LAND AND .WATER 
October 23, 1915. 
European conqiii'^ts w^as the power they gave him 
to forbid the subject or allied countries from 
trading with these islands. 
To deprive all countries, including his own, 
of colonial products and the communities with un- 
developed industries of British manufactures im- 
posed a sacrifice that was found to be intolerable. 
It is not without interest that the first ruler to 
rebel against this tyranny was the aged Pontiff 
Pius \ II. The disaffection of all Northern 
Europe and Russia with the Berlin decrees was 
general and undisguised; Spain rose in defence 
of liberty. Throughout the years of Napoleon's 
unquestioned military ascendency Great Britain, 
with her Navy and her trading ships, thus became 
the symbol of freedom in the struggle against 
tyranny. What had been the cry of the Revolu- 
tionary armies now became the watchword of the 
enemies of France. Alone of the countries of 
Eurojie Great Britain had not been and could not 
be invaded. Alone amongst them she not only 
maintained but increased her wealth; alone 
amongst them she kept the will and the means to 
carry on an unrelenting, though seemingly hope- 
less, struggle. Not that peace might not have 
been made had we been willing to compromise on 
the liberties of Europe. But to our statesmen's 
credit be it said, an inconclusive peace seemed to 
them worse than continued unsuccess in war; and 
it seemed worse because they knew that in a fight 
between sea-power and land-power it was the 
former that must prevail, if only for the reason 
that sea force can he kept at full strength without 
exhausting national resources in wealth and men, 
while land force, if fighting is continuous, must 
in time exhaust both. And so it hapjjened that, 
though Trafalgar was fought ten years before, 
Waterloo was truly the ptirpose, the completion, 
and the crown of the work of Barham and of 
Nelson. 
A PARALLEL LESSON. 
Surely all these things are well called to 
memory now. The German Navy has not met its 
Trafalgar, but for the purposes of the war it is 
as effectively locked up in the waters round Heli- 
goland as ever were the remnants of the French 
Fleet in the roads of Aix after Trafalgar. Even 
if we had a Cochrane who could destroy the Ger- 
man Fleet beyond its defences, his victory would 
add nothing to the completeness of our sea com- 
mand. So far as the sea is concerned, then, the 
• Central Powers to-day stand where Napoleon 
stood for the ten years between Trafalgar and his 
final fall. But there the parallel ends, for from 
the beginning of the 1805 campaign to the treaty 
of Tilsit, Napoleon's military course was a 
'dazzling succession of complete and seemingly 
final victories, which even the retreat from 
MosaAv could not immediately dim. The sea- 
boari of the Mediterranean, from Cattaro to Gib- 
raltar, was in his hands, and the seaboard of the 
Atlantic, of the Channel, and of the North Sea 
from Gibraltar to the Sound. Austria and Prus- 
fia had been crushed. Russia, right up to the 
kst invasion, was in the Napoleonic Alliance All 
Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Holland had been 
annexed. 
What can the Central Powers show against 
this to-day? A devastated Belgium, ten depart- 
ments of France, Poland, Courland, a mere strip 
oi Eastern Russia. So much for her conquests 
Her Allies are Bulgaria and Turkey, each divided 
against themselves; each brought into the alliance 
by the seduction of their Governments and not by 
the choice of their peoples, so that — like 
Napoleon's virtual annexation of Spain through 
Court intrigue — both alliances may yet prove 
greater sources of weakness than of strength. But 
the territories that have been raided and are now 
held, and the help of the not very significant 
Powers that have been cajoled or bullied into co- 
operation, are none of them the fruits of any true 
military victory. Not a single Allied army — not 
even the Belgian — has been conquered and put out 
of action. 
That war has been made at all, and the kind 
of war that has been made, are both things de- 
liberately planned by Germany. And the most 
hopeful of all the factors in the present situation 
is this, that the kind of war Germany has chosen 
to make is the kind that exhausts most rapidly 
the national resources in men. She had hoped to 
counter this waste by a superior organisation of 
national resources for the manufacture and supply 
of guns and munitions, thus producing an ir- 
resistible engine of war that would do its work so 
rapidly that the whole thing would be over and 
victory assured before the danger point in the loss 
of men had been reached. But once mass and 
momentum had failed to get the decision, then 
the issue of the war became a question of endur- 
ance. For this endurance two things are required 
— the necessary complement of men and a superior 
equipment in apparatus and material. For a year 
the advantage of having both has been over- 
whelmingly with the enemy— and without bring- 
ing him victory. But the sea-power of Great 
Britain, protecting us from invasion, has kept our 
manufacturing capacity intact, and secures its 
supplies and raw material from the world over. 
It has kept open the ports of Russia and France 
as well as our own. All the Allies then have equal 
access to what the neutral nations can make for 
us. The sea-power, and the British intervention 
on land, Avhich was its firstfruit, have given all 
the Allies time to organise their industries to 
counterbalance the huge German war production. 
Had the British Fleet done no more than to con- 
tribute time to the Allies, it would have been 
enough to secure victory; for while the war con- 
tinues the wastage of men goes on, and tlie re-, 
sources of the Allied Powers in men ultimately 
available are to the resources of the enemy nearlv 
two to one. ' *" 
If Waterloo was the inevitable fate of the 
greatest of the world's conquerors when opposed 
by an invincible navy, what is the fate of the un- 
victorious Central Powers of to-dav, faced bv the 
same insuperable sea-power and by unconquered 
and superior armies as well? If we keep the 
obvious facts of the case and the broad lessons of 
history and experience before us, we shall realise 
that the margin of power on the Allies' side is 
great enough to allow of even such disastrous 
blunders as the naval attempt to take the Darda- 
nelles and all its consequential losses, and still 
leave us the assurance of final and probably not 
very distant victory. 
A. H. POLLEN, 
Mr. Pollen will lecture on behalf of naval and mllitanr 
chanties at Llanelly, October 22; Macclesfield, October 26i 
Essex Hall, W.C, October 28 
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