The Germans have failed in their greatest aim--as the case stands to-day. One cannot doubt that the high authorities in Berlin must realize this truth as surely as the military brains do on this side of the line. The Germans have shot their first bolt, a bolt forged from every resource in men and munitions that they could muster after months of preparation. The Russians have recoiled before it and may recoil again and again, but they always manage to prevent it from accomplishing its aim. At the moment of writing Germany faces the identical problem that she did two months ago, excepting that she now occupies extra territory, for the most part in ruins. The problem before her is to repeat the Galician enterprise on an army infinitely better than the one she broke in May. If she can do this she will have the identical problem to meet on some other line in another two months, and after that another and another. It is simply a question of how much time, men and resources Germany has to spend on these costly victories, if indeed the next proves a victory, which is doubtful. She may do it once, she may do it twice, but whenever it may be there will come a time when she can do it no more, and when that time comes Russia will slowly, surely, inexorably come back, step by step, until she has regained her own, her early conquests, and has Germany on her knees in the East. It is futile to speculate as to time. It may be months and it may be years. But it is most surely coming eventually. THE GERMAN DRIVE IN GALICIA CHAPTER XV THE GERMAN DRIVE IN GALICIA Dated: ROVNA, _June 26, 1915_. It is utterly impossible at this time to give anything like an accurate story of the past two months in Galicia. It will be years before the information necessary for definite history can be accumulated from the various units engaged. Even then there will be gaps and inaccuracies because hundreds of the men engaged have been killed, and so few even of the Generals know more than their own side of the case, that the difficulties of the historian will be enormous. I shall not attempt then, in this brief chapter, anything but to trace the merest outline of the causes and effects of the German drive in Galicia.