December 4, .1915. 
LAND AN D W A T E R 
productive use and wasted in unproductive ex- 
penditure. 
The connection between national solvency 
and the power to conduct war exists — but it . is 
exceedingly indirect. There is no direct function 
uniting the one thing and the other. The French 
Republic was bankrupt just as it began its great 
series of victories a hundred years ago. Germany 
is bankrupt to-day in the sense that the German 
Government can never dream of meeting the 
paper obligations into which it has entered. 
, What is called " money " — that is, the enor- 
mous amount of instruments of credit which repose 
in our present civilisation upon a very small 
basis of gold — is only the lubricant of exchange. 
Exchange itself is in services and in goods. 
To say that those services and goods will 
give out before the defeat of the enemy is to talk 
nonsense. To say that you may reach a point 
where the possessors of such goods and services 
may prefer national humiJiation to further sacrifice 
is another matter, and it is upon that breaking 
point that the enemy is gambling in this third 
element of hi.:; propaganda for peace. To meet 
such an effort there is no weapon save the deter- 
mination (which he has already entered into} 
to sacrifice wealth indefinitely : preferring any- 
thing to defeat. 
\Miether partial repudiation when it is neces- 
sary takes the form of forced conversion, of 
taxation obviously confiscatory in its amount, or 
the franker and more honest public declaration that 
the full financial pledges entered into by the 
Allied nations cannot be maintained, is indifterent. 
At bottom the problem will always be this : Will 
those who possess wealth prefer to suffer the 
loss of their wealth or the loss of the nation's 
position in the world. If they prefer their nation 
to their fortune the wealth is there to defeat the 
enemy twenty times over. H. Belloc. 
THE NAVY AND THE BOARD. 
By A. H. POLLEN. 
In accordance with the requirements of the Press Bureau, which does not object to the publication as censored, and takes ao 
responsibility for the correctness of the statements. 
THE present position of the war is not 
unlike that of a cricket match in which 
three innings have been played, and the 
batting 'side in the fourth cannot possibly 
make the runs required for victory, and can onh" 
avoid defeat by playing out time. The failure to 
crtish either France or Russia leaves Germany 
no alternative but to distract and discourage the 
Allies by a diversion in the Balkans. Here they 
have achieved the same kind of initial success 
that they enjoyed in overrunning Belgium, 
the Northern departments of France and 
Poland and Courland. But there is a sharp 
difference between the first two and the last 
of these efforts. Had either of the first suc- 
ceeded it would have gone near to securing' a 
decision in the whole campaign. No success 
liowever complete m the last effort can alter 
the ultimate issue, except by postponing it. 
The Germans know that even the most resolute 
people tire of sacrifices and lose heart if the enemy 
has successes, and they have none. They hope 
delay will weary us all into the peace for which 
Germany, in Herr Harden's words, is herself 
yearning. Our enemy is in short playing for a 
draw. It is a desperate effort, for he must know- 
that the Allies are fully determined on a war of 
exhaustion if there is no other way of finishing 
things. But next to losing the war, the greatest 
misfortune that could happen to us is its undue 
prolongation. It follows then that it is vital 
to us to use all our resources to the utmost. 
In military power we are already almost the 
enemy's equal. We are on the way to becoming 
greatly superior. Of sea power we possess a 
monopoly. As we saw last week, the new 
war in the Balkan imposes on the Allies the 
two exceptionally difficult tasks of concert- 
ing the miUtary efforts of three dissimilar and 
separated countries, and doing this through the 
medium of amphibious warfare, whose intricate 
problems are proverbial. But there remains a 
third task which is especially in this country's 
hands. I mean using the Allied seapower so as to 
do the best on sea. 
Given control of the sea, which carries with it 
the safety of our shores, the security of our oceanic 
supply, and the immunity of our communications 
w'ith the oversea armies from concerted naval 
attack, what are the principal uses to which our 
sea power can be put ? Can the German fleet 
be attacked in its stronghold ? Can we otherwise 
attack the enemy, say, in his forts or strong places, 
or in the Baltic ? Can we enforce still more 
rigorously a general embargo on his supplies ? 
Can we protect ourselves more completely against 
the *.poi-adic attacks of his submarines ? 
It seems to be taken for granted that the 
Fleet cannot be used for a direct attack on the 
enemy's ships, so long as they resolutely stay 
entrenched behind their harbour defences. When 
Mr. Churchill spoke of " digging them out like 
rats," his phrase was derided as rodomontade. 
But one hundred years ago the French fleet in the 
Aix roads seemed at least as safe as the German 
fleet at Kiel, and Cochrane found a way of breaking 
these defences down. Is it certain that the British 
navy in the 20th century cannot produce a genius 
of equal resource ? Can air-craft, submarines, 
mines, torpedoes, air bombs, be used in such a 
masterly combination as to inflict damage so great 
that a "Fleet action may seem preferable ? Had 
we been fighting for a generation instead of only 
for 16 months we should, of course, know who 
were our exceptional men. The chances are 
strong that the Cochranes are there. Where 
knowledge, skill, courage and enterprise have been 
given a free hand, there seems to be no limit to 
what has been achieved. The anti-submarine 
campaign in home waters, our own submarine cam- 
paign in the sea of Marmora and the Baltic, 
in both of these the men who had to act, once 
freed from central control, and acting entirely 
" on their own," have worked miracles. We only 
know generally what the result of this freedom 
has been. Here able men, unhampered in taking 
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