September 18, 1915. 
LAND AND.WATlill 
A REPLY TO CRITICISM. 
IT has been the constant policy of this paper 
to avoid controversy of any kind, both be- 
cause the matters it dee.ls with are best 
examined as intellectual propositions and 
because the increasing gravity of the time is ill- 
suited for domestic quarrel. 
I none the less owe it to my readers to take 
some notice of the very violent personal attack 
delivered by the Harmsworth Press some ten days 
ago upon my work in this journal. I owe it to 
them because I should otiierwise appear to admit 
unanswered the depreciation of my work in this 
paper, but, still more, because the incident would 
give the general public a very false impression 
unless its cause were exposed. I will deal with 
the matter as briefly as 1 can. It is not a pleasant 
one, and I doubt whether the principal offender 
v.ill compel me to return to it. 
I must first explain to my readers the occa- 
sion of so extraordinary an outburst on the part 
of the proprietor of the Daily Mall. I have be- 
come, with many others, convinced that a great 
combination of newspapers pretending to speak 
with many voices, but really serving the private 
interests of one man, is dangerous to the nation. 
It was breeding dissension between various social 
classes at a moment when unity was more neces- 
sary than ever; pretending to make and unmake 
Ministers; weakening authority by calculated con- 
fusion, but, above all, undermining public confi- 
dence and spreading panic in a methodical way 
which has already made the opinion of London an 
extraordinary contrast to that of the Armies, and 
gravely disturbing our Allies. They could 
not understand the privilege accorded to this one 
person. I therefore, to the best of my power, 
determined to attack that privilege, and did so. 
I shall continue to do so. But such action has 
nothing to do with this journal, in which I have 
hitherto avoided all controversy. 
The gist of the particular article in the Dally 
Mall of September 6 was that in the mass of work 
produced by me in Land and Water during the 
last thirteen months I had upon at least one 
occasion regarded an enemy offensive in tlie West 
(last spring) as certain to take place; whereas. 
?.s a fact, the great enemy offensive was delivered 
in the East. To this error in judgment upon my 
part was added a number of lesser charges, per- 
fectly just for the most part, showing how in this 
place and in that I had overrated one factor or 
underrated another. 
The article also contained much foolish and 
irrelevant matter, such as jeering at my former 
service for a few months in the French Army, and 
allusions to the writer's personal acquaintance 
with the Carpathians, the Gallipoli Penin.sula, 
and, I think, the Chinese coast. In none of 
these matters does he seem to have a quarrel with 
me. I am, therefore, not called to sj)eak on them 
unless it be to assure him that I envy him so wide 
an experience of travel. 
There is in such an indictment as this noth- 
ing to challenge, because I would be the first, not 
only to admit its truth, but, if necessary, to sup- 
plement the list very lengthily. To write a weekly 
commentary upon a campaign of this magnitude — 
a campaign the facts of which are concealed as 
the) have been in no v/ar of the past — is not only 
an absorbing and very heavy task, but also one 
in which much suggestion and conjecture are 
neces-sarily doubtful or wrong, and to pursue it as 
I have done steadily and unbrokenly for so many 
months has tried my powers to the utmost. 
But I confess that I am in no way ashamed 
of such occasional errors in judgment and mis- 
interpretations, for I think them quite unavoid- 
able. They will be discovered in every one of the 
many current commentaries maintained upon the 
war throughout the Press of Europe and even in 
the calculations of the General Staffs. 
Nay, I will now add to the list spontaneously :' 
In common with many others, I thought that 
an invasion of Silesia was probable last Decem- 
ber. At the beginning of the war I believed that 
the French operations in Lorraine would develop 
towards the north — an opinion which will be 
found registered many months later in the official 
records recently published. In the matter of 
numbers my early estimates exaggerated the pro- 
portion of wounded to killed, while only a few 
weeks ago I guessed for the number of German 
prisoners in the West a number which subsequent 
official information conveyed to me proved to be 
erroneous by between 17 and 18 per cent. I long 
worked on the idea that the line from Ivangorod 
to Cholm was a double line — a matter of some im- 
portance last July. I have since found that it was 
single. The total reserve within and behind Paris 
which decided the battle of the Marne was, I 
believe (though the matter is not yet public), less 
large than I had suspected, and the figures I gave 
would rather include the Sixth Army as well as 
the Army of Paris. A few weeks ago I sug- 
gested that there was difficulty in moving a great 
body of men rapidlv across the Upper Wierpz. 
Yet the movement, wlien it was made, might fairly, 
be described as rapid. At any rate, the aid lent 
to the Archduke came more promptly than had 
seemed possible. I certainly thought, though I 
did not say so in so many words, that the capture 
of the bridgehead at Friedrichstadt would involve 
an immediate and successful advance by the 
enemy upon Riga, and in this opinion, I believe, 
no single authority, enemy or ally, differed. What 
has caused the check to the enemy advance hero 
for ten full days no one in the West can tell, nor, 
for that matter, does any news from Russia yet 
enlighten us. 
And so the list might be continued. Such 
errors in judgment, greater or less in degree, will 
always accompany my work because it is no more 
than an attempt to give week by week, at what I 
am proud to say is a very great expense of time and 
of energy, an explanation of what is taking place. 
There are many men who could do the same thing. 
I happen to have specialised upon military history 
and problems, and profess now, with a complete 
.set of maps, to be doing for others what their own 
occupations forbid them the time and opportunity 
to do. 
Ill this occupation I shall continue. Errors 
will, no doubt, slip into my work in the future as 
tliey have in the i>ast. but .so I hope will appear, in 
larger proportioji, the accurate study of map.s and 
tlie detailed explanation of movements which is 
what 1 believe my readers exi>ect of me. 
H. BELLOC. 
