LAND AND WATER 
January 16, 1915. 
considerations." Now this phrase seems ambigu- 
ous. For it is evident that every campaign must, 
in the wider sense of the term political, be domi- 
nated by political considerations. A nation does 
not go to war save for certain political ends. Its 
warfare is dictated by its foreign policy. It desires 
to achieve certain political gains, or to prevent cer- 
tain political losses. Save for such a desire war- 
fare would have no object and no meaning. Thus, 
Austria threatened Servia with the political object 
of extending her influence— and particularly the 
influence of Hungary— in the Balkans. Germany 
took advantage of that situation to force war upon 
Eussia and France with the political objects of 
ridding herself of Slav pressure from the East, of 
making herself secure over her Polish subjects, of 
putting an end for ever to the French menace from 
the West, and probably of acquiring a seaboard in 
the Low Countries whence she could challenge the 
maritime supremacy of Great Britain. All wars 
are political in their inception ; all have a political 
motive behind them, and the strategy of all is 
destined to achieve some political end. 
How, then, can we talk of political considera- 
tions as " embarrassing " or " confusing " strategi- 
cal plans ? When military history speaks in those 
terms it is using the word " political " in a special 
sense, and what is meant is that, during the course 
of a campaign, certain subsidiary political ends, 
far less in importance than the total defeat of the 
enemy, come in to hamper a general and prevent 
his pursuing the immediate military object which 
he should alone pursue, the weakening and ulti- 
mate destruction of his opponent's armed forces. 
For instance, when the Germans invaded 
France in the overwhelming force of, say, 16 to 
10 last August, they calculated on the " political 
lure " of Paris as something certain to divert the 
French generals from their plain military task of 
maintaining their armies intact until, if it were 
possible, they could hold and check the enemy. It 
was obviously the business of the French generals 
to prevent by any means in their power the anni- 
hilation as an offensive weapon of the numerically 
inferior forces they commanded, and in pursuit of 
that plain object it was the duty of the French 
generals to neglect all secondary considerations, 
such as the safety of a particular town or district. 
T4ie one thing they had to remember was that the 
armies must be kept in being, and that the invader 
must be held, and later defeated, in spite of his 
overwhelming numerical superiority. 
But the German General Staff calculated that 
the threat of material destruction in Paris, and 
even of an occupation of the French capital, would 
be of such effect that the French generals, rather 
than risk this destruction or occupation, would 
compromise the whole campaign. They calculated 
that the advance on Paris, and especially the im- 
mediate approach to the capital, would either con- 
fuse the French general strategical plan or would 
so change that plan as to make its new object not 
the holdmg of the enemy and his ultimate defeat, 
but merely the immediate salvation of the area of 
Pans. 
By a curious irony the war has so developed 
that no one of the Allies, but rather the Austrians 
and the Germans, now suffer from this embarrass- 
ment, and that the strategy of the Austro-German 
forces, which should be directed to the sin-^le end 
of defeating the Allies in the field, is already 
hampered, and will, presumably in the near 
future, be much more gravely hampered by con- 
siderations not purely military, but, in the 
secondary sense of that word, political; and it is 
this political embarrassment which I propose to 
analyse in what follows. It will prove essential to 
our comprehension of the further phases of this 
war. 
The political embarrassment of which I speak, 
and which is already entering into and disturbing 
the plans of the enemy, is two-fold. 
First : There are the political considerations 
which tend to disruption within the Germanic body 
by the threat of Hungarian disaffection and of 
Austrian defection. 
Secondly: There are the political considera- 
tions affecting Germany alone, her desire to hold 
on to Belgium, not for a military but for a 
political reason; her desire to hold on to 
Alsace-Lorraine, not for a military, but for a. 
political reason; her desire to hold on to East 
Prussia, not for a military, but for a political 
reason ; her desire to hold on to Silesia, not for a 
military, but for a political reason. 
It will be noted when we come to examine the 
matter in the form of a diagram, first, that the 
danger, certainly of Hungarian, possibly of Aus- 
tro-Hungarian secession from Germany, is, from 
considerations of geographical position alone, in- 
creasingly strong. Secondly, that the German 
Empire cannot equally defend the four extreme 
and separate areas — Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, 
East Prussia, and Silesia — to which its political at- 
tachment is now fixed, but will have to choose 
between them, since these areas are four widely 
separated outliers of the whole territory wherein 
the German effort at defence is now being played. 
IN WHAT THE POLITICAL EMBAR- 
RASSMENT TO THE ENEMY'S 
STRATEGY CONSISTS. 
L- GENERAL. 
I would first ask the reader to grasp the fol- 
lowing four simple diagrams. 
I shall, for the purposes of elucidating this 
argument, which is at once of a novel and, I think, 
important character in understanding the future 
of the campaign, repeat the two principal of 
these diagrams later in the article. But I put 
them at the head of my argument in order to make 
my principal point clear before I elaborate it. 
Here are two oblongs, A (left blank) and B 
(lightly shaded). Supposing these two oblongs com- 
bined to represent the area of two countries which 
are in alliance, and which are further so situated 
that B is the weaker power to the Alliance both (1) 
in his military strength and (2) in his tenacity of 
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