LAND 'AND WATER 
February G, 1915. 
Stetor 
tvwtntin Lalu 
, third SaXor 
fH OtrJam 
,«. 
■ — that is, so long as winter keeps the external Eus- 
sian ports ice-bound. 
(1) The first of these conditions is, the restric- 
tion of our Allies in the matter of equipment. 
There is no great mystery about this, and it 
has often been mentioned before in these com- 
ments, because the judgment which is so necessary 
to public opinion in this severe struggle depends 
upon our just appreciation of it, and because in 
this case the facts are a great deal better known 
to our opponents than to any civilian centres 
among the Allies. Briefly, all the Allies began 
the war short of the full equipment and the full 
reserves of ammunition which it has proved to de- 
mand, while the enemy began the war not with the 
full equipment and reserve of ammunition which 
the war has proved to demand — for it has far ex- 
ceeded his expectations — but with a great deal 
more of both equipment and ammunition than we 
had. The reason of this is perfectly simple. Berlin 
wanted war and has prepared for it during the 
last three years with the greatest secrecy and 
energy and has declared it at exactly her own 
moment, subordinating everything to that one end, 
while the Allies have only considered war during 
that period as a possible catastrophe to be avoided 
by every means in their power, and surely to be 
Successfully prevented if another crisis should acci- 
dentally arise. The whole thing is as simple as 
any one of the corresponding problems that con- 
tinually arise in daily life. A knows that B wishes 
him ill, but he is not going to give up his normal 
occupations in order to devote himself entirely to 
the ruin of B, because he has often called B's bluff 
m the past and because, judging other men from 
himself, he cannot believe that B is going to give up 
ever^-thmg for the sake of attacking him, and be- 
cause It 13 no part of healthy living to devote one's 
entire time and opportunities to a struggle which 
may never take place. If Europe were a chao^^ 
and nations a band of cut-throats, then the obViou 
policy for England and FranC? 
for both these countries to 
ago before the creation of the heavy howitzer, 
when the French had submarines and the Germans 
none (an interval of several years), before the 
Germans had developed their Fleet, and when the 
French Army had the new quick-firing gun and the 
Germans the old gun, which could not stand up 
against it for a moment : again an interval of 
several years. But to force war like this with 
the mere object of destroying another member of 
the European family is not in the morals of the 
West. It is only with reluctance that even now 
a minority of the West (outside France) has come 
to regard Prussia as an outlaw. 
Under such circumstances it was inevitable 
that the anarchic Power keeping its efforts secret 
should begin the struggle with a great advantage 
in equipment and in reserve of ammunition. 
Luckily there went witli its plans what nearly 
always happens with too frigid a calculation, to 
wit, an exhaustion beyond the point to which cal- 
culation has reached: an inability to face unex- 
pected issues. The enemy allowed for, at the 
most, six months of war. He calculated that 
the Austro-Hungarian forces would hold up with- 
out disaster a Russian advance; he under-esti- 
mated the expenditure of ammunition, and he did 
not allow for a blockade, even such a partial 
blockade as has been imperfectly established. He 
is therefore himself handicapped from now on- 
wards, but he was able to put into the field more 
men than the Allies during all this first and second 
phase of the combat. He still has more men, and 
that leads me to my second point with regard t» 
the eastern field. 
(2) The Russian plan is not a plan of envelop- 
ment, for a plan of envelopment is impossible with 
inferior forces, and the number of Russians 
equipped and at the front between the Roumanian 
frontier and the Baltic is certainly less than the 
number of the enemy opposed to them. 
But if this 'dual attempt on the extreme north 
and on the extreme south of the extended line is 
not an attempt at envelopment, what is it 1 It is 
a plan of embarrassment and division. 
In order to explain that definition we must 
first define what envelopment is. 
Supposing you had on this huge semi-circle 
would have been 
from the Baltic to the Carpathians the 
^sj* war some years enemy along A-B counting as 3 and our Allies 
