June 26. 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
has been hampered by the necessity of treating 
Belgium as a confiiiere<i eountvy. There are those 
who have excused upon purely inilitaiy grounds 
the wholly novel and amazing procedure of 
massacre, pillage, rape — and worse — with which 
the German Authorities treated a Nation whose 
security they had themselves sworn to preserve. 
These apologists, admitting, of course, whatever 
moral blame you will in such conduct, maintain 
that in the purely military sense it has 
strengthened the German hands. They are quite 
wrong. The violation of Belgium and the policy 
of wholesale massacre and savagery has had three 
most important consequences, each adverse in 
their various degree to the German arms : 
(a) It delayed at first by hampering com- 
munications the deliveiy of munitions, particu- 
larly of heavy shell at the very end of the advance 
on Paris; 
(b) It has locked up in one way or another in 
Belgium not less than 100,000 men as a garrison 
of that unhappy country throughout the whole 
period of hostilities ; 
(c) (most important of all) it has strategi- 
cally tied the Germans through all the future of 
this campaign to the corpse of that Belgium 
which they have killed. A reluctance or inability 
to retire with safety and rapidity tlirougli 
Belgium, a growing necessity or desire to pretend 
the annexation of that country leaves their grand 
strategy to this day clogged, they are not free to 
shorten their line where they will. They must 
hang on in the north. Compare the effect in 
Central and Eastern Spain ufx>n the Marshals of 
Napoleon a hundred years ago, especially when 
the necessity for retreat appeared. 
3. In this third theory the enemy was right 
and the Allies were wrong. Permanent fortifica- 
tions were easily dominated by the modern siege 
train, when that siege train and its raunitionment 
were in sufficient force. Note that it was to the 
Austrian arsenals mainly, and to the Austrian 
engineers that the enemy here owed his power. 
4. In the fourth point, the power of modern 
rapid road transit made gcK)d the very largest 
flanking movement, the enemy was wrong. 
Perhaps it was because the provision of suf- 
ficient artillery was impossible; but at any 
rate, with an enormous superiority in number, the 
enemy's theory of enveloping here quite broke 
down. I will suggest that it may perhaps have 
been mainly due to his error in the fifth point — 
the u.se of dense masses in attack — which is of an 
importance meriting longer discus ion and which 
I will analyse next week. 
H. BELLOC. 
{To he continued.) 
MR BEI.LOG'S LECTURES ON THE WAR. 
Mr. HiUiro Beiloc will lecture on the War at Queen's Hall on 
Tuesday, July 13; and Tuesday, July 27. 
Seats may now bo bfioked. 
At 3.20, the Winter Gardens, Boumemoalh, Monday, Jane 28. 
At 8 o'clock, tho Speech HaU, Wycomba Abbey, High Wycombe, 
on Wednesday, July 7. 
THE WAR BY WATER. 
By A. H. POLLEN. 
NOTE. — This article has been submitted to the Press Bureau, vrliich does not object to the publication as ceaso red, and takes n« 
responiibllity tor the correctness ol the statements. 
THE NAVAL SITUATION. 
THE account of the advance of the Allied 
forces in the Gallipoli Peninsula, pub- 
lished on Wednesday morning, mentions 
the services of the French battleship, St. 
Louis, in keeping down the fire from the forts on 
the Asiatic side, but it makes no mention of any 
co-operation of the ship's guns with the land forces 
in the actual advance. The fact that the St. Louis 
was engaged shows that it was not from any fear 
of German submarines that the battleships have 
abstained from participation. The probability is 
that the fighting took place on ground that the 
naval guns could not reach. 
Tuesday's Temps announced that the Allied 
fleet had bombarded the town of Gallipoli, but it is 
not officially confirmed. It is possible that this 
bombardment coincided with the successful ad- 
vance officially announced on Tuesday. From 
Gallipoli to Duhut Iskalessi, off which the ships 
might lie, is well within the range of 12-inch guns, 
and as the town occupies a great deal of ground, 
there is no reason why, with the assistance of air- 
craft, a very effective indirect bombardment should 
not have been carried out. There are no hills pro- 
tecting Gallipoli from such fire. To the ordinary 
members of the public, the principal interest of 
both items of news lies in the fact that it is evident 
that Admiral de Robeck has the submarine menace 
well in hand. 
Beyond this, the official news of naval activity 
from all quarters is slender. In the Baltic, 
a German auxiliary cruiser has held up the 
Swedish cruiser Thorsten. There is an uncon- 
firmed report from Petrograd that the Hamadieh 
has been badly injured in an encounter with the 
Black Sea Elect. Beyond this there have only been 
some minor events in the Adriatic. One is dis- 
tinctly curious. The Italian submarine Medusa 
had the ill-luck to come to the surface in the im- 
mediate neighbourhood of an Austrian submarine 
that was showing her periscope only. The 
Austrian had time to fire a torpedo before it was 
itself detected, and the torpedo unfortunately; 
proved fatal. It is almost inconceivable that one 
submarine could torpedo another in any other cir- 
cumstances than these. It is well that this ex- 
planation has been given, for I notice that in an 
article in the Nautical Magazine, a merchant 
service officer holding a first mate's certificate 
describes how a ship he was on Avas submarined. 
He declares that the submarine fired when sub- 
merged, without her periscope being above water, 
and conjectures that the conning tower of the sub- 
marine was fitted with a plate-glass window, 
through which an observer could see to fire without 
using any visible optical device. If any such feat 
as this were possible, the submarine would be a far 
more formidable weapon than it is, But under 
water, even in the brightest light, it is not possible 
to see more than a very few feet, certainly not a 
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