THE ROUTES TO LEMBERG.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1600, 19 August 1916, Page 4

THE ROUTES TO LEMBERG.

Discussing the routes to Lemberg, a well-informed correspondent in the London Times says: Geographical factors, and particularly the railways, arc likely to play an important part in the development ot the Russian offensive. The vital centres of communications behind the Austrian line are Kovel, Lemberg, and Stanislao; im the Russian side Rovno and Tarnopol, and to a minor extent, Czorlkow. The main railway lines between the five chief centres form a capital W. of which the.upper points lie on the western, i.e,, Austrian side. Gasifies these lines, a railway runs in the north from Kovel, through marshy regions, along the southern fringe of the swamps of the Pripet. In the south two important railways line the region of the Dniester; one leads from Stanislao by Ni/niow and Buezaez to (J/.ortkow, the other from Stanislao by Kolomna and Czernovity to Bessarabia. The left, i.e., northern, bank of the Dniester is especially difficult ground for roads and railways running east and west, as the lower courses of the numerous left-baud tributaries of the Diwester form deep canons. In the northern sector between Kovel, Rovno and Lemberg, there are very few minor lines branching oft from the chief railways. In the south, on Austrian territory, the net is much more developed. If the Russians manage to break through the line of the River Koropiec, round Monasterisk, they will have reached the open plain between Nizniow and Heliez, one of the most important strategic sectors in the eastern theatre of war, and the scene of General Bmssiloff’s first victories over the Austrians. Lndoubtedly the great m'ass of splAidid cavalry at the disposal of the Russian commanders will greatly facilitate the operations in which the cutting of the communications in the rear of the unbroken parts of the Austrian front is of decisive importance. The fact has to be realised that the present Russian operations are in complexity and magnitude equal to anything which this war has as yej produced, and as a problem of generalship perhaps even surpass all previous battles.