February 22nd, 1915

- The French undertake renewed attacks in Champagne today, but fail to make any headway, and the commanders of the German VIII and VIII Reserve Corps opposite believe that the attacks aim merely to cover the failure of the main French offensive.

- Dutch neutrality is seen by the German army as a potential threat, as opposed to one of the last links between Germany and the global economy.  In particular, the army is concerned that the British might invade the Netherlands to outflank the German position in Belgium - a concern undoubtedly based in the knowledge that such a violation of Dutch neutrality is precisely the sort of thing the German General Staff would advocate if the positions were reversed.  4th Army, responsible for the front in Belgium along the Channel coast, has been tasked with developing a contingency plan should such a British invasion occur.  Today, 4th Army HQ informs OHL that if needed two marine brigades, the Guard Cavalry Division, a mixed infantry brigade, and a number of battalions of rear echelon troops will concentrate on the Dutch frontier to oppose a British landing.

- The revised instructions to U-boat captains regarding which targets to fire upon and how they are to determine a vessel's identity have been sufficient to overcome the remaining concerns of the Kaiser, and as such unrestricted submarine warfare begins today against Britain.

- In Augustow Forest, the remnants of the Russian XX Corps surrender, with twelve thousand soldiers marching into German captivity.  Of the rest of the Russian 10th Army, though III Siberian, III, and XXVI Corps have escaped eastwards, they have suffered heavy casualties and rendered combat-ineffective.  Ludendorff claims the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes to be another Tannenburg, but in practice the victory is not on the same scale.  The Russian 10th Army has lost 'only' 56 000 casualties over the past few weeks of fighting, and though battered and weakened at least still exists, in contrast to the fate of 2nd Army at Tannenburg.

A German machine-gun position during the Winter Battle of the Masurian Lakes.

The German victory over the Russian 10th Army, however, has not secured to the Germans any broader strategic consequences.  Ludendorff had hoped that victory here would threaten to outflank the Russian position in central Poland, and in consequence the Russians would pull back over the Vistula.  However, the German advance has simply formed a large salient from East Prussia to the Niemen River.  To the north the Russians remain in control of the fortress at Kovno, a threat to the German 10th Army's left flank.  To the south, much of the strength of the German 8th Army has been drawn into a siege of the fortress at Osowiec, where the rivers and marshes, combined with a skilled Russian defence, have prevented the Germans from bringing their siege artillery fully to bear on the fortress' walls.  Finally, today the Russian 12th Army finally begins its delayed advance to the west of Osowiec, and though the German 8th Army is able to contain the Russians, the Germans find themselves pinned into defensive positions, incapable of threatening anyone's flanks.

- To the west, the gap between the German 8th Army near the East Prussian frontier and the German 9th Army on the line of the Bzura River is covered by a scratch force under the command of General Max von Gallwitz.  With the forces to the east stalemated, Gallwitz launches an offensive today, advancing southeast towards the town of Prasnysz with elements of I Reserve and XVII Reserve Corps and 3rd Infantry Division.  Their ultimate objective is the Narew River, and by securing a crossing they hope to outflank the Russian line west of Warsaw and force the enemy to abandon the city.

The German advance towards Prasnysz, February 22nd, 1915.

- With the Boer Rebellion effectively crushed, Prime Minister Botha of South Africa turns his attention to the invasion of German South-West Africa.  Today he lands at Walvis Bay, assumes command over the South African force that occupied Swakopmund on January 13th, and orders an advance inland towards Windhoek along the railway (destroyed by the Germans) connecting the two towns.  Botha views the march to Windhoek, the German colonial capital, as strategically decisive, severing German communications between the north and south of the colony.  However, to prevent a German withdrawal from the south to concentrate against his column he has also ordered offensives from Lüdertiz and across the Orange River.

- The mutiny of soldiers from the 5th Light Infantry battalion at Singapore ends today, as British forces, with assistance from Russian, French, and Japanese sailors, round up the last of the mutineers who had fled to the jungle.  Next will come courts-martial to pass judgement on the one hundred and twenty-six mutineers who have been captured.

November 23rd, 1914

- In France four squadrons of Voisin biplanes, totaling eighteen airplanes, are merged together into 1st Bombardment Group, the first French aerial unit devoted to strategic aerial attacks on Germany.

- For several weeks the British and Dutch governments have been negotiating an agreement regarding the importation of goods to the Netherlands deemed contraband by the British.  The concern of the latter is that such goods after arrival in the Netherlands could easily be shipped across the border to Germany, thus allowing the Germans to circumvent the blockade.  The Dutch, for their part, believe that as a neutral power their global trade should not be impeded.  Today the negotiations result in an agreement to create the Netherlands Oversea Trust, a company composed of Dutch private sector merchants who would help individuals wishing to trade in contraband goods.  A pledge would be extracted from such individuals that the contraband goods were for home or Dutch colonial consumption only, and the Netherlands Oversea Trust would then communicate the pledge to the British who would allow the trade based on the guarantee of the Trust's board of directors.  This system solves many of the concerns of both parties - the British gain a means by which Dutch trade in contraband goods can be regulated, while Dutch merchants gain some security that their goods will not be seized.  Moreover, as the Trust is civilian, the Dutch government is not worried about the arrangement appearing to violate their neutrality by leaning too heavily towards the British.

- East of Lodz the German XXV Reserve Corps and Guards Division is now pulling back northwards in an effort to escape from the Russian encirclement, marching over poor, icy roads.  To the west of the German force the Russian defenders at Lodz are too disorganized from the ongoing fighting with the bulk of the German 9th Army to interfere.  To the south, German cavalry covers the German retreat so successfully that the Russian commander there believes he has won an excellent defensive victory.  To the east Russian cavalry mistakes columns of thousands of Russian prisoners accompanying the retreating Germans as additional German soldiers, believe themselves vastly outnumbered, and do not bother to attack.  So far, then, the Russian army is demonstrating their usual level of competence in attempting to destroy the German corps and division.  Still, the Lovitch detachment from the Russian 1st Army has now advanced far enough to sit astride the line of retreat northwards of the German corps and division, leaving the latter still in great danger of envelopment and destruction.

- It is only today that the last units of the Austro-Hungarian army arrive by train opposite central Poland.  The two weeks it has taken the army to redeploy by rail from Galicia to east of Breslau is testimony to the poor state of Austro-Hungarian railways and the dysfunctional logistics that has plagued their armies in the field.

- For the past four days Count István Tisza, Prime Minister of Hungary, has been in Germany discussing the diplomatic relationship with Romania, meeting with Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, General Falkenhayn, and others.  The Germans have been applying pressure on Austria-Hungary to cede territory to Romania in exchange for its entry into the war on their side, a stance that Tisza strongly opposes - though willing to give some concessions on language and education to Romanians within the Empire, the lands the Germans propose to yield come from the Hungarian portion of the Empire.  However, the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war and the initial progress made in the current invasion of Serbia have served to calm German fears regarding the situation in the Balkans, and Tisza returns home confident that he has convinced the German leadership to drop any suggestion of territorial concessions.

- A ceremony is held today in Basra today to formalize the British occupation of the city.  The British are eager to win the active support of Arab tribes in the region, and thus desire to show that as the Ottomans are never to return the Arabs need have no fear of Ottoman reprisals.  But if the Ottomans are not to return, what, exactly, is to become of the region.  Are the Arabs to 'enjoy the benefits of liberty', as the commander of Indian Expeditionary Force D proclaims at today's ceremony, or is the region to be annexed by Britain, as the same commander suggests he said to the assembled crowd in his report on the ceremony to the Secretary of State for India.  Neither option has been seriously discussed, and both raise important issues.  For the British it will prove to have been much easier to occupy Basra than decide what to do with it.

There is also the question of what IEF D ought to do next.  Its initial orders said nothing beyond the occupation of Basra, so are they now simply to stay put?  Sir Percy Cox, IEF D's political officer and an Arab expert, believes that Arab support will only be forthcoming if the British continue to advance up the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and demonstrate their complete dominance of the region.  To this end, he recommends in a letter to the Viceroy of India that IEF D advance to Baghdad, a much more significant undertaking that simply securing the Shatt al-Arab.  Even though the term has not yet been coined, the British campaign in Mesopotamia takes a first step towards becoming a textbook definition of mission creep.

- At 10am this morning the schooner Ayesha, carrying First Officer Helmuth von Mücke and his fifty-man detachment that escaped from Direction Island after the sinking of Emden, sights the Sumatra coast in the Dutch East Indies.  Ayesha has had an adventurious journey since they set sail two weeks ago.  Given that the schooner was built for a crew of five, sleeping arrangements were at a premium, and most had to sleep in the hold with scrap iron used for ballast, while two small cabins below deck, originally fitted out for sleeping, had to be abandoned to the huge cockroaches that patrolled them.  The water held in iron tanks aboard was discovered to have fouled, forcing the crew to rely on rainfall to avoid dehydration.  The old sails tore repeatedly, meaning much work was spent mending and patching the canvass.  Much of the wooden hull was rotten, so much so that when it was inspected with a knife they had to quickly desist in fear poking the wood would let in the Indian Ocean.

That the Ayesha has survived the nearly eight hundred mile journey from the Cocos Islands to Sumatra is nothing short of a minor miracle, but their tribulations are hardly at an end.  They have no charts of the Sumatra coast, and there is a constant worry of running aground upon some hidden reef or rock.  There is also a keen awareness that warships of the Entente are almost certainly searching the seas for them, and may anticipate them sailing to the Dutch East Indies.  First Officer Mücke, however, has no intention of being captured.  They still have the four machine guns they had brought with them when they had landed on Direction Island, and hole have been cut in the gunwales to mount them.  Though the aged schooner could hardly have looked less like a warship, Mücke has every intention of fighting if confronted by an enemy vessel.  Meanwhile, his intention is to sail up the Sumatra coast to the port of Padang, where he intends to avail himself of international law that allows warships to enter neutral ports for twenty-four hours, during which time he hopes to reprovision.