OctoT)er 31. 1914 
LAND AND WATER 
necessary conseqtience, involve the abandonment of 
the sea-coast between Nieuport and Calais. Wliy, 
ihcn, has tliis divereion of forces taken place ? Why 
have the Gemians struck, not only west of Lille 
a^inst La Bassee — where success would automatically 
have uncovered the sea-coast — but also along that sea- 
coast itself ? 
The answer must be political. Tliere is no other 
answer. Someone in control of German affairs has 
said : " If we can occupy the sea-coast quicMi/ we shall 
have a certain political effect which we much desire, 
and which an ult imate success f ui-ther south wiU not 
subserve." Someone else, more militaiy, has said: "I 
regret tliis waste of men upon a political object. 
Our only chance of breaking the enemy's line is to go 
for the main point west of Lille. I insist upon 
having, at any rate, great masses of men for that main 
point (the neighbourhood of Lille). Use what you 
think you can spare to the noiih." Whereupon a 
compromise has been effected between the poHtician 
and the soldier. The former first took large reinforce- 
ments for his attempt along the coast ; the latter had 
reinforcements, also large, not as large as he could 
have wished, for his efliort in front of Lille. But as 
the politician is master, the attack along the sea-coast 
has used up most of the men, and is attracting to 
itself, by its very lack of success, more and more 
forces from the south. 
The effect of this division of power has been to 
leave a lar^e body of the Allies well advanced between 
both attacks, threatening at Ypres and to the east of 
Ypres, the flank of each Gennan push. All those 
strong bodies in the neighboui'hood of Ypres and to 
the east of that town, occupying country nearly up to 
Roullers, threaten the southern German advance by 
Lille somewhat and threaten the sea-coast advance 
very gravely indeed. 
Fot instance, the French have been pushing 
eastward from Armentiferes for three days consecutively. 
They certainly would not have been able to do that if 
the whole of the German attack had fallen upon La 
Bassee. But the mass of that attack had been deflected, 
by divided counsels, to the north and along the sea. 
Now what was the Gennan political object in 
this iiuach along the sea-coast ? To that a simple 
and true answer can be given. The object was to 
frighten England ; to advance, as some German 
pohtical authority believed, another step in the 
process of weakening the Alliance. Such political 
ebjects are not without military value where one is 
certain of one's psychology. The great siege of Paris 
in '70-'71 was almost entirely political, and the 
Germans rightly judged that the fall of Paris would 
be the end of the war. They therefore risked a gi-eat 
deal with that one political object in view, and they 
were right. But it Is an extraordinary misconception 
of the moral condition in this country to think that 
the occupation oE the French coast up to Cape Grisnez 
would appi-eciably affect either the Alliance or the 
domestic balance of the English people. 
This political move had, indeed, also some strategic 
value : though quite out of proportion to the strategic 
loss it involved. 
But first let us note another political object 
■which may have been held in view by the enemy, and 
that is the complete holding of Belgian soil. 
The power to say that they were technically the 
masters of all that had once been Belgium may have 
attracted some German statesman or Prince. At any 
rate neither this nor any larger object was worth the 
diversion of such masses of men from tho critical 
point by Lille. It is that diversion which puzzles 
every critic and student of the campaign in its present 
phase. It only puzzles him if he forgets how often 
the most urgent militaiy considerations have been 
sacrificed in the clash between the politician and the 
soldier. 
But let us consider in detail how a man possessed 
of political power might, if he had power to force this 
false plan on the staff, bring forward military ai-guments 
for thus dividing the Gennan anny and attempting 
the Calais march. 
THE STRATEGICAL PROBLEM OF 
THE STRAITS. 
I have said that it is clear that someone in 
authority over the Germans has suggested as an 
imperative necessity of the moment an advance by 
Dunkhk to Calais, and the occupation of the French 
shore of the Straits of Dover. I have further said that 
a soldier, not a politician, wovdd have urged the 
massing of aU forces for a blow that should break the 
Allied line — not turn it on the coast. 
For it is the business of soldiers to decide cam- 
paigns, while it is the business of politicians to 
estimate the psychology of those whom they happen 
to govern as subjects, or as foreigners to oppose. 
But the advance along the sea-coast to, let us 
say, some point north of Boulogne, the occupation of 
the maritime end of that range of hills which bounds 
the Artois country, and runs into the sea at Cape 
Grisnez, at the narrowest point of the Straits, the 
possession of Dtmkirk and of Calais, and of the cliffs 
that look at England from the west of Calais (whence 
is the shortest ai-tillery trajectory across the narrow 
seas toward Britain), has certain strategical objects. 
The politician who shall have ordered this move did 
not act, and could not only have acted, with a vague 
intention of disturbing the English temper. There 
are already between Ypres and the mouth of the Yser 
perhaps 10,000 German dead, perhaps CO, 000 German 
casualties; and the purely militaiy value of such 
a move must have been weighed — even though it were 
undertaken against the highest military advice — before 
it was begun. 
^Vliat is that military value ? 
I will summarise what is to be said for and 
against the march upon Calais ; or, to be more accurate, 
the march upon the heights of Grisnez — for these 
are the true strategical objective. 
1. Of the Allies in the west Great Britain alone 
is, theoretically at least, inexhaustible. Slow as the 
training of new levies must be ; difficult as is the 
finding of officers and even of instructors for them ; 
untried as must be their cadres or framework (the 
officers and non-commissioned officers which hold an 
ai'my t<^ether, as the honeycomb of solid metal holds 
the paste of an accumulator plate) ; diverse as the 
elements of British recruitment necessarily are (Colonial, 
Asiatic, and the rest) : it remains true that in a pro- 
longed war the power of Great Britain to provide 
mere nmnbers should be, in comparison with the 
Germanic peoples, inexhaustible. 
Now, to create such a state of mind among the 
British, and paiiicularly m their politicians, as would 
detain upon these shores reinforcements otherwise 
destined for France and Belgium would have an 
obvious strategic value. 
This I think the principal, and certainly the 
most legitimate, of the conclusions drawn by what- 
ever minds conceived tliis quite novel move of the 
Gennan mai-ch upon tho Straits of Dover. It is 
believed that operations of a certain kind (to be 
described in a moment), undertaken upon the French 
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