LAND AND WATER 
October 17, 1914 
compliment to us) that Germany will, as I read things, seek her 
Trafalgar in the Baltic rather than the North Sea. From what 
1 know of the re-organised Russian Navy, tlie part of the Gennan 
admiral will be Yiileneuvc, not Nelson. 
THE FAR EAST. 
The advance upon Kiao-Chau continues. There is reason to 
believe that all the German warships in the harbour will presently 
fall victims to land attacks from the Japanese, who have tho 
valuable e.xperienco of two previous wars to bring on results of 
this nature. 
THE HIGH SEAS GENERALLY. 
At the moment of writing the German predatory cruisers 
are taking a rest. This, presumably, means that by easy stages 
they are proceeding to fresh hunting grounds, whence a 
recrudescence of attack may be expected. To the number of 
known corsairs the light cniiser Leipzig (twenty-three knots) 
^Belaian. 
CZZ] Dutch, 
osuhd 
^''"^-■'^ ''■■••■•'"■••''' "fi'fiYifiir'iiii 
^ 
I.OCALITl" Oi' TilK BIVER SCHELDT. 
must now be added. Her original port was Kiao-Chau, but her 
last heard of " stamping ground " was off the west coast of 
South America, where she has made two captures — one of these 
worth about £120,000. 
Vigilance on the part of British consuls all over the world 
m detecting suspicious supply craft and warning our cruisers 
is the surest method of capturing German corsairs. Unfortunately 
in a great many minor places our consular service is represented 
by any handy foreign resident. In peace time this system 
(common to all countries) is economical ; but war is indicating 
its disadvantages. A ncutrjil cannot possibly be expected to 
throw tho same energy into the business as a Britisher. I am 
inclined ■ to fancy that one immediate result of this war wUI 
be a very considerable change in our consular service, unless 
" Britain for the British " is to remain a nacre empty chat- 
word. 
The Admiralty has just issued an olllcial statement in 
connection with the duel between the Carmania, and the Cap 
TrajaUjar. Tho outstanding feature of the report is that we 
appear to have aimed steadily at the watcrlinc of the enemy, 
whereas the enemy aimed at the Carmania' s upperworks. This 
is a reproduction of what used to take place in the Great War of 
a I'.undred years ago. 
IT'.ifortunatcly, we are still without data as to whether the 
hi^::h aim of the Germans was merely bad gunnery or whether 
it was of dehberate intent. Probably it was the former. 
THE WAR IN THE AIR. 
In the bombardment of Antwerp the Gennans are 
reported to have employed si.^ Zeppelins. As explained in 
previous articles anything German which is lighter than air 
is for public purposes a " Zeppelin," so for " Zeppelin " wo 
had better read " dirigible airship." 
Now the Germans started this war with sixteen big rigid 
airships built or completing and six others in course of 
construction. At the very outside they had nine Parsevals or 
inferior non-rigid imitations. Tliis gives a maximum total 
of twenty-five all told- Of these we know that three have been 
destroyed for certain, probably double that number. We 
shall not be far wrong if we put the total of available and cfiec- 
tive airships at somewhere about eighteen to twenty. Secret 
Zeppelins are as impossible as secret Dreadnoughts — they are too 
big to try to hide. 
At least as many dirigibles will be required on the Russian 
frontier as on the western side. From which we can calculate 
that the number of dirigibles of all kinds available for service 
against Antwerp would have been between six and nine. 
We had better assume the latter number ; because fragile 
craft like dirigibles are never likely to be able to materialise 
in full strength at any selected moment. 
Two more raids have been made by our aeroplanes on the 
German airship sheds at Cologne and Dusseldorf. No success 
seems to have attended the Cologne attempt, but the flame seen 
issuing from the Dusseldorf shed is clear proof that there is 
certainly one Zeppelin which will never fly again, also probably 
one shed that will no longer be of any use. 
FIELD ENTRENCHMENTS AND THEIR 
DEFENCE. 
By COL. F. N. MAUDE, C.B., late R.E. 
SPEAKING with an experience of many years, there is 
nothing so difficult to teach in peace time as the 
construction and " siting " of field entrenchments. 
Men very soon get tired of lifting earth, with 
unaccustomed back muscles and blistered hands, on 
some disused patch of uninteresting land— all that can be 
spared them for the purpose. The whole idea of digging 
a pit and squatting in it to shoot seems so childishly simple 
that in a very short time the interest slackens, and unless you 
are lucky enough to have the assistance of war-experienced 
sergeants and subalterns, the whole business becomes tedious 
and subveriiive of disciphne in the highest degree. 
This last remark may require elucidation for civilian reader.'?, 
as the connection is not at first obvious ; but, in reality, it is very 
simple. Men come back from trenchwork thoroughly stiifi 
and sore, with an appalling thirst on them. The canteen is a 
confortablo resort, and though drunl:enncs3 is now almost 
extinct, yet the couple of extra glasses of beer and the next 
mormng's muscular stiffness, not to mention the blistered hands, 
bring them back to work in just that condition of nervous 
imtabriity which renders friction with authority nearly 
inevitable. Someone oi other loses his temper, a couple of 
men are marched back to the guardroom, and a settled gloom 
descends on the trenches. Every little sliift or evasion is 
practised to save the sore hands and aching muscles, unless you 
have with you some of the above-mentioned assistants, to cheer 
the men up and interest them with bits of practical experience. 
Fortunately, during the last few years there have been many 
such men in the regular army, and nothing struck me so much 
when watching the Infantry Pioneer classes at Chatham as the 
greatly increased interest in their work v/hich all ranks showed, 
as compared with my experience as instructor in earlier years, 
and reports from the front show how much we are profiting 
from this altered state of things almost daily. If instruction in 
fieldworks had not become a living reaUty, had it remained 
in the " before the war " condition, matters on the Maine might 
have taken a very different course. 
The real difficulty of this class of instruction, and I write 
for the benefit of the very many officers fresh to the work in the 
New Armies, lies in the absolute simphcity of the fundamental 
ideas and the extreme difficulty of reconciling all the conflicting 
tendencies contained in these ideas. The bedrock principle 
all through the practice of warfare is " to kill your man first 
before he can kill you " ; clearly, when he is dead he can do you no 
further damage. But, to begin with, you do not always know 
where he is, or how he intends to attack you ; so you dig a hole to 
get cover from both sight and bullets, and wait for him to 
commence operations or, at the best, to give himself away. 
U* 
