August 7, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER 
The inclusion of the trawlers is done for 
obvious reasons. It makes the total very much 
more impressive. The German Admiralty must 
have seen from the first month that the campaign 
was a failure, and has pursued it, not in the hope 
of bringing about any serious economic condition 
here, but solely to keep up the spirits of the 
.German civilian population, and possibly to im- 
press neutrals with the theory that Great Britain 
is steadily weakening. Now that we see why the 
greater figure is wanted, we are nearer having an 
explanation why so many trawlers and fishing- 
smacks have been sunk. Fishing craft, by long 
prescription, have always been excluded from 
liability to search, capture, condemnation, and 
destruction. In no previous war have the 
Germans had a Navy, so that the rules of sea war- 
fare have been drawn up by civilised peoples. 
Still, this particular brutality threw so peculiarly 
odious a stigma on the German Navy that many 
of us have wondered why it was incurred. 
For the first six weeks, after all, no trawler 
was attacked. The thing began in the first 
days of April and culminated in the first 
week in June. It is a pretty cheap way of 
saying that the campaign has been twice as suc- 
cessful as in fact it has been. But even if aU the 
trawlers had been merchantmen, we should still 
have been a long way off that " growing economic 
effect " on which the Count pretends so confidently 
to rely. If British merchant shipping is taken to 
aggregate about 21,000,000 tons, our losses since 
February 18 by submarines can barely be more 
than one and a quarter per cent, of the total. Had 
it been two and a half, however, it still would not 
have been formidable. If the attacks have not 
frightened merchantmen from the sea, nor travel- 
lers from venturing on the ocean, still less has it 
frightened underwriters from insuring owners 
and merchants from risk. The rates quoted at 
Lloyd's to-day are certainly not higher — in some 
particulars they are lower — than they were 
before the campaign began. Freights, no doubt, 
have risen greatly; but the rise is not due 
to the increased cost of insurance. It is due to 
the fact that war has caused the Admiralty some 
months ago, as Mr. Churchill explained, to 
requisition the services of more than one-fifth of 
our mercantile marine. And for that matter, the 
demand of the Navy on the resources of our ship- 
building yards explains the quite unimportant 
reduction in the amount of merchant shipping 
now under construction, compared with what it is 
in normal times. But even at this reduced figure 
it is considerably more than five times the tonnage 
of what German submarines have cost us. 
So far, then, as the submarine campaign is 
concerned, we can still see no object in maintain- 
ing it, unless it be that the state of public opinion 
in Germany makes it necessary to keep up the 
bluff that something very serious is happening to 
Great Britain. 
The German figures are, strange to say, quite 
accurate in the number of Allied ships sunk. But 
in saying that only thirty-three neutrals have 
gone under they are manifestly wrong. It is easy 
to contradict the statement that ninety-five have 
been sunk by submarines, but then that statement 
was never made. The actual figure of neutrals so 
sunk up to July 25 was apparently forty-nine, 
and fourteen have been simk since. 
Cannot one assume from this particular form 
of mendacity that German opinion requires Eng- 
lish losses to be exaggerated and the German 
callous toll of her non-combatant neighbours' 
ships to be minimised ? Altogether these figures 
are curiously significant in their exaggeration, 
their misrepresentation, their under-statement, 
and their very limited accuracy. 
A. H. POLLEN. 
A YEAR OF WAR. 
TBGS many readers of Land and .Water 
throughout the past year have estab- 
lished a claim which we have done our 
best to satisfy. They expect to find in 
these pages week by week a reasoned and clear 
analysis of the great operations on land and sea 
in which the nations of the world are engaged; 
and they expect to learn the views of recognised 
experts on all the momentous questions that are 
directly or indirectly concerned with the War. 
Our aim has been to avoid controversy and 
political bias, to present an accurate and intel- 
ligent account of the progress of events. 
After a Year of War it is natural that our 
readers should wish to consider the results in 
retrospect and to obtain an impartial view of the 
War as a whole. In dealing with a subject of this 
magnitude it is not possible to confine such an 
analysis to the ordinary Limits of this journal. The 
next issue of Land and Water (August 14) will 
therefore be a Special Double Number, containing, 
in addition to its usual features, a " Review of 
THE First Year of War," by Hilaire Belloc 
and A. H. Pollen. It is enough to say that those 
who know the work of Mr. Belloc and Mr. Pollen 
will be anxious to see their estimate of the Allies' 
achievements. 
To this number John Buchan contributes an 
invaluable article on Subsidiary Operations and 
the Dardanelles; Dr. Dillon writes on The Sphinx 
in the Balkans — i.e., the Problem of Neutral 
States; L. March Phillipps explains Germany's 
Break with the Past; Harold Cox criticises the 
policy of Ca' Canny; W. L. George depicts a 
fight between a Zeppelin and an Aeroplane; 
Desmond MacCarthy and J. D. Symon contribute 
brilliant essays; and there is a vivid study en- 
titled " Wounded on the Battlefield," by a young 
Officer who describes his own experience. 
Mr. Belloc and Mr. Pollen will analyse the 
week's operations on land and sea in addition to 
their special review of the War. 
On the whole Land and Water of August 14 
should mark an epoch in the literature of the War. 
MR. HILAIRE BELLOG'S WAR LECTURES. 
Mr. Hilaire Belloc will lectnre at the Public Hall, Dorking, at 
3 p.m. on Wednesday, August 18; and at the Town Hall, Hove, at 8 
o'clock OD Monday, August 23. 
NOTICE.— The Editor of Land and Water « 
willing to consider suitable contributions, 
provided they are typewritten. Prose urticles 
should run to, say, 1,500 words. All MS. 
must be accompanied by stamped and 
addressed envelopes. Every endencour will 
be made to return rejected contributions, but 
the Editor cannot accept any respo?isibility. 
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