November 14, 1914 
LAIJD AND WATER 
THE WAR BY LAND. 
By HILAIRE BELLOC. 
NOTE. — THIS XBTICLa HAS BEIN ECBITITTED TO THB PRESS BnHEAU, 'WniCH DOBS KOT OBJECT TO THa FTmLI01.TION AS CIHSOBSO 
AND TAKES SO BESPONSIBILITT FOB THa OOBEECTNESS OF THB STATEMENTS. 
Ol ACCOBSAKCa 'RITH THE EEQUIEEMENTS OE TBa PEKSS BXTEEAn, TH» POSITIONS OF TEOOrS ON PLANS ILLUSTSATINQ THIS 
AKTICLB MUST ONLT BB BEOABSES AS APPEOIIMATB, AND NO OEFINITa 6TBENGTH AT ANY POINT IS INDICATED. 
•• PRESSURE." 
WHEN nations conflict in war they bring 
armies one against the other, and the 
first object of strategy for each army 
is to disarm, in as high a degree as 
possible, the other. 
But there is a second, subsidiary object always 
present in warfare between civilised nations, which 
indirectly leads to the same result, and that object is 
the putting of a political and economic " pressure " 
upon the enemy. 
For instance : The German attack in 1870 was 
directed upon Paris, and rightly : not because Paris 
was an army, but because with Paris taken French 
resistance was almost bound to cease. 
Now there is in modem Gennany no centre 
corresponding to Paais, and therefore no corre- 
sponding political objective. 
But look for a moment at the accompanying 
sketch. 
^^ Main Industrial Regions 
-.^•w Frontier of German Bmpire 
A A Western German Battle Line 
BB Eastern „ ., „ 
Germany is a nation which has chosen in our 
own generation to industrialise itself ; that is, to 
convert the main part of its energies from agriculture 
to capitalistic modem manufactui-e by machinery, 
notably of metal goods. 
There has accompanied this phenomenon what 
always accompanies it : the nation's reposing upon an 
urban population of lower physique than of old; 
its dependence for all information upon a centralised 
Press in the hands of a few capitalists ; a vast 
proletarian mass, impotent to organise itself or to 
act with civic initiative — and an absolute physical 
necessity of keeping the machinery going. 
If an industrialised country be suddenly con- 
demned to use its agricultural resources alone, it is 
wounded to death. 
In an extreme case, like that of England, it will 
not even be able to feed itself with the first and most 
necessary forms of food. It will not have enough 
bread to keep alive. Germany is not yet in this case ; 
yet it suffers in the second degree, which is, that a 
blow at its industrial districts deprives the mass of its 
population of their common habit of life and cuts all 
the channels whereby, within their experience, liveli- 
hood can be maintained. You may feed the towns, 
if industry decays, so long as you stQl have (as Germany 
has) a remaining sufficient agricultural population. 
But even the mere feeding of them would require 
suddenly organised, vastly competent, entirely cen- 
tralised control — and the destruction, of course, of all 
the old bonds of property and credit. Food would have 
to be taken by force and distributed by officials — to 
perform the task fully would certainly be too hard, 
even for the most humanly perfect organisation. The 
striking at the industrial districts would hamstring 
the whole nation in the matter of food distribution 
alone : e.g., Belgium (in spite of vast emigration and 
small size) to-day. 
But there is more than this. The industrial 
districts coUect the currency (and its control) in great 
depots. Outside them, only the capital and the main 
seaports have gi*eat depots of controlled currency. 
Again, the industxial districts provide the opinion, 
spontaneous or manufactured, upon which the govern- 
ment of such countries reposes. 
Again, the industrial districts make a mass of 
things which the nation has leamt to regard as neces- 
saries, and which, in some cases, are necessaries — 
especially to the conduct of a campaign. They make 
the rails and the locomotives and the wagons, the 
internal-combustion engines, the electrical apparatus, 
the com mills, the spinning and weaving machinery, 
and at certain few spots in them you find concentrated 
the only available plant for making the guns and 
explosives. 
Now it so liappens that the German Empire has its 
two main industrial districts precisely in those regions 
which the first shock of an invasion will strike. Boughly 
speaking, you have (1) the Westphalian and Western 
group — extending into Lorraine — and (2) the Silesian 
Eastern group. There is much intermediary; but 
those two districts are the two nerve-centres, the dual 
poles, of modem industrial Germany, 
Defending Westphalia you have, when the tide 
shall turn against the Germans in the West and the 
deadlock there shall break, successive lines of defencb, 
natural and artificial. It may bo suggested that a 
first obvious line, for instance, is through and defend- 
ing Antwerp, then Bmssels, to Namur, and so up the 
Meuse. iijiother and shorter could run througb 
and in front of Liege along the Belgian Aisne and 
