February 6, 191'5. 
LAND AND WATER 
certain ia war. As a mere mathematical problem 
Verdun is easier of solution and more fruitful of 
result than Flanders ; further, tlie fifth sector is the 
last to dry with the approach of better weather, 
and lastly, it has been more exhaustively studied 
for purposes of defence than any other. But that 
the chances of the new offensive being, directed 
against this familiar ground are high no one will deny. 
It need hardly be pointed out that when ^the 
uew German offensive is made (as we presume it 
will be made) it must succeed or result in a situation 
■which will put within sight the termination of the 
.war. 
Germany will be using the last of her reserves. 
She will without a doubt, if she attacks at all, attack 
to win finally and with her whole force and at any 
expense whatsoever. It will not be an effort after 
which the offensive, if it fails, will be able to fall 
back upon another prolonged defensive. For fall- 
ing back thus upon a prolonged defensive means 
the awaiting of further reinforcement and the 
opportunity for recuperating strength. But after 
this next effort no such reinforcement can be 
expected upon the enemy's side ; the throw wiU be 
a final one. 
This does not mean that the struggle will be 
sliort. It may be prolonged, as the fighting for 
Warsaw was prolonged ; .or the tremendous (and 
happily unsuccessful) effort to obtain the Straits of 
Dover. The effort may be postponed until the 
spring or even the late spring. It may come uj^on 
us before the end of February, When it is at last 
in movement it may occupy two months or more 
before it shall either achieve success or confess to 
defeat. But it is coming ; and when it comas it 
will come upon one of these five sectors and more 
probably upon the second or the fifth than upon the 
first, third or fourth. 
A NOTE ON THE EGYPTIAN 
ADVANCE. 
Though the advance against Egypt has not yet 
developed, It is worth remembering by what road 
the enemy ajjpears to depend for his main supply, 
and it Is a point I will develop at length next week 
with a sketch map. 
That route would seem to be neither the sea 
road nor the Akaba road, but rather up the Wady- 
el-Arish Southward — where there is no serious 
obstacle to a light railway and no fear of attack 
from the sea — then, from where the Wady strikes 
the Pilgrim road, to Suez. 
FINANCIAL PRESSURE AND WAR. 
HERE has been a good deal of talk in the general experience. Your individual or your 
Tlast few days of the financial pressure 
upon Germany and upon Austria-Hun- 
gary which results from the present cam- 
paign. The point merits attention in 
these notes, for, though it is not strictly military, 
it is a subject with which every student of military 
history is acquainted from the past. 
The particular error most common in connec- 
group of individuals not possessed of sovereign 
power cannot get food or arms without the pos- 
session and use of the current medium or the 
instruments of credit based upon the current 
medium. But the sovereign power can perfectly 
well obtain both without the use of such a medium. 
Take all the gold away from the enemy and, if it 
were possible, deprive him of the power of issuing 
tion with this subject is the error that an enemy instruments of credit, you would yet leave the 
ean be reduced by the lack of what is vaguely enemy as well able to fight as ever. The only case 
called " money"; a term used confusedly in such in which the possession of the current medium 
statements to mean (a) the total amount of (which in our civilisation is gold) and of instru- 
eurrent metallic medium possessed by the enemy;; ments of credit based upon that medium is appa- 
(ib) this plus the instruments of credit based upon rently necessary to a nation fighting for its life is 
the metal ; or (c) (much more uncertain) a general the case of foreign exchanges. And even here tha 
estimate of all economic values real or imaginary, 
in services or in goods at the service of the enemy. 
Generally speaking, when public men discuss 
the matter, they mean by " money " either (a) or 
(b) or both muddled together, and a calculation is 
made that because the stock of gold in the enemy's 
possession is dwindling at such and such a rate, or 
because the instruments of credit based upon that 
stock are exchanging abroad for less than their face 
ralue, therefore within such and such a space of 
time the enemy, though still possessed of arms, 
food, and men, will be unable to continue fighting. 
That the error is a gross one all military history 
proves; revolutionary France (for instance) was 
necessity is not absolute. To appreciate this trutli 
let us see what the current medium does and what 
instruments of credit based on it do. 
The current medium does not produce wealth 
— gims, wheat, cotton for powder, copper for 
shells, for instance — it does not even, in the largest 
view, create a demand for them : all it does is to 
make their exchange easier. 
In normal times, and under the regime of 
private property, one citizen produces, or controls 
a stock of, wheat; another of guns; another of 
copper; another of cotton, etc. The man who 
wants copper may have wheat to give for it, but 
the man with the copper may not wantl the wheat., 
bankrupt, and her instruments of credit exchang- He may want the guns; and the man with gims 
ing at a negligible fraction of their face value at 
Idie very moment when she was about to enter on 
her stupendous career of victory, and to change 
the face of the world. 
It is an error, I say, to believe that an enemy 
can be beaten from lack of this " money " — save 
possibly through some distui'hance in th& arrival of 
necessary and foreign supplies — and it is an error 
proceeding, like most economic fallacies, from the 
extension of private and particular to public and talcen by gold. 
may not want either copper or wheat — he may 
want cotton — and so forth. As only in rare cases 
do two indindual citizens possess each a surplus 
of what his particular known to him neighbour re- 
quires, some common denominator arises which 
all will take as a common standard of value. It 
reaches that position through a number of charae- 
ters: permanence, desirability, ease of carriage, 
etc., and in our civilisation that place has been 
11* 
