A possible explanation of Von Hindenburg’s advance to the Niemen was that the German General Staff hoped by a serious threat in this direction to lead the Russians to diminish the pressure upon Galicia in order to reinforce their right. At the time of the operations Colonel Shumsky, perhaps the best-known military writer in Russia, pointed this out, and at the same time suggested that the menace from East Prussia could have no serious result. “Will the Germans,” he asked, “compel us to abandon the operations in the Carpathians and throw our forces across to the Niemen, or shall we compel the Germans to restrict their activity on the Niemen, and fling themselves into Cracow and Galicia to save Austro-Hungary? The advance of the Germans from East Prussia cannot have any decisive object. A lightning-like stroke could only be delivered if the Germans were finished with France and could move all their forces against us.” It appears that something was done to draw reinforcements from the western theatre of war for the German armies on the Polish frontier. Reserve and Landwehr troops organised since the declaration of war were moved in the same direction, and, according to Russian estimates of a subsequent date, by the end of September the Germans had concentrated twelve army corps of about 400,000 men on the frontier in the centre about Thorn and Posen. It appears, however, that at the time the Russian Staff did not realise that this formidable concentration was in progress, and thought that their opponents were putting forth their chief efforts on the two flanks of the long curved line northwards--for the struggle in East Prussia, and southwards for the defensive campaign in Galicia. The Germans, however, were preparing for a serious stroke in the centre of the Polish theatre of war, and, despite his failure on the Niemen, the chief command of this great effort was entrusted to General Hindenburg. The fame he had acquired by his expulsion of the enemy from East Prussia had only been slightly overclouded by the defeat on the Niemen, and it was thought that the German generals in East Prussia could be safely left to defend against Rennenkampf’s farther advance through the wilderness of forest, marsh, and lake which forms the natural barrier along the frontier of the province.