indeed will she have done that
which her own military leaders be.
lieved could not be possible. There
were those who, year ago, stead.
fastly insisted that Germany would
not go to Paris. The event proved
they We're right; and surely those
who entertained that view then are
not to be convinced, short of the &C.
complishment, that she can do il
now.
The price which a years struggle
has exacted from Germany is heav.
ier, in proportion to her ability to
pay, than any other contestant has
borne. Somewhere there are today
two million British soldiers, perhaps
three million, waiting for the new
western onset of the Teutons. There
is French army generally con,
ceded to be the most effective in all
the zone of war. They are mani.
festly playing the game their owr
way. The strategy of Joffre in the
first Paris campaign has not beer
changed; he is going to make the
enemy play the part of the grand
offensive; to keep his own troops or
the defensive. If it had been part
Of Joffre's program to undertake q
great offensive, he would have
launched it before now; before the
Germans could be disengaged in the
east. He did not launch it, but con.
tinued his "nibbling" tactics, the
while digging deeper into the earth
and strengthening his lines across
France and Belgium.
OoilIc ldS DSell CIlliClSeu lOT IL
and there have been persistent init
nations that Russia was disaffectec
because of the failure of the western
allies to come to her rescue with {
smashing offensive. 1t would bt
dangerous to place too much conf
dence in these reports; in all proba
bility the entente powers understand
each other thoroughly, and have &C
cepted from the beginning that tn,
war could not at last be defnitel!
won, for them, in the east. Russi;
has rendered the service for which
her forces were best adapted sh,
has made Germany spend a yea
getting to Warsaw, when German.
ought, on form, to have gone ther'
before last Thanksgiving; she ha
taken fearful toll of German lif
and stores in the three campaigns il
the east; she has won time for he