LAND AND 57, ATE R. 
March 13, 1915. 
We can be^i' iinderstand how the German 
people looked at the chances of the war, 
remembering what the average Imperialist in 
this country felt upon the sea power of Britain 
jln, say, the j^ears 1896-1900. Not only was 
there no question for a moment in the mind of 
any German that counted, or with the general 
mass of opinion, as to the invincibility of the 
German army, but there was what counts more 
ithan calculations : there was faith. There was 
that unquestioning "taking for granted" of 
certain conditions which seemed to be part of 
the nature of things. 
It is our judgment, of course, partly 
because the war has been presented to us in a 
[partial manner, but more because as a reflec- 
tion of our own mood, that the German has 
long lost his confidence. He has not. If he is 
losing it at all, he is only beginning to lose it. 
For in the first weeks of the war came that 
series of crushing victories of which we only 
heard in this country doubtful and confused 
accounts. 
There was Metz and there was Tannen- 
berg. There was the avalanche of advance 
upon Paris. There has been no corresponding 
eort of defeat. And just as great nations may 
decline for generations without noting the slow 
process, so the losing partner to a campaign 
may greatly fall from a worse position to a 
worse, hardly noticing his lapse until the first 
shock of defeat touches him. 
The enemy, I make bold to say, will not 
realise " the critical point " which we have dis- 
covered in reserves of men and in material, and 
to some extent in climate, until the invasion of 
his soil upon a large scale has begun, or until, 
preceding this, he suffers on some one front a 
serious local defeat, such as the German armies, 
at least, have not yet suffered. 
The number of German prisoners in France 
is very large. I have been given figures (under 
reserve), and if those figures are accurate (I 
do not publish them here) they are much in 
excess of anything that the most sanguine 
opinion in this country was ready to accept. 
But whereas at Maubeuge alone anything 
from twenty-five to thirty thousand men 
capitulated and were lost to the French army, 
whereas in the advance on the Marne the 
Germans must have picked up many thousands 
of French wounded, prisoners, and stragglers, 
whereas in the battle of Metz we know that 
they captured something like half a division, 
there is no single action in which the French 
have taken prisoners great numbers of 
Germans by one tactical move. The accumula- 
tion of their great haul has been the result of 
an unceasing trickle of surrenders proceeding 
for months, and even at the battle of the Marne 
the total of the German prisoners was made up 
of a number of small units. Further, the wise 
French policy of not publishing these numbers 
(wise because it ultimately weakens the enemy 
by confusing his calculations) j^et tends to keep 
up a fictitious confidence in Germany, and we 
may make certain that we shall not find in the 
near future, not in the late spring or early 
summer, the date to which every other form of 
argument leads us, a "critical" point in the 
factor of moral. That point of the factor of 
German moral will come earlier or later, 
perhaps even so late as the very eve of collapse, 
and it will only be determined by the material 
ravaging of German soil or the dramatic effect 
of a local disaster on a really considerable scale. 
ROTE. 
THE WAR BY WATER. 
By FRED T. JANE. 
-This Article bas been submitted to fbe Press Bureau, which does not object to the pubiicatioa as censored, and takes no 
responsibility for the correctness o! the statements. 
THE DARDANELLES. 
OPERATIONS in the Dardanelles continue. Fortu- 
nately the Turkish guns are mostly obsolete and 
the garrisons none too efficient or well provided. 
And so we continue to make "some progress," 
and shall so continue till there is a sudden " give "• 
and Constantinople once more falls. 
But it cannot b« too strongly emphasised that " one 
•wallow does not make a summer." We have a certain 
number of ships which we can spare for these operations, 
ships which we could lose without jeopardising our naval 
Buperiority. This — coupled with the fact that the enemy are 
not a brainy folk — makes the Dardanelles effort possible. 
But all the evidence is to the effect that had the Dardanelles 
been German instead of Turkish no fleet could possibly have 
done anything whatever, even were the factor of mines and 
submarines excluded. 
The factor of mobility is, of course, a considerable asset 
to a ship, but against this must bo put the relative targets. 
Allowing heavily for speed and for selection of range, we still 
get target ratios somewhat as follows : — 
♦ ♦ ♦ 
FORT. 
The fort guns may, of course, be blinded by dust and 
debris J but as the forts' position -finders, &c., are not located 
in tha fort, but in any unknos^ and inconspicuous place 
outside it, whereas the ship is self-contained in the sam« 
respect, the handicap against the ship is clear. 
In the Dardanelles we have so far managed to outi 
range the forts. But given forts of equal range to the ships, 
we are reduced to realising that, while the ship may hit or 
may miss, the fort is — humanly speaking — absolutely certain 
to hit. 
Indeed it' is only in this strength of the fort that its 
weakness lies. As every garrison gunner knows, many a 
fort has guns liable to be outranged because hitting was 
regarded as so certain that medium calibre guns were con- 
sidered amply to suffice. Outranging is a modern and novel 
idea of which the first glimmerings only appeared in tha 
South African War. 
It was not invented in that war. The real perceivers of 
the value of outranging were the Brazilians, who many years 
before insisted on being supplied with what were then 
abnormally long guns, on the grounds that they required 
something which could hit the enemy from a range which 
he could not reach in return. 
Tlie only comment this evoked at the time was con- 
fined to sneering speculations about Brazilian " nerves " 
and what not. To-day, of course, outranging is the last 
word in the science of war. 
Along such lines forts are liable to be reduced; bub 
apart from this nothing has ever happened to negative tlie 
old proverb that one gun on shore is worth a dozen such 
guns afloat. We cannot be too careful in avoiding falsa 
deductions from successes in the Dardanelles. 
In connection with the Dardanelles operations there is 
a certain cynical humour about tha fact that German naval 
ia» 
