December 4, 1915. 
L A W i> AND W A T E R 
but his two youngest possible classes and the 
inefficients he has already begun to tap. Hence 
Prussia's feeling for peace. 
Let us examine the basis upon which that 
effort reposes. 
We know in the first place that it makes no 
appeal to military opinion. That, indeed, has 
been the one sharp characteristic of the German 
propaganda and of those who consciously and un- 
consciously were doing the work of the enemy in 
the press of belligerent and neutral countries. 
No military argument was ever used, or if 
one were used, it was one so grotesque as to suggest 
a contempt for the military knowledge of those to 
whom it was addressed. 
The soldiers know well enough what the 
position is. 
I hope next week, or the week after, to repeat 
upOiJ a large coloured map what that position is, 
numerically at least. This element may be very 
briefly recapitulated : — 
(i) The enemy is holding fronts of about 1,500 
miles. 
(2) He cannot continue to hold those fronts 
much longer, because his efficient ma.n-power in 
the field is beginning to decHne. 
(3) He has against him superior man-power 
potentially. With only this element still in his 
favour, that the Russian numbers are not yet 
equipped, armed and munitioned. 
NEW ELEMENTS. 
Regarded as a purely strategical problem to be 
worked out on military grounds alone, the enemy 
is beaten and knows that he is beaten. But there 
are, unfortunately, other elements. 
There is the establishing of a false judgment 
upon the war in the mind of civilians and par- 
ticularly of neutrals, which it is hoped may grow 
into a force too strong for the soldiers. 
There is the hope upon the enemy's side of 
political changes in his favour, both through the 
action of armies now neutral and through diverg- 
ence in aim between the various Allies. 
• Finally, there is the appeal to what is called 
" financial exhaustion." 
Let us take these three elements upon which 
the enemy depends, in their order, see what it is 
that he desires to impress, why it is false, and how 
the falsehood should be met. 
We have first, then, the dehberate propa- 
ganda towards spreading the unmilitary \'iew of 
the campaign as widely as possible, and relying 
upon the effect so produced upon the mind of 
civihans, and so overwhelming the mind and will 
of the soldiers. 
It is a process with which earlier descrip- 
tions in these columns have rendered my readers 
familiar. He rehes upon various factors, all of 
them equally inept as military propositions, but 
all of them unfortunately of great effect in the 
Press and upon the general populace, belligerent 
and neutral. 
Thus we have the appeal to " look at the map." 
That phrase is almost everywhere the first to be 
used in this connection,and that it should ha\e the 
effect it has is enough to make any interested 
student of the war despair. Becuase the enemy's 
line stands in alien territory ; because he is the 
invader and not the invaded, an effect is produced 
which it is impossible for the closest reasoning 
and the most insistent reiteration of the plainest 
strategical conclusions to destroy. 
It was exactly the same, by the way, during 
Napoleon's occupation of the Peninsula. Up to 
the very moment when his forces began to retire 
and those of the British, Portuguese and Spanish 
to go forward, there was a civilian opinon which 
saw- nothing in Torres Vedras but a sort of 
sulky refusal to admit defeat, and there was at an 
earlier point a civilian opinion which saw nothing 
in Sir John Moore's great raid, retreat and magnifi- 
cent action at Corunna but the success of the 
enemy. 
The enemy can use that argument with almost 
limitless effect, for one man who knows or will 
be taught what is meant by a dangerous exten- 
sion of front, there are a hundred men who are 
content to " look at the map." Just as for one 
man who guessed in October, i8i2,thatthe occupa- 
tion of Moscow was fatal, there were a hundred 
men who merely noted that the Emperor of 
the French was present in the capital of the 
Emperor of Russia, and were impressed accord- 
ingly- 
To meet that sort of thing there is no power 
save the constant reiteration, to boredom and to 
tears, if necessary, of main principles. 
Of almost equal effect in this sort of propaganda 
and of rather more legitimate effect, is the advance 
or the retirement of forces. 
I say "of rather more legitimate effect," though 
eveiy one possessed of the mere alphabet of mili- 
tary history knows that retirement and advance 
are but means to an end, and that final success is 
never measured in terms of the one or of the 
other. Still, a force that retires is presumably 
weaker than the force that advances, and the effect 
upon opinion of the fact that the enemy's bodies 
have nowhere retired since last April is, what we 
know it to be, of great weight. 
It is of such weight that the enemy has thought 
it worth his while to attempt advances where he 
had lost all hope of real Success — as in Courland. 
This ability to say that he has nowhere gone back 
in all these months, and in the Balkans actually 
gone forward, is, as we know from his Press, of the 
greatest political value to him at home. It has a 
corresponding effect abroad. Nor need we wonder 
at that, indeed, when we remember that the same 
phenomenon is present with almost equal strength 
upon the side of the Allies, and that slight local 
advances by the Russians, for instance, on their 
fluctuating line are invariably made too much of. 
Another form of this same part of his propa- 
ganda, but a negative one, is the refusal to discuss 
numbers, losses, wastage and recruitment, and in 
this the enemy is very powerfully helped by the 
sensational Press, not only in neutral but, unfor- 
tunately, also, in belligerent countries, and nowhere 
more than in Great Britain. Partly because care- 
fully argued statistics have nothing lurid or violent 
about them, partly because they can only be read 
at the expense of some leisure and attention and 
can only be appreciated by those who possess 
a certain degree of instruction, but most of all, 
perhaps, because the means by which conclusions 
of this sort are arrived at are not familiar to the 
pubUc in times of peace. This capital point in 
any military judgment — the estimating of numbers 
— holds in general opinion a very modest place, or 
rather is usually forgotten : while the great mass 
of less important matter is made the daily food 
of the public. 
A further point which helps the enemy some- 
what in this propaganda, but which it is exceeding!}- 
I-? 
