LAND AND WATER 
October 16, 1915. 
•olutions. I am doing no more than compare the 
elements of strength and weakness shown by the 
situation as a wliole. 
That examination concluded, the questions 
will remain questions and remain unanswered 
until the military development of the next few 
weeks — ih& facts — will answer them for us. 
I will take them, then, in their order. 
THE POLITIC \L PROBLEM. 
If there is one phrase which has appeared 
with more insistence than another in a certain 
section of the Press of this country during the last 
week, it is this phrase, " It is not possible to ex- 
aggerate the importance of the German invasion 
of Serbia." 
It is the business and the duty of everyone 
who desires to help the commonwealth by the 
formation of a sound judgment (and the momen- 
tum of a million such judgments constitutes the 
sanity of the State) to write that phrase down and 
to say that it is the exact opposite of the truth. 
It is possible to exaggerate the importance 
of the new enemy move — which, by the way, is not 
German, but German and Austrian, with the 
probable aid, negative or positive, of Bulgaria— 
and that we should exaggerate it is exactly what 
the enemy desires. 
Consistently, without hesitation or lapse, for 
month upon month, that portion of the Press to 
which I refer has done everything which could 
possibly be done to play into the hands of the 
enemy. It has shaken public confidence at home ; 
it has implied that the deliberate refusal of the 
great offence in the West is either meaningless or 
due to an impotence in attack. It has given to the 
advance of the enemy forces in the East exactly 
that application which the enemy hoped would be 
given to it by the most uninstructed and the most 
timorous civilian among the Allies. It has pre- 
tended that a calculation of losses and of remain- 
ing effectives and reserves was immaterial and 
that our whole attention should rather be fixed 
upon the enemy's immediate successes to the 
neglect of his future chances. It is now, I repeat, 
in this matter of the new Balkan situation, doin^ 
to an inch that which the enemy further requires 
— ex-^ploiting British opinion, trying to force the 
hand ot those who alone understand the situa- 
tion; creating a divergence between the private 
objects of the various members of the great 
Alliance; and, in a word, doing all the harm it 
possibly can and no good whatsoever. 
But if it be possible to exaggerate the import- 
ance ol the new enemy move, it is also only too 
easy to underrate it. One can conceive the same 
. stupidity, the same panic, and the same lack of 
elementary historical and contemporary know- 
ledge behttlmg the last strategic experiment of 
the enemy. Bad .judgment (and nothiAg judges so 
wildly as panic) is capable of an extreme in Sther 
direction always. 
The sane view of the situation may be 
sumnied up roughly as follows • ^ 
«eut .umbers upon the Da.uV le Sis a fair 
chance of getting and holding the road to Con- 
stantinople. The reason that the political effect 
of this would be so great is that Asiatic opinion, 
including that of the Near East, hangs largely 
upon the i'ate of Constantinople. Therefore 
France and England, more than France, arc inti- 
mately concerned with preventing, if it be pos- 
sible, the full munitionment of the Turkish armies 
and the intimate linking up of the enemy with the 
Turkish capital. 
Further, such a linking up would isolate 
I?oumania, and, unless there were some new and 
not too delayed Russian success to the north of 
that State, would prevent the Roumanians ever 
coming iji on our side. 
Those who love romance may further specu- 
late upon how far this linking up with Constan- 
tinople might lead next year (or the year after) 
to campaigns on the Nile or the Euphrates. But 
for the moment no sane nnm need botht;r about 
that. Turkey has not the foi-ces, Germany has not 
the men, for any such enterprise until the Allies 
are beaten, or f^.re well on the \vay to defeat. 
The political effect, then, of the present 
situation, though far more restricted than foolish 
panic-mongers in London imagine, is serious. 
If the Allies can send a sufficient number of 
men to prevent the enemy, with Bulgarian aid, 
from grasping the line to Constantinople— in 
other words, if the Allies can send and maintain 
an army sufficient to save Serbia, it is amply worth 
Avhile to undertake this diversion. 
To conceive that it is, or ever will be, the 
mam operation of the war is foolish. The main 
operation of the war will develop upon one of the 
two great fronts, and probably upon the West. 
The enemy defeated there is defeated everywhere. 
It is not 14 or 15 divisions on the Danube that 
represent his principal effort; still, to check him 
there is obviously an important thing, and ^ve 
may next attempt to calculate in what numbers it 
w^ould suffice, or, rather, what minimum is at least 
required. For to send at least even such a mini- 
mum IS to throw away men for nothing. It is 
an absolute dogma of all military art in all times 
and places that subsidiary operations must never 
be undertaken upon such a scale as to weaken the 
main chance of victory, and must never be under- 
taken in such small numbers as to involve mere 
local disaster without effect. 
These are the figures in the matter. 
FIGURES. 
The Serbian Army ready to take the field 
may, as we have seen, be roughly estimated in 
numbers at 250,000 men. The figure 250,000 gives 
us an estimate not unduly inflated, but scaled 
down somewhat against our own side. 
This Army is not possessed of heavy artillery 
which can match the heavy artillery the enemy 
has to bring against it, though it has been lent 
some reinforcement herein. In other respects, in 
its held artillery, in its munitionment for field 
artillery, m its infantry equipment and in its 
munitionment for the same it is fairly the equal 
ol its opponents. ^ 
As against this body of, roughly, a quarter 
01 a million, you have an enemy concentration 
roughly equal. The enemy has spread a rumour 
tiiat he has conr^entrated the equivalent of ten 
corps upon the Danube and the Save. It is not 
possible. There is evidence that certain units 
