LAND AND WATER. 
April 3, 1915. 
although the total forces on the Allied side were 
heavily interior, was a triumphant piece of 
strategy he discreetly veils. It is true that the 
retireiDent was at its maximum over but a few 
miles — say three or four days' march— and at the 
pivot end of the swing hardly noticeable. It is 
true tliat the losses were not heavy for an opera- 
tion of the kind, or at least not exaggeratedly 
heavy. And what he goes on to say is equally true 
— that ti;o ntlempts to turn the German right wing 
failed. 
But the skill shown in the concoction of this 
document, though worthy of some admiration, is 
not the main point. The main point is the object 
he clearly has in view. And that object is not the 
compelling of the neutrals to any exaggerated ad- 
miration for Germany : on the contrary, its object 
is rath'vU' to provoke a limited and sober respect. 
Let anyone unacquainted Avith military history as 
a whole, of all principles of strategy, and the 
main lines of the present campaign, read Bern- 
hardi's work. Such a reader will conclude that the 
Germans have not done as well as they expected, 
but they can still put up an interminable fight 
which it would be foolish to prolong. 
Bernhardi knows that Germany is making for 
defeat, and that any nation, once defeated, can be 
and will be crushed. He is a soldier. But his 
civilian audience here and elsewhere do not know 
this. 
Exactly the same thing is apparent in the 
descriptive articles of German ambulance work, 
German recruiting, German food supplies, and the 
spirit of the German people at home, which are 
mysteriously appearing even in the journals of the 
nations now fighting Germany. " We have no exal- 
tation, such as there was at the beginning of the 
campaign, but there is a carefully calculated dis- 
semination of confidence — not confidence in any 
decisive success, but confidence in the power of in- 
definite resistance." 
Interviews granted by public men in Germany 
to their journalists, and equally finding their way 
into the Press of the Allies, are upon the same note. 
As though by order, all fantastic boasting has dis- 
appeared, and its place has been taken by a sort of 
quiet regard of the future, which is intended not 
to terrorise, but to make the enemies of the Ger- 
manic alliance regard the struggle as intermin- 
able. 
When we turn to a third category of evidence, 
the domestic Press of Germany, we find a slightly 
different note, but one still in consonance with the 
efi'ect which is aimed at in the neutral countries, 
and upon certain sections of opinion among the 
Allies. 
The fact that the war is still being prosecuted 
in foreign territory is perpetually insisted on. 
The fatuous description of the siege work as " the 
invincibility of the wall of steel " regularly 
appears and reappears. No hint is given of the 
plain military truth that, in a state of siege such 
as this, the initiative has passed to the besiegers. 
Take a particular instance. The whole break- 
down of the great German " sortie " against 
Warsaw is recorded as a series of local successes ; 
and in that record the absence, or, rather, the nega- 
.tion, of general success is forgotten. 
Now, this impression, deliberately calculated 
and imposed upon the German public in one 
form, and upon the neutral and allied public 
in another does not of course deceive its 
own authors. The Great General Staff knows its 
own losses, it knows the adverse conditions of the 
present siege work ; it has leckoned very seriously 
the limits of time within which it is working. But 
we should fall into disastrous error if 7ve imagined 
jnMic opinion in Gerviian^j was vierely playing a 
part. It is honestly coiivinced; and it does not 
recognise that it is acting under orders. 
This is, of course, less true of public opinion 
in the Dual Monarchy. The Press, the accounts of 
travellers, and private letters amply testify to the 
big rifts in the corresponding state of mind which 
it lias been the object of Germany to produce in the 
mixed populations of her ally. She has failed ; and 
v.hereas Germany proper has suffered no dramatic 
blow which could awaken the public conscience to 
the truth, Austro-Hungary, in the fall of Przemysl 
and in the now certain peril of the Carpathians, is 
not in the same case. Further, Austrian soil is 
occupied, and the Austrian losses in prisoners are 
hardly less than double those of the Germans. The 
Austrians taken prisoner by this time must be well 
over 400,000. Przemysl, at the end of the story, 
and Leraberg, at the beginning, alone account for 
far more than half that number. 
Austro-Hungary, then, is already, so far aa 
its mind upon the war is concerned, entering that 
condition which the German mind would only 
enter after some considerable local defeat or after 
the occupation of some considerable portion of 
German soil, or after the surrender of some con- 
siderable garrison. 
Well, the general lesson to be drawn from the 
present attitude of that v/hich is morally the chief 
part of our enemy seems to me to be this : We 
must regard his present confidence, especially in 
its calmness and superficial strength, as at 
once a real emotion and a particularly arti- 
ficial one. I do not mean that there is not 
the chance of change adverse to us and favour- 
able to him. But I do mean that the gulf 
between the military reality and the public 
opinion supporting the German soldiers is a 
gulf to-day very much v/ider than any which has 
existed previously in this war. Between the height 
of almost insane exaltation of the first days and 
the very great achievements of the German army 
in those same first days there was no such strain. 
To-day there is all the strain that accompanies an 
unstable equilibrium, all the top-heaviness that 
any State suffers (particularly in time of war) 
when those who know are in a ■ mood utterly 
different from those whom they instruct. 
We often hear it said that the awakening will 
be terrible. It is no more than a private judgment, 
but personally I should doubt it. Changes of 
opinion — the ridding of public opinion from illu- 
sion and the fitting of it to reality — are only ter- 
rible when violent. It is even possible, if 
things were mishandled, that the enemy might get 
his inconclusive peace in time, and that his public 
should never learn the present anxiety of its 
rulers. 
But one thing is certain : if he gets his incon- 
clusive peace, then, without doubt it will be but a 
truce so far as this country is concerned. And 
whatever a settlement might do for the satisfac- 
tion of the Continent, it would leave the German 
Empire at least determined and able to pursue, at 
no very distant date, its task of undermining the 
supremacy of Great Britain at sea and the whole 
international position of these islands. 
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