November, 13, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
THE ADVANCE ON VELES, 
By HILAIRE BELLOC. 
NOTE. — This Article has been submitted to the Press Bureau, which does not object to the publication as censored, and takes no 
responsibility for the correctness of the statements. 
In accordance with the requirements of the Press Bureau, the positions of troops on Plans illustrating this Article must only be 
regarded as approximate, and no defi.iite strength at any point is indicated. 
THERE never was a moment, since Prussia's 
overwhelming chances of victory were 
destroyed for ever by Joffre in the Battle 
of the Mame, when it was more necessary 
for opinion in this country to distinguish between 
the moral, the political, and the strategical effect 
of a military action. 
The three categories are closely connected 
and react one upon the other, but they may be 
separately and clearly defined. 
They stand in relative military importance the 
exact contrary of what they are in the eyes of dis- 
turbed or insufficiently instructed opinion. Moral 
effect counts most when the nerves of people at 
home are on edge, strategical least. Yet in the 
conduct of war strategical effect in the field is to 
mere moral effect on civilians as a hundred to one. 
And it is the chief test of judgment in any cam- 
paign to put these three categories in their right 
proportion. 
Each of these three categories reacts upon the 
others. And therefore both the less important 
ones react upon the main one, which is the strategic. 
Nevertheless, it is possible to define each clearly 
and separately. This I will proceed to do before 
going further. 
(i) Strategical Effect. — The military object 
in war being to disarm the armed forces of an 
opponent, every military action which directly 
tends through military effect alone to reach this 
end we speak of as strategical (or tactical in 
the case of a particular battle) and its effect wo 
call strategical effect. 
(2) Political Effect. — A military action, 
though it do not tend directly to the disarming 
of the enemy, may affect his political organisation, 
that is the structure of his State, so that indirectly 
the conduct and right ordering of his armed forces 
will also be affected. Such a result we call a 
political result, and we speak of the military 
effect of the action in question as political effect. 
(3) Moral Effect. — Lastly, a military action 
may be of such a nature as neither to affect the 
armed strength of an enemy nor even to affect 
directly the political organisation of the enemy, and 
yet to strike forcibly the imagination of neutral 
and civihan belligerent opinion — usually in pro- 
portion to its ignorance of military affairs. This 
last effect we call a moral effect. 
For example, the flank march on Sedan had 
a strategical, the capture of Napoleon IIL's person 
a political effect. Napoleon L's hold on Moscow 
had a moral effect alone — which the Russian 
commanders wisely discounted. 
None of these three effects of a military action 
can be neglected. If men were all thoroughly 
instracted in the nature and character of military 
operations ; if they submitted to a perfect disci- 
pline ; if civilian opinion, in no matter what degree 
of instruction, denied itself any activity against 
the professional conductors of war, then all that 
would have to be considered would be strategical 
results, or perhaps in addition, those rare political 
effects of a military action which go directly to 
the heart of a State, and of their very nature must 
affect the conduct of armies. 
But mankind being what it is, lesser poUtical 
effects may have grave results upon the conduct 
of armies, and even mere moral effects may have 
disastrous weight. 
It is the business of all those who desire to 
inform opinion justly during the present crisis, to 
distinguish between and to give no more than their 
proportionate weight to these three categories, 
and to prevent the least important, the moral, from 
affecting through lack of information the most 
important, the strategical. 
THE BALKAN EXAMPLE. 
I have said that the Balkan business, particu- 
larly at this moment, affords a complete example 
of all this. The truth could |3e illustrated by the 
following consideration. 
In mere strategics, that is, regarding the war 
merely as a struggle between two existent armed 
forces, each occupied in disarming the other, and, 
occupied on that alone, the Balkan adventure of the 
Austro-Germans was, and is, negligible. It is 
undertaken with less than a twentieth of the allied 
bodies. It would obtain for the enemy, were it 
successful, some supply of copper (of which he still 
has plenty for purely military purposes), some 
supply of cotton (of which he has plenty), no india- 
rubber (of which he is in acute necessity), and no 
appreciable amount of wool, the necessity for 
which he also feels. The opening of a direct line to 
Constantinople could lead to no conceivable de- 
cision. He cannot largely munition or equip any 
very considerable Turkish force in reserve, and 
even if he could, the Turkish reserve is not there. 
He could not reach any vulnerable point, such as 
Egypt, even if there were such a reserve, and even 
if he could equip and munition it, until so many 
months had passed that his losses by attrition 
would already have changed the face of the war. 
Finally, even if all these premises were as untrue 
as they are true, the vulnerable point so reached, 
though the wounding of it would be politically 
grave, could not finally affect the issue on the great 
Eastern and Western fronts, where alone the war 
can be decided. 
Politically, the matter stood otherwise. There 
was in the first place the indirect but rapidly 
approaching result upon neutrals. The enemy 
had already secured the aid of the Bulgarian forces, 
equivalent to about one-tenth of his existing forces 
upon the Eastern front, or rather more. To neglect 
the Balkans as strategically unimportant might 
have led to the appearance of further forces now 
neutral upon the enemy's side. First a force 
adding another tenth to his eastern armies, next 
[Copyright in .America by " The New York American."] 
