LAND AND 5EATER. 
May 15, 1915. 
one naturally turns to the sensational and, in a 
military sense, useless actions of the last few 
weeks, and particularly of the last ten days. 
The public mind naturally and instinctively 
turns to them, as, indeed, the enemy intended that 
it should. But it might be imagined that an analy- 
sis which deals only with the purely military con- 
ditions of the campaign should leave aside a^ts 
v/hich are less and less military in their conception 
and execution. In what way (it may be asked) 
does such an action as the shelling of Dunkirk, or 
the raid on Libau, or the German Emperor's tele- 
gram to his sister, or the sinking of the Lusitania 
concern military history ? One might as well, it 
would seem, drag in the guillotine at Arras, or the 
speeches of Robespierre into a military narrative 
01 the early revolutionary war. 
I do not think this criticism is sound. As it 
seems to me, the enemy's recent actions, which have 
quite evidently no military object proportionate 
either to the expense of their undertaking or the 
risk he runs by them, and many of which have no 
direct military objec^t at all, are none the less well 
worthy of note, and very useful in the analysis of 
the purely military side of this campaign. 
We are always to ask ourselves whenever an 
enemy command does anything, from the movement 
uf a batteiy to the sending of a political telegram, 
why he does it, and how his action can possibly lear 
upon the conduct of the war. His action may 
often be foolish ; we may often see it to have been 
a blunder ; but it is never quite meaningless. 
Let us, therefore, begin by contrasting the 
operations of the Allies in the West with those of 
the German forces, segregating these two oppo- 
nents because it is between their methods that the 
contrast most severely applies. 
The Allies in the West, as the turn in their 
numbers has gradually come about, as they have 
provided themselves with more and more heavy 
artillery and with a larger and larger accumu- 
lation of munitions for the same, have with every 
passing week concentrated more and more clearly 
upon the purely military objects of the war. 
For instance, the first use made by the French 
of their new security in heavy pieces was to push 
forward in a belt of the Champagne until they com- 
manded the lateral communications of the enemy 
between Argonne and Lille. That done, they 
halted. Next they worked south and north of the 
St. Mihiel wedge, up to Les Eparges on the one side 
and the neighbourhood of Freilu on the other. They 
here also could bombard the points of junction of 
his lateral communications. They pushed forward 
to the heights north and east of Pont k Mousson 
until from those heights they were in range, though 
'distant range, of the chief southern communica- 
tions of Metz. In the Vosges, at very heavy 
expense, very slowly, but with continuous deter- 
mination, they pushed on until they occupied simi- 
lar positions, from which they dominated at long 
range the main railways of the Alsatian plain. 
CThat done, they fell back upon the defensive. 
Their air service, over and above its main work 
of observation and of " spotting " for the heav}- 
pieces, dropped bombs upon certain headquarters 
(especially the great general headquarters at 
Meziferes), upon the railway junctions (work done 
with peculiar success by the British Flying Corps 
in Belgium), upon the airship sheds, and upon 
Btores and munitions. It is particularly to be 
noticed that all this process of purely military 
work became more and more restrained, as it 
were, was more and more exactly directed towards 
purely military objects as the winter passed into 
spring and as the moment for an offensive 
approached. The whole thing has been aptly com- 
pared by Colonel Maude to the laying of founda- 
tions by an engineer before he builds, and the 
nearer the moment has come for erecting the walls 
upon the foundations the more minutely and 
thoroughly has the allied work concerned itself 
with those foundations alone. There has been less 
and less, as the weeks passed, of chance blows or 
of tentative adventure. There has been a steadier 
accumulation of men and of munitions, a somewhat 
increased rigour in the blockade by sea, and, a8 
was perfectly right, a somewhat increased severity 
in the censorship. 
Now, compare with this process and its cumu- 
lative character the corresponding action of the 
enemy. 
He begins as early as December with announc- 
ing an indecisive action before Warsaw, which all 
but ended in a disaster for himself, as comparable 
to a defeat of the Persians by the Greeks. He later 
announces, after the local defeat of one army corps, 
the total destruction of the tenth Russian Army. 
He proclaims that the special bombardment of 
Rheims is an act of retaliation. He drops bombs 
upon watering-places along the East Coast, where 
— as almost everywhere in England nowadays — 
there were troops billeted, but which he carefully 
styles as being " fortified places." He announces 
that he will sink merchantmen by submarine, but 
at first he attempts to save the crews. He proceeds 
to a policy of sinking them with or without saving 
the crews, indifferently. He announces his great 
offensive in Galicia in terms of extreme rhetoric 
which do not correspond with the facts. He makes 
a raid upon the Baltic coast of Russia which can 
have no direct effect upon the campaign as a whole. 
He sends out more than one bombastic telegram to 
reigning families allied with his reigning house 
and takes care that they shall be published abroad. 
He shoots at extreme range, without aiming, large 
shells into Dunkirk, hitting at random, and with 
no conceivable military object. He sinks the Lusi- 
tania, producing an effect, one side of which, its 
horror and its novelty, must bear no relation to the 
comparatively small cargo of munitions thereby 
prevented from reaching his foe, and his Press, 
which, even where it is purely financial and cos- 
mopolitan, like the Cologne Gazette, acts under 
orders, and particularly emphasises that side of all 
these actions which is calculated to affect, not 
military, but civilian opinion. 
I would even go so far as to say that the use of 
poisonous gases, which he has developed, falls 
under the same category. That they are efficacious 
in driving men from trenches we know. But there 
is something else. The thing could have been done 
with chemical agents that would not have the pecu- 
liar effect of these poisons. Again, it is an agency 
expensive in preparation and in time. Again, it 
can only be used under special circumstances of 
weather. Again, it is an agency that has only been 
used on one tiny fraction of his whole line. 
Now, I am not denying that in all this the 
enemy is putting his very fullest military effort 
forward as well. My point is that the most 
remarkable part of his recent activity has been 
this appeal to the nerve of neutrals and of belli- 
gerent civilians. When he dropped a few .shells 
