LAND AND WATER. 
October 23, 1915. 
men more lavishly than ever because his Higlier 
Command has decided that a violent expenditure 
of energy in this crisis is better policy than hus- 
banding his remaining reserves. In connection 
with this policy, he has also created a new diver- 
sion, largely political, in the Balkans with some 
5 per cent, of his forces, and could at the most, 
were his success complete in that direction, slowly 
train and still more slowly equip some unknown 
number — perhaps half a million — of men drawn 
from the subjects of the Turkish Empire. While 
this experiment is being made in the South-East 
of Europe he is being hammered continuously 
upon the Western line ; he is losing great masses 
of men (for the equivalent of five army corps have 
gone in the last three weeks, allowing a proportion 
of 1 in 5 casualties for the dead); he is failing in 
exceedingly expensive counter-offensive strokes, 
and on the East he is at last held. 
That is the situation as a whole, and the 
more steadily we bear it in mind and base our 
judgment upon it, the better for the nerves of the 
nation. 
NOTE ON THE VULNERABILITY OF 
THE RAILWAY ABOVE NISH. 
I owe my readers a correction of one state- 
ment made in last week's issue. The railway 
above Nish is, as I am now informed by a corre- 
spondent, far more easily destroyed in the gorge of 
the Nisava than I had thought. There are 
several short tunnels, the walls are sheer, and the 
track is in many places hewn out of the rock. A 
very considerable delay could therefore be inflicted 
on the enemy's use of the line here, should he cap- 
ture it, by judiciously placing blasting charges in 
this sector. H. BELLOC. 
THE BALTIC BLOCKADE. 
By A, H. POLLEN. 
In accordance nitb (he requirements ol the Press Bureau, which does oot object to the publication as censored, and takes oo 
responsibility for the correctness of the statements. 
I DREW attention last week to the fact that 
at last our submarines in the Baltic were 
taking a leaf out of the German book and 
cutting off the supply ships plying between 
^ Sweden and the German ports. During the 
^ last few days the evidences of the activity 
of E 19 and her consorts have multiplied 
in a gratifying manner. Six further trans- 
ports have been sunk, and it is said that 
at least fifteen vessels laden with ore and so 
forth have been sent to the bottom after the 
safety of their crews had been provided for. Mon- 
day's Times contains a brief telegram from a cor- 
respondent in Washington saying that the State 
Department has hailed these proceedings at sea 
on the theory of a blockade. 
It is several months since I took upon myself 
to suggest to friends at Whitehall that once Ger- 
many had begun using submarines to sink mer- 
chantm.en it Avas quite unnecessary for us to leave 
ourselves open to the technical criticism that the 
blockade of Germany was incomplete because it 
left the Baltic ports open to the Swedish trade. 
So long as the civilised world seemed to take 
President Wilson's earlier line — viz., that the 
submarine was not the right kind of ship through 
which to exercise belligerent rights over merchant 
shipping —- belligerent or neutral — there was 
obvious wisdom in our submarines refraining 
from German practices. But in the third Liisi- 
tania Note the President held up the humane pro- 
ceedings of the submarine captains as a thing 
which had excited the gratified admiration of the 
world. Clearly after that tlicre was no point to 
be gained in international controversy by leaving 
the Baltic trade undisturbed. 
If the story of the Moen engagement is true, 
the British submarines are putting a verv bold 
face upon their doings. One of them is 'repre- 
sented as fighting a cruiser and two destroyers in 
the open, and, while exposed to the gunfire of all 
three, sinking one of the destroyers and putting 
the other two opponents to flight. The cheery 
Hun who corrects the things unwelcome to Ger- 
many through the Amsterdam Press declares the 
whole story to be apocryphal. He suggests that a 
destroyer, which was sunk, hit a mine and not a 
submarine. Are we then to believe that the 
Russians have been laying mines so near to Kiel 
as this, or that we have torn another page from 
the German book and have sent mine-laying sub- 
marines into the Baltic, as well as fighting sub- 
marines ? The fact of the destroyer being sunk is 
apparently not contradicted. Indeed, two have 
been claimed. But tlie Russian Admiralty is as 
secretive as Whitehall, and we should do well not 
to ?.ttach too much importance to isolated items of 
information, while taking note of the facts that 
such predominance as Germany pos.se3ses in the 
Baltic is being brought to a low military value, 
and that Sweden, as a source of supply of military 
stores, can no longer be relied upon. 
The fact that the completion of the blockade 
of Germany is being made under the orders of 
Russia— though actually effected by British sub- 
marines — lends point to the argument put for- 
ward in these columns some weeks ago — viz., that 
we weaken any controversial case we may have 
with the United States by not establishing that 
our policy with regard "to the control of the 
neutral trade with Germany is one in which all 
our Allies are jointly answerable with ourselves. 
It is perfectly clear, and always has been clear, 
that the Washington Government, while bound to 
defend its national traders, so long as it can be 
asserted that they have the law on their side, is 
most anxious not to seek or to press any cause of 
quarrel either with Great Britain or any other of 
the Allies. The United States have, after r.ll, been 
withm measurable distance of declaring war on 
Germany. It is a simple fact that war has been 
threatened, and the provocation that brought the 
threat w?.3 no technical breach of commercial 
rights, but hideous and undisguised outrage of 
the fundamental precepts of civilised humanity. 
There is no common term that covers a disputablo 
12 
