LAND AND WATER. 
;july. 17, 1915. 
NOTE. 
THE WAR BY WATER. 
By A, H. POLLEN. 
-This article has been submitled to the Press Bureau, which docs not object to the publication as censored, and takes a* 
responsibility for llie coirectncss ol the statements. 
T 
THE DARDANELLES. 
HE dispatch in which Sir Ian Hamilton 
describes the first ten days of the inva- 
sion of the Gallipoli Peninsula was 
published after my article of last week 
altogether innocuous (that is, if it goes deep 
enough) or destructive over a very small area. 
But the thing will be altogether different 
when the troops have advanced far enough to 
bring the forts of the Narrows under observation. 
For these will then be brought under the fire of 
was written. It followed hard on the account oi 12-iiich guns from a great distance, and conise- 
the fighting- at the end^of J/^^® and^tjie hrsu^t^ew ^^^^^1^ ^.j^^ g^^jj ^jjj ^^^^-^^ at a larger angle. 
■I-. .i i,_ . „ „, oTir A - Qj.gj^|. accuracy will be obtainable, and the vast' 
volume of fire that will be at hand will more than 
compensate for the minor disadvantages I have seti 
out above. 
davs of July. Both the dispatch and the tele 
graphic accounts of the British advance and the 
(Turkish counter-attacks throw a considerable 
amount of new light on the share of the Navy m 
these operations. But I do not propose on the 
present occasion to discuss these matters in detail, 
as they can more suitably wait until the next dis- 
patch is received, when the whole of the opera- 
lions up to the advent of the German submarines 
can be brought under review. 
THE GERMAN NOTE. 
If it were possible for German diplomacy to 
surprise, the final reply to President Wilson would 
be a startler indeed. The first reply based itself 
But certain matters should not be passed by on the allegation that the Lusitania, being armed, 
in silence. The dispatch is of a literary brilliance was virtually a ship of war. All such pretences 
worthy of the operations it describes. And it is are dropped now, and the crime justified on the 
remarkable for the generosity and eloquence of grounds : 
its tribute to the seamen's service to the Army. (1) Tliat the Lvsitania might have been ex- 
I have ventured to say before that, when the full pected to float long enough for the passengers to 
account of these operations comes to be written, it be saved. 
.will be found that they constitute perhaps the (2) That if the submarine had warned the 
most astonishing of all recorded military achieve- ship before firing the submarine would certainly 
jnents. This could not have been so but for the 
perfection with which the sailors' share was per- 
formed. 
It seems clear that the artillery support given 
by the ships was of really great value only while 
the actual landing was going on. So long as the 
snemy occupied positions between the beach and 
the crests of the hills they could be brought under 
the direct fire of the guns. Once on the long, re- 
ceding reverses of these hills they were out of 
reach. It will be noticed that in the recent fight- 
ing none of the big ships were brought up to sup- 
port the troops. The monitors and destroyers 
that came to the help of iheTalbot are possessed of 
no bigger guns than 6 and 4 inch. Yet there seems 
to have been a limited amount of indirect fire, as 
Eeuter's correspondent refers to the services ren- 
dered by the captive balloon. That nothing 
larger than 6-inch guns were used points to the 
fact that it is only the smallest naval gun, even 
have been destroyed. The event is held up to exe- 
cration as a result of the horrible kind of sea war 
that Great Britain is waging ! Surely fatuity of 
argument and effrontery of speech can go no 
further. It is surely a dangerous argument that 
murder is necessary to Germany. If the Imperial 
power can only continue if bloodguilty piracy, 
continues, America may feel compelled to take a 
hand in ending both. President Wilson has to 
make his warning good and hold Germany to 
strict account. How will he do it ? 
The American community appears to be 
divided into three camps : an extreme German 
party tliat considers the sinking of the Lvsitania 
justified on the grounds Germany has put for- 
ward ; a party that sees no alternative, honourable 
to the nation, except immediate war ; a third party, 
far larger than either, that is profoundly pledged 
to peace, and hopes against hope that some middle 
course, that is neither war nor surrender, and is 
when using half-charges, that can get a sufficiently compatible with the country's dignity, may be 
high angle with its fire to be of service. 
This a little bit discounts the hopes some of 
us entertained that the battleships would very 
greatly facilitate the operations of the Army. 
But we have to recognise two limitations to naval 
fire. The first, which is already familiar, is that 
It is comparatively easy for the Turks to put their 
batteries where they cannot be reached by naval 
guns. The second is that the flatness of its tra- 
jectory carries the naval shell horizontally into its 
target instead of vertically. The steeper the 
angle at which a shell falls, the less its velocity 
the less it buries itself in the ground, the greater 
the destructive area when it bursts. A single big 
Bhell falling vertically into a position will radiate 
damage from the point of impact. But a shell 
hitting horizontally, and at a high velocity, buries 
itself in the obstacle, and on bursting is either 
found. 
Much discontent has been aroused in America, 
and has seemingly been growing stronger, owing 
to the British application of the theory of the con- 
tinuous voyage. The cry of the American ex- 
porters, who wish to profit by the German demand 
for cotton and metal, to some extent discounts the 
horror which the German atrocities have creat<?d. 
The issues are greatly confused by a hopeless in- 
accuracy of speech and a profound misunderstand- 
ing of sea Icxw. Nor is this misunderstanding con- 
fined to America. I have had several letters from 
correspondents saying it was a cowardly thing to 
allow women and children to travel in a ship in 
which munitions of war were carried—as if such 
cargo implied the risk of being sunk. A Con- 
gressman, speaking at one of Mr. Bryan's meet- 
ings, declared that " So long as our Government 
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