May 15, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER, 
into Dunkirk the other day from a range of over 
twenty miles, with his guns at an extreme eleva- 
tion, with no earthly chance of hitting any one 
military target, he produced in our Press exactly 
the effect which he desired. There was first a 
nervous fear lest his fleet might not be in the North 
Sea. Next, that exceedingly naif astonishment 
that heavy guns could deliver shells at range so 
great. When he sank the Lusitania he excluded 
for the moment from the attention of most neutrals 
and of all civilians the very much more important 
military developments of the few days succeeding 
that tragedy. And no wonder, for it was a thing 
more awful by far in its effect upon the imagina- 
tion than the much more disquieting advance of 
the Austro- Germans into Galicia. 
The whole thing may be compared to the 
action of two boxers, one of whom should confine 
the whole of his energy to tlie boxing while the 
other produced appeals time and again during the 
match, or sought to impress the spectators by blows 
that drew blood. The expert would, perhaps, in 
too great a degree confine himself in such a matoh 
to the way in which the mere chances of the game, 
according to the rules of its art, were turning ; but 
the spectators, in proportion to their ignorance of 
that art, would have their attention directed to the 
side issues of disgust or of protest. 
What does this obvious and increasing orien- 
tation of the enemy's efforts tow^ards political effect 
mean ? It means that Prussia, of the two weapons 
upon which she has always relied, is now relying 
more upon the terror of the civilian population 
than upon the purely military art. She is still 
relying upon both, but relying more than ever upon 
the first. And that means, in its turn, that she 
believes this moral effect upon the civilian popula- 
tion to be becoming more and more her best chance 
of obtaining an inconclusive peace. 
I am not here concerned with whether her 
calculation is wise or unwise, still less am I con- 
cerned with an estimate of its morality. I am only 
regarding the matter as an index of how the war 
stands in the mind of the German General Staff 
and of what they probably conceive the future to 
be. And I discover that index to point towards an 
increasing doubt whether they can by military 
means alone achieve wh.it has become their some- 
what modest aim, of saving the State. To acquire 
an hegemony in Europe, to eliminate the French 
from the list of the great neutral Powers, to for- 
bid Russia future influence in the Balkans, to 
keep the Italian forces vassal or ally, to exploit 
economically the Turkish territory in Asia — to 
do any one of these things in even the remote 
future, no one of their directing minds is so 
foolish as to hope. The whole plan, carefully 
matured and diligently prepared, has failed. In 
one respect, indeed, and a most important one, 
that plan mav still conceivably be pursued, I mean 
the outlet of energy which would concern itself 
with a special duel against Great Britain : the 
surpassing of British eeaborne commerce by Ger- 
man, the acquirement of Colonial possessions at 
the expense of Britain, and the exploitation for 
the future of those particular economic fields in 
which England has gained supremacy. It was but 
one chapter of the w hole programme, and, save to 
those who had least grasp of reality among the 
North Germans of our generation, not the most 
important chapter. The most important thing by 
far was to become the chief Power in Europe. The 
attack on Britain would follow only as a natural 
course. But the attack on Britain, once conceived 
as a form of slow and necessary successful mari- 
time and economic corapetition, has now become 
the only feasible part of the national ambition. It 
can be pursued at the price of an inconclusive 
peace. If the German organism is spared, if the 
Prussian Empire remains in being after the war, 
nothing else of the programme will stand, but an 
attack on Britain segregated from all the other 
lost ambitions is still permitted. It would be an 
attack delivered no longer by the chief Power in 
Europe, only by one Power among many, and that 
Power degraded and weakened as compared with 
its great Continental neighbours. But the attack 
covld he delivered if an inconclusive peace were 
patched up, and that inconclusive peace, the 
enemy believes, can best be served by concentrat- 
ing his moral effects upon neutral and civilian 
people, but particularly against the opinion of this 
country. That is the moral of all that crescendo 
of horrification which has used poisonous 
gases against the extreme of the British line, 
which has shelled Dunkirk at twenty-two miles 
(and lost a gun), and yet not shelled Nancy at 
fifteen, which has sunk the Lusitania, and which 
proposes to burn, one after another, a group of 
civilian habitations in these islands, and anyone 
who chooses can draw his military lesson from so 
strange a perversion of the mind. It is in clear 
lineal descent from those lesser massacres of 
civilians and those experiments in terror which 
marked the campaign of 1870-71. 
AN ELEMENTARY 
GLOSSARY. 
{Continued.) 
TtlE chief weapon in modern war is the missile, just 
as the chief weapon in ancient war was the arm 
properly so called, the thing held in the hand, 
the lance or the sword. 
The missile ia obviously an extension of tha 
lauce or the sword. It strikes a blow as does the lance or the 
sword. The only difference in its action is that it strikes 
a blow beyond the reach of the human agent responsible for 
its discharge. 
With the insignificant exception of certain trench de- 
vices, the modern missile is discharged by the explosion of 
chemical compounds of a sort varying in the different ser- 
vices, but roughly combined in English under the term 
povrrler. 
The charge thus used for driving the missile forward and 
throwing it at the enemy is called " the propellani charge " 
(to distinguish it from a bursting charge, &c., of which mora 
in a moment). 
The basis of this explosion is everywhere nowadays 
cotton, though the proportion of cotton differs with the dif- 
ferent services. It is highest in the French and American, 
and lowest, I believe, in the Austrian. 
Tlie mis-siles thus discharged by the use of propellant ex- 
plosives are nowadays, save in the case of certain very large 
pieces, still bound up in one piece with the propellant charge, 
just as the shot in a gun is bound up in one cartridge with 
the powder and the cap, and this form of confstructing ammu- 
nition is known as fixed ammunition. Among the other 
points, which render copper so essential to modern war- 
fare, is one connected with this matter of fixed ammuni- 
tion. It is important that the lower part of the 
cartridge which holds the propellant explosive and grips the 
base of the missile should b« seamless. Brass can be pressed 
from one whole piece into the required shape so that th« 
