LAND A N D WATER 
October 30, 1915. 
country, but of the soldiers who are guiding the 
attack on the one side and organising the defen- 
sive on the other, was whether tlie continued 
ofi'ensive which the French had clearly shown to 
be tlieir intention v»ouId do its work or no. The 
Germans would necessarily attempt very violent 
counter-offensives both against the French in 
Ciiauipagne and against the French and English" 
in the North, where the first blow delivered by the 
Allied offensive had had similar results. The 
German losses in those counter-offensives would be 
enormous. The German commanders knew that 
they would have to pay a heavy price for the end 
they had in view, and were prepared to pay it. 
But they were only prepared to pay it because the 
thing they desired to gain was immunity. If in 
spite of those counter-offensives one point after 
another in their line continued to give way; if 
whenever the English or the French struck hard in 
this or that local point— after a due interval for 
munitioning — and at each such stroke succeeded, 
then the position of the German line would get 
more and more doubtful. 
So far, in the course of a month, this debated 
plan has turned more and more in our favour. 
The great German counter-offensive in the North 
against the British utterly failed with an immense 
expense of life. So did the German counter- 
offensive in Champagne. After they had failed, 
the process of wearing down the German line 
began again and continued to succeed. The 
British in the next blow they delivered mastered 
the German salient north of Loos, the French 
rushed the Butte of Tahure, on the left, and five 
miles away the swell called the " Hand of Mas- 
siges " on the right, with the usual complement 
of prisoners and machine guns and the usual de- 
struction of trenches. The great blow of the end 
'of September had on the accompanying Sketch 
IV. carried their line into the shape A B. The 
second stroke carried it into the shape C D— that 
was about a fortnight ago. There remained, at 
the point marked X south of Ripont, heights above 
the River Dormoise still in the enemy's hands and 
making a salient. The third blow in this locality 
was delivered against this salient at the end of 
last week, and roughly speaking the shaded por- 
tion in Sketch IV. was taken. 
Now, it is obviously not the mere area occu- 
pied m strokes of this kind that gives them their 
interest, any more than it is the weight of the 
pieces of snow that begin slipping on a snow-slope 
which interest you and make you anxious when 
you are crossing such a place on the Alp.s. It is 
the indication they afford of the qunlitu of tlie 
material with which you are dealing. There is 
all the difference in the world between a snow- 
slope which is frozen quite liard and lies on 
ground where it will not shift, and one which also 
has not yet shifted but is beginning to shed slight 
fragments. What these local successful blows, 
delivered north of Loos and here in front of 
Mesnil in Champagne, show, is that whenever the 
Allies strike sometJiing gives way, and that wher 
the Germans counter-strike there is no correspond- 
ing result. 
I do not know whether the v.ord "crumbling," 
which was used in a very interesting letter received 
the other day from an artillery officer at the front, 
may not be a little too strong to describe the j)ro- 
cess. We do not know how long that process will 
take nor by what stages it will be repeated, but at 
any rate there is something going on all along the 
.Western line which, unless we deplete it, or the 
enemy reinforces it, will have cumulative effect. 
The blows are delivered at the choice of the Allied 
commanders, and, though the intervals between 
them make public opinion impatient, succeed 
within their measure each after it is launched. 
The same is not true of the converse enemy effort 
in the same field. His defence does not un- 
brokenly hold ; his counter-offensive now fails. 
A GERMAN GRinCISM OF 
"LAND AND WATER." 
I have just been shown a translation of one 
of those numerous articles which the Germans 
cause to appear in neutral countries or are i)ub- 
lished in favour of Germany in neutral countries, 
specially attacking this paper and my own 
calculations by name. The article appears in 
a Dutch review, and is of the type with which 
German propaganda has made us so familiar. I 
call my readers' attention to it, not so much as a 
curiosity, or because it deals with this paper so 
largely and repeats frequently my own name and 
writings, as because it is a very excellent example 
of the way in which German influence is spread, 
as will be seen when I come to the points it 
mentions. 
This article desires to conA^ey to its readers 
just the same sort of impression about the inex- 
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