Good news from the Balkans

Serbians fighting splendidly

Allies’ new landing reported Wedge between Bulgars and Turks

IT IS believed that the Germans will make yet another big attempt to capture Dvinsk before the winter sets in, despite the failure of their previous efforts and that for this purpose reinforcements will be found and another attack in force made.

Possibly the intention is to kill two birds with one stone - to force the Russian defences in the northern sector from Riga downwards and to create a diversion which is fondly hoped will interfere with Russian plans elsewhere.

Prisoners tell their captors that the High Command is resolved to take the city “at all costs” but General Ruszky has so far kept the foe at bay and yesterday’s official report made it clear that, temporarily at all events, the foe had been fought to a standstill.

However, if it is correct that “an important engagement on the entire front of the lower and middle reaches of the Dvina” is pending we may speedily discover what strength the enemy is able to muster in this region.

At the same time, it is pointed out that so long as Riga is enabled to retain its communications with Dvinsk along the right bank of the Dvina and with its base in the rear, such an advance will not decide the ultimate destiny of the Baltic port.

The balance of the advantage so far in the prolonged fighting, as indicated by the results of isolated collisions inclines to Russian arms and Dvinsk and the Dvina front are not likely to go without the German paying a price they can ill afford.

On the remainder of the front there is not the slightest doubt that the Russians continue to hold the whip hand and the latest communique, reproduced in our news columns, is a record of quite a series of successes, several of them being an important character.

Many villages have been taken and the prisoners aggregate 3,500 together with much material while the enemy losses in killed and wounded are once more described as enormous.

Curiously enough very little is said of the Russian advance in the extreme southerly sector but there may be good reason for the reticence.

Berlin, too, has practically nothing to say, but their silence, we may safely guess, is for quite another reason.

The German has yet to be thoroughly beaten on the Eastern Front but already he is bewildered and for the Germans to be puzzled is for him to be half-way towards disaster.

“For reason which must have become obvious even to the most ignorant during the past five months of the Russian Retirement,” remarks a Petrograd correspondent who has proved his worth, “it is impossible for Germany to decide the war by anything attaining on the Russian front” and the writer goes on to discuss the general position somewhat in the paragraph preceding this.

“Apparently,” he says, “there is an inclination abroad to regard the new Balkan combination as yet another stroke of German military genius . . . The military genius of the German consists wholly and solely in far-sighted preparations for this war. “