To the unthinking, Russia has proved somewhat disappointing. Such great things were expected of her by those who knew nothing of the conditions in the eastern theatre of war. At the end of over a month of fighting she had not advanced a mile along the direct road to Berlin. Her army in the north, after an advance which was acclaimed as of tremendous importance, was defeated, driven back and practically forgotten. The south-west of Poland was still overrun by the enemy, and the only real advance that had been made was to penetrate about a hundred miles into Galicia. Certainly it does not appear at first glance to be a very considerable achievement. It is only when matters are thoroughly investigated that the truth is grasped. Russia has achieved more than any other Power engaged in the war, and far more than could rightly have been expected of her. In the west the Germans advanced to the very gates of Paris, but they won no decisive victory; the allied armies remained intact and unbroken. The Allies then assumed the offensive, and the Germans were pushed back. But again no decisive battle has been fought, at least during the period under review. The German armies are, at the moment of writing, still intact and to all appearances capable of assuming a renewed offensive with vigour. It is only in the eastern theatre of war that victories have been won. Tarnopol, Tomasov, and Lemberg were not merely favourable engagements which resulted in the enemy being forced to retreat a few miles. They were victories which routed as well as defeated the enemy. It must be remembered, too, that these operations in Galicia and Poland are being fought on the same vast scale as those in the west. They extend along a front of no less than 200 miles. In point of numbers engaged, the Galician and Polish operations are again very similar to those in France. In fact, the conditions in the east and west are more or less equal, and therefore Russia’s victories were the only really decisive engagements won by any of the armies. Official opinion in Russia would have been quite satisfied if, by the beginning of September, the mobilisation was completed, and Warsaw, Vilna and Kiev still in Russian hands. It was certainly expected that at the end of a month’s warfare Russia would be engaged in fiercely defending her own territories and in making desperate efforts to drive the invaders back over the frontier. In short, she was fully expected to be faced with a month or more of sheer defensive fighting before she could hope to advance. The magnitude of her task in this direction will be obvious when it is remembered that, in addition to the inevitable slowness of mobilisation which renders her a comparatively easy prey for invaders, she has a frontier of well over 1,000 miles to defend against Germany and Austria.