The strategic value of Przemysl itself was in no way acutely delaying the Russian campaigns elsewhere, and they could afford to let the Austrian General who shut himself and a huge army up in Przemysl, play their own game for them, which is exactly what happened. There was no such situation here as at Port Arthur, where the menace of a fleet in being locked up in the harbour necessitated the capture of the Far Eastern stronghold before the Russian second fleet could appear on the scene and join forces with it. Nor was there even any such important factor as that which confronted the Germans at Liège. To the amateur it seems then that the Austrians, with eyes open, isolated a force which at the start must have numbered nearly four army corps, in a position upon which their programme was not dependent, and under conditions which made its eventual capture a matter of absolute certainty providing only that the siege was not relieved from without by their own armies from the South. The lesson of Przemysl may be a very instructive one in future wars. The friends of General Sukomlinoff, the Russian Minister of War, are claiming with some reason that what has happened here is a vindication of the Minister’s theory, that fortresses in positions which are not of absolute necessity to the military situation should never be built at all, or should be abandoned at the inception of war rather than defended unwisely and at great cost. It is claimed that if the Warsaw forts had not been scrapped some years ago, the Russian Army to-day would be standing a siege, or at least a partial siege, within the city, rather than fighting on a line of battle 40 kilometres to the west of it. Port Arthur is perhaps an excellent example of the menace of a fortified position of great strength. So much had been done to make that citadel impregnable that the Russians never dreamed of giving it up. The result was that a position, which was doomed to succumb eventually, was made the centre of all the Russian strategy. For months the army in the North was forced to make attempt after attempt to relieve the position, with the results that they lost probably four times the number of the garrison in futile efforts to relieve it. A fortress which has cost large sums of money must be defended at any cost to justify the country that has incurred the expense. Forces which can probably be ill spared from field operations are locked up for the purpose of protecting expensive works which, as in the case of Przemysl, yield them little or nothing but the ultimate collapse of their defence, and the consequent demoralization of the field armies which have come to attach an importance to the fortress which, from a strategic point of view, it probably never possessed. V