Volume 2 — THE MARSHES OF PINSK
Reading edition
The Kaiser: "When the leaves fall you'll have peace."—They have.
The last of the great Austro-German strokes had failed, and before the beginning of October, 1915, the line of the enemy in the east was established precisely where it was to be found unchanged until the great offensive delivered upon its southern part by the Russians in the beginning of June, 1916. Lord Kitchener put the matter simply and in words the accuracy of which could be gauged by the exasperation they caused at Berlin, when he said that the enemy had now in the East "shot his bolt." It was a phrase exactly true. The expense in men, the difficulty of bringing up munitionment; the entry into territories with worse roads and less opportunities of supply; the fact that the line now reached was cut by the great belt of marshes in the centre—all these things between them brought the great adventure to a stand.
Hilaire Belloc. in Land and Water.
