LAND AND WATER 
November 6, 1915. 
little We must increase it to at least 27 per cent, 
or 28 per cent. This leaves us rather more than 
800 000. Of these a certain number have already 
gone as \-ohmteers— but we must not exaggerate 
that number because we must remember that the 
war has already lasted more than a year ; that 
the mass of the volunteers, joined thirteen or four- 
teen months ago, and that, at that moment, the 
lads who will be twenty in 1916, were most of them 
still under seventeen, "and not yet eighteen. 
I take it, then, that the total really available 
from these two classes in the spring of 1916, 
should Germany bring off the gamble of the wmter, 
wall be rather less than 800,000. Good authori- 
ties say " roughly a million." But it seems to 
me on the above calculation that this figure is 
^'''' wfrnust, of course, add to such figures the 
great remaining reserve of man-power in the 
iistro-Hungariln Empire, but it is essential to 
remember that Austria-Hungary now depends 
entirely upon the direction and survival of the 
German forces, and that if, or when, these waver 
the Central Empires also waver as a whole and 
together. ^ 
TTC liii AiRP BELLOG'S WAR LECTURES. 
ustratec 1 Chester Music Hall, Friday, 3 1'^., ^ov. 19, not . us- 
tratoT I iver S>1 • Philharmonic Hall, Friday, Nov. 19, & p.m .1 us- 
FLEETS AT WORK. 
By A. H. POLLEN. 
Jo accordance with the requirements of the Press Bureau, which does not object to the publication as censored, and takes no 
respDnsibility for the correctness of the steteinents. 
ATTACK ON VARNA. 
THE fog which proverbiallj- hangs over all 
the operations of war, thickens to an 
impenetrable blanket as we near the sea, 
and very great events may take place, 
while the public, curious or anxious or both', is left 
to grope its own way through discrepant or in- 
credible telegrams, and the reconstruction of any 
probable truth becomes a feat beyond the capacity 
,of the most expert. And never was a general 
truth more tantalisingly exemplified than during 
the last week. For some days now, we have 
heard from many sources of the Russian bombard- 
• ment of Varna and Bourgas. But the nearest 
approach of anything official on the subject is an 
Italian telegram via Bucharest. Rome has evi- 
dently been busy with rumours since. One corre- 
spondent, for instance, gives currency to a some- 
what startling tale from the Bulgarian capital, 
that two Dreadnoughts took part in the operations 
off Varn^. Another story put the Russian Fleet at 
three battleships. There is a report, too, that the 
Goebcn, Breslau, and Hamidieh have been engaged 
in a battle royal with the Russians in the Black 
Sea. Then .there are stories of the submarines 
supplied to/ Bulgaria by Germany having been 
completely' unsuccessful in their attack on the 
bombarding squadron, they having been driven 
off by gunfire ; and another from Hungarian 
sources repeated from Constanza, to the effect 
that a fleet of transports has left Odessa with 
xroops, with the evident intention of following up 
the bombardment of the Bulgarian coast by a 
landing. Finally, on Tuesday comes a telegram 
saying the Russians have actually landed. But 
there has not been a single word in the Russian 
official telegrarhs to give substance to any of these 
stories. What, tiien, are we to believe ? 
It is in thewirst place most improbable that 
the Ekaterina II. and the Imperatriza Maria, the 
first two of the^Dreadnoughts laid down at the 
Sevastopol and Nikolaieff works, are now com- 
pleted and ready for sea. They were laid down 
towards the end of 1911, and Mr. Jane's Fighting 
Ships 0/ the World for 1914 states that they were 
due for completion in the course of that year. 
But the Gangoot, Poltava, Petropavlovsk, and 
Sevastopol, which were laid down two years eariier, 
are onlv supposed to have been commissioned 
within 'the last twelve months. Is it then pro- 
bable that Nikolaieff and Sevastopol have caught 
up a whole year on the Petrograd yards.'' 
One sincerelv hopes it is true, but it seems unlikely. 
The report \hat three battleships were engaging 
Varna is more likely to be correct. They would be 
the levstaji, the loann Zlatoust and Panteleimon, 
pre-Dreadnoughts of about the same displacement 
as the CanopHs class, but in the case of two of them, 
with an armament more nearly resembUng the 
King Edward. These were undoubtedly the ships 
that engaged the Goehen last winter in the Black 
Sea, putting her to flight, and at least one of her 
turrets permanently out of action. It is not 
improbable, too, that the damage that the battle- 
cruiser suffered on this occasion may have included 
the derangement of her steering gear. For it was 
shortly after that she ran upon a Turkish mine, 
and was beyond all fighting for many months. 
How far the Goeben has recovered from all her 
injuries is beyond our knowledge, but it is certain 
that she cannot be in any better shape than she 
was when she ran from these three ships before, 
and the Hamidieh and Breslau, the only ships 
mentioned as her consorts in this engagement 
w'ould, with their 6 and 4 inch guns, have had 
no terror for the Russians. In a straight fight 
then between the Russian Black Sea squadron 
without the new Dreadnoughts, and the Goehen, 
one would fully expect the previous result to be 
repeated. And it is quite certain that if the Russian 
Dreadnoughts were finished, the Turks would 
not have ventured upon an engagement. But 
indeed the whole story of this action seems 
to me apocryphal. Note that no mention is made 
of Turkey's only battleship the Torgnd Reis. 
If the Turks really intended to protect the Bul- 
garian coast with a naval diversion, they would 
send out, not the damaged Goeben, helped only by 
two light cruisers, but every fighting ship they have. 
It is much more probable that all the naval defence 
was left to submarines and mines, and unless the 
submarines had expert German officers and crews 
on board, it is altogether unlikely that they would 
i2 
