LAND AND WATER. 
August 28, 1915. 
arc})i[>elago affords at once a safe retreat and 
innumerable opportunities for surprise attack. 
The Germans, not for the first time, seem to have 
shown a singular incapacity either to take the 
measure of tlieir opponents or to realise ike risks 
of the operation they were undertaking. As we 
have often j)reviously seen in these notes, the L-Uid- 
ing on an enemy's coast is the last and final osser- 
tion of a claim to command the sea. To attempt 
a landing, as at Pernau. without having sunk or 
l>lockade(J the Russian Fleet, was an act of ex- 
treme rashness. The enemy seems to have acted 
on the theory that, being in greater force than the 
Russians, once the mines blocking the entrance to 
the Gulf were cleared, the Gulf itself could be held 
and Pernau taken. Pernau was chosen in prefer 
ence to Riga because the latter is fortified and 
l*ernau is not. It is also near Petrograd. 
But had the landing been effected, what 
would have become of the troops? Unless there 
were further barges and larger forces coming to 
support them, it would be a mere question of 
days before a suflBcient force would have been on 
the spot to overwhelm them. And in the mean- 
time, if the Russian cruiser.s, destroyers, and sub- 
marines had not been sunk or driven oft', addi- 
tional ships would be required to convoy the new 
transports. An initial success, therefore, could 
only have led to greater ultimate disaster. As it 
is, the Germans are probably fortunate that 
matters have turned out no worse. 
The Russian Navy deserves every possible 
congratulation and praise on what was in all 
probability a most brilliant performance. To 
face a superior force of every kind successfully 
argues a skilful use of cover, fine seamanship, 
but, above all, the exercise of a wise patience. 
The enemy was certainly led into a sense of false 
security, and once the supreme blunder was com- 
mitted, the superior gunnery and dash of the 
Russians drove him from this semi-inland water, 
heavily damaged in material and utterly discom- 
fited in moral. 
In the absence of details it is, of course, ex- 
ceedingly rash to try and guess what happened. 
But one is tempted to suppose that the engage- 
ment must have been much of the same character 
as our own dash into the Heligoland Bight a year 
ago. But the essence of Sir David Beattv's ex- 
pedition was to strike, do all the damage possible 
in the shortest possible time, to support the van- 
guard of destroyers and light cruisers with 
stronger cruisers, and finally to cover the retreat 
.with overwhelming strength— thus securing the 
maximum loss to the enemy with the minimum 
loss to ourselves. The Germans hampered their 
whole proceedings by tying themselves up with 
transports and by hanging about in the Gulf for 
a week, and so gave the Russians exactly the 
opportunity they required. 
In addition to this discomfiture, the Ger- 
mans have now to realise that the process of 
attntiMi by submarine—a process that was to have 
brought the British and German fleets to equality 
^has, at the beginning of the second vear of war 
operated m the reverse direction. The torpedo- 
ing ot the Moltke is, one supposes, an event that 
may be entirely unconnected with what has hap- 
pened in the Gulf of Riga. She may have been 
.watching outside, possibly acting as convoy to 
forther transports. It is equally possible that 
»he was torpedoed m the neighbourhood of Kiel 
Al his ran aground in Danish waters on 
10 
August 19. for all we know to the contrary, one 
or more other British submarines may have got 
through at that time or before or after. But it 
is idle speculating upon the whereabouts of the 
event. The important thing is the event itself. 
If the DerffllHycr and Seydlitz have not yet re- 
covered from the fight off the Dogger Bank the 
German Fleet is almost entirely bereft of its 
fastest and costliest units. 
THE BRE.4CH WITH AMERICA. 
The sinking of the Arabic and the murder 
of at least two more American citizens seems, at 
last, to end the six months" controversy between 
Germany and the United States. It has 
been a new wonder of the world that it 
did not end some months ago. Mr. Wilson 
has exhibited a patience, a toleration of 
outrage and of insolence, and a. reluctance to 
believe that Germany can mean either what she 
says or Avhat she does, that have been proof 
against the plainest language and the most 
glaring facts. His quite un-American virtues 
have been in an unique sense exemplary, in that 
history has no other example of a proud nation 
submitting to such great affronts. It was all the 
more extraordinary because the American attitude 
towards Germany's claim to run amok was defined 
not in the vague circumlocutions of diplomacy, 
but in language that bore only one meaning, and 
that deadly clear. 
The proclamation of the war area was in 
effect an assertion by Germany of her intention 
to sink at sight any" ship, belligerent or neutral, 
approaching these islands. This was not only 
}>lain from the language used and the mean's 
chosen for carrying out the threat, but it has been 
proved to be so by six months' consistent practice. 
The ratio of neutral ships to the total sunk is 
higher than that of neutral to national ships 
coming into and leaving British ports. And 
President Wilson, in common with the rest of the 
world, perceived from the first that this vvcald 
have to be the case. Accordingly, on February 10, 
he defined the American view as to the rights of 
American ships in the area which Germany had 
proclaimed. Should a German naval commander, 
this Note said, in effect, on seeing the American 
flag, wrongly assume that it was not being rightly 
used, and should he sink an American ship and 
thus endanger American lives, the United States 
would regard it as an " indefensible violation " of 
its rights, and Germany would be held " to strict 
accountability." Nothing could have been more 
definite. It tied America finally to a certain view 
of the law and to a definite course of conduct, if 
Germany acted on a contrary view to America's 
detriment. And there the matter stood until, in 
the first week in May, the Lusitania was sent to 
the bottom, carrying with her more than one 
hundred Americans. 
The loss of the Lusitania was not the first 
outrage on American rights. An American 
citizen had been drowned when the Falaba — a 
British merchant ship — was sunk on March 28, 
in circumstances of peculiar atrocity. In April an 
American vessel, the Cashing, had been bombarded 
by a German aeroplane. On ]\Iay 1 the American 
Gulf Light had been torpedoed without warn- 
ing and tw-o Americans had met their deaths. 
With the Lusitania outrage, Mr. Wilson broke 
silence. He protested his incredulity that such 
t 
