LAND AND WATER 
January 16, 1915. 
On the accompanying sketch-map, Belgium, 
Alsace-Lorraine, East Prussia and Silesia are 
shaded as were the four corners of the diagram. 
No. 1 is Belgium, No. 2 is East Prussia, No. 3 is 
Alsace-Lorraine, No. 4 is Silesia. The area occu- 
pied by the German Empire, including its present 
occupation of Belgium, is marked by the broad 
outline, and the areas shaded represent, not the 
exact limits of the four territories that are so im- 
portant, but those portions of them which are 
essential: the non-Polish portion of Silesia, the 
non-Polish portion of East Prussia, the Plain of 
Belgium, and all Alsace-Lorraine. 
Now, the reason that each of these must at 
all costs be preserved from invasion is, as I have 
said, different in each case, and we shall do well 
to examine what those reasons are ; for upon them 
depends the political confusion they inevitably 
cause to arise in the plans of the Great General 
Staff. 
(1) Belgium. — The occupation of Belgium has 
been a result of the War, and, from the German 
point of view, an unexpected result. Germany 
both hoped and expected that her armies would 
pass through Belgium as they did in fact pass 
through Luxembourg. The resistance of Belgium 
produced the occupation of that country; the 
reign of terror exercised therein has immobilised 
about 100,000 of the German troops who would 
otherwise be free for the front; the checking of 
the advance into France has turned the German 
general political objective against England, and, 
to put the matter in the vaguest, but most funda- 
mental terms, the German mind has gradually 
come, since October, to regard the retention of 
Belgium as something quite essential. (a) It 
gives a most weighty asset in the bargaining for 
peace. (6) It gives a seaboard against England. 
(c) It provides ample munition, house-room and 
transport facility, without which the campaign in 
North-Eastern France could hardly be prolonged. 
(d) It puts Holland at the mercy of Germany, for 
she can, by retaining Belgium, strangle Dutch 
trade, if she chooses to divert her carriage of goods 
through Belgian ports. {e) It is a specifio con- 
quest ; the Government will be able to say to the 
German people : " It is true we had to give up this 
or that, but Belgium is a definite new territory, 
the occupation of which and the proposed annexa- 
tion of which is a proof of victory." (/) The reten- 
tion of Belgium has been particularly laid down as 
the cause of quarrel between Great Britain and 
Germany ; to retain Belgium is to mark that score 
against what is now the special enemy of Germany 
in the German mind, {(j) Antwerp is the natural 
port for all the centre of Europe in commerce 
westward over the ocean, {h) With Belgium may 
go the Belgian Colonics, that is, the Congo, foi 
the possession of which Germany has worked 
ceaselessly year in and year out during the last 
fifteen years by a steady and probably subsidised 
propaganda against the Belgian administration. 
She has done it through conscious and unconscious 
agents ; by playing upon the cupidity of Parlia- 
mentarians, of rum shippers, and upon religious 
differences, and upon every agency to her hand. 
We may take it, then, that the retention of 
Belgium is in German eyes now quite indispen- 
sable. " If I abandon Belgium," she says, " it is 
much more than a strategic retreat ; it is a political 
confession of failure, and the moral support behind 
me at home will break down." 
If I were writing not of calculable considera- 
tions, but of other and stronger forces, I should 
add that to withdraw from Belgium where so 
many women and children have been massacred, 
so many jewels of the past befouled or destroyed, 
so wanton an attack upon Christ and His Church 
delivered, would be a loss of Pagan prestige in- 
tolerably strong, and a triumph of all that against 
which Prussia set cut to war. 
(2) Alsace-Lorraine. — But Alsace-Lorraine is 
also " indispensable." We have seen in an earlier 
part of this article what the retention of that terri- 
tory means ; bewildered by the difficulty of main- 
taining so enormous a line in the West, the Ger- 
mans left the unfortified upper corner of Alsace 
in weak hands (reserves), and not too many of 
tbem. The French pressure here has at once called 
German troops from the north, probably from 
Champagne, where, as a consequence, the French 
have advanced in five places. Alsace-Lorraine 
is the symbol of the old victory. It is the German- 
speaking land which the amazingly unreal super- 
stitions of German academic pedantry discovered 
to be something sacredly necessary to the unity of 
an ideal Germany, though the people inhabiting 
it desired nothing better than the destruction of 
the Prussian name. It is more than that. It is 
the bastion beyond the Rhine which keeps the 
Rhine close covered; it is the two great historic 
fortresses of Strasburg and of Metz which arc the 
challenge Germany has thrown down against Euro- 
pean tradition and the civilisation of the West ; it 
is something which has become knit up with the 
whole German soul, and to abandon it is like a 
man abandoning his title or his name, or surren- 
dering his sword. Through what must not the 
German mind pass before its directors would con- 
sent to the sacrifice of such a fundamentally sym- 
bolic possession ? There is defeat in the very sug- 
gestion; and that very suggestion, though it has 
already occurred to the great General Staff and 
has already, I believe, been mentioned in one pro- 
posal for peace, is still intolerable to the mass of 
the enemy's opinion. 
(3) East Prussia. — East Prussia is sacred in 
another, but also an intense fashion. It is the 
very kernel of the Prussian Monarchy. When 
Berlin was but a market town for the electors of 
Brandenburg, those same electors had contrived 
that East Prussia, which was outside the Empire, 
should be recognised as a Kingdom. Frederick 
the Great himself while of Brandenburg an elector 
was in Prussia proper a king : a man whose fathe? 
