[Illustration: DIAGRAM VII. You have here 1000 men ready to attack. If they attack in long open waves of men as at A-A, it takes them a long time to spread out, and when they are spread out the effect of their shock is not overwhelming.] You have in Diagram VII a thousand men ready to attack. If they attack in long open waves of men as at A-A, it takes them a long time to spread out, and when they are spread out the effect of their shock is not overwhelming. They can only succeed by wave following wave. [Illustration: DIAGRAM VIII. If your 1000 men attack in denser bodies as at B-B, they can be launched much more quickly, and the effect of their shock when they come on is much greater.] If they attack in denser bodies (Diagram VIII), as at B-B, they can be launched much more quickly, and the effect of their shock when they come on is much greater; it is, to use the German’s own term, the effect of a swarm. This seemed obvious, but the critics of the second system of close or swarm formation always said that, though they admitted its enormous power if it could be used at all, it could not be used because its losses would be so enormous against modern firearms. Your spread-out line, as at A-A, offered but a small target, and the number of men hit during an assault would be far less than the number hit in the assault of such bodies as B-B, which presented a full target of dense masses. Well, in the event, that criticism proved wrong in _both_ its conceptions. The Germans, thanks to their great courage and excellent discipline, _have_ been able to use close formations. The immense losses these occasion have not prevented their continuous presence in the field, but, contrary to all expectations, they have not, as a rule, got home. In other words, they have, in the main, failed in the very object for which the heavy sacrifice they entail was permitted. Another unexpected thing in which this war has warranted the old conception of arms is the exactitude of provision. Everybody thought that there would be a great novelty in this respect, and that the provisioning of so many men might break down, or, at any rate, hamper their mobility. So far from this being the case, the new great armies of this modern war have been better and more regularly provisioned than were the armies of the past, and this is particularly true upon the side of the Allies, even in the case of that astonishing march of three million of Russians across Poland with the roads in front of them destroyed and the railway useless. WHAT TO BELIEVE IN WAR NEWS _Showing how the reports in the Press should be selected and compared, so as to arrive at a just estimate of the true position of affairs._ WHAT TO BELIEVE IN WAR NEWS The other day there came a message to London from Italy, solemnly delivered in printer’s ink and repeated in nearly every newspaper, that the town of Cracow was invested, that the bombardment had begun, and that part of the city was in flames.