en
completely successful? The sober truth is that the invention and
employment of these devastating appliances have completely altered
the face of the field of battle and the conditions of modern warfare.
It is not in human valour, no matter how heroic or self-devoted it
may be, to oppose itself with anything like confidence to an enemy
which strikes from the skies, and cannot be struck in return.

"It was thus that the battles of Alexandrovo, Kalisz, and Czernowicz
were won in the early stages of the war upon the Austro-German
frontier. So, too, in the Rhine Provinces, were the battles of
Treves, Mulhausen, and Freiburg turned by the aid of the French
aerostats from battles into butcheries. It was under the assault of
these irresistible engines that the great fortresses of Koenigsberg,
Thorn, Breslau, Strasburg, and Metz, to say nothing of many minor,
but strongly fortified, places, were first reduced to a state of
impotence for defence, and then battered into ruins by the siege-guns
of the assailants.

"All these terrible events, forming a series of catastrophes
unparalleled in the annals of war, are still fresh in the minds of
our readers, for they have followed one upon the other with almost
stupefying rapidity, and it is yet hardly six weeks since the
Cossacks and Uhlans were engaged in their first skirmish near Gnesen.

"This is an amazingly brief space of time for the fate of empires to
be decided, and yet we are forced, with the utmost sorrow and
reluctance, to admit that what were two months ago the magnificently
disciplined and equipped armies of Germany and Austria, are now
completely shattered and broken up into fragmentary and isolated army
corps, decimated as to numbers and demoralised as to discipline,
gathered in and about such strong places as are left to them, and
awaiting only with the courage of desperation the moment, we fear the
inevitable moment, when they shall be finally crushed between the
rapidly converging hosts of the victorious League.

"Within the next few days, Berlin, Hanover, Prague, Munich, and
Vienna must be invested, and may possibly be destroyed or compelled
to ignominious and unconditional surrender by the irresistible forces
that will be arrayed against them.

"Meanwhile, with still deeper regret, we are forced to confess that
those operations in the Low Countries and the east of Europe and Asia
Minor in which our own gallant troops have been engaged in
conjunction with the