November 20, 1915 
L x\ N D AND W A T E R . 
For instance, 1 will bargain that not one news- 
paper reader in a thousand has grasped the fact 
that the Balkan Campaign is on the small scale if it 
is compared with the gi^eat Eastern and Western 
fronts. The number of men the Austro-Germans 
have been able to scrape together for that adven- 
ture bears to their whole forces about the same 
relation that the people in the boxes bear to a 
crowded theatre, or the same proportion that the 
expenditure of eight pennies bears to the expendi- 
ture of a golden sovereign. 
Similarly the authorities might issue state- 
ments of the rate of enemy wastage, statements 
of the rise of his food prices, the appeals for. the 
last reserves, the belated character of the casualty 
lists on the enemy's side and their insuificiency, 
and a hundred things with which they are well 
acquainted and the publication of which would 
do no sort of harm but only good. 
A CORRECTION. 
We have received by the courtesy of a corres- 
pondent, Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, whose 
article appears elsewhere, a very long, detailed, and 
accurate account of the communications in Asiatic 
Turkey, which go \"ery lar to correct the mipression 
left on readers a week or two ago. Were a sufficient 
recruitment possible an advance from European 
Turkey towards Syria would be more rapid than 
I had allowed for. There is railway communication 
throughout save for the gap of the mountain 
range which bounds Asia Minor upon the south- 
east, and in summer, at least, the tracks of the 
Asia Minor tableland are good going, petrol traffic 
would be possible upon a considerable scale. 
But it is of course the question of recruitment 
which really dominates the whole problem, and 
our correspondent, who has very high authority 
in this matter, confirms the view that no great 
recruitment from the native population is to be 
feared. The numbers are not sufficient, nor the 
opportunities for equipment, still less the oppor- 
tunities for instruction within any useful time. 
H. Belloc. 
Mr. Hilaire Belloc is unfortunately confined to his 
room with a severe chill. The lectures at Wolverhampton, 
Walsall, Chester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, and (ilasgow, which 
were arranged for this week have to be postponed for a 
fortnight. 
SUBMARINES AND COMMUNICATIONS. 
By A. H. POLLEN. 
In acsardance with the requirements of tlic Press Bureau, wh'.ch does not object to the publication as censored, and takes no 
responsibility for the correctness of the statements. 
to bring no less than fifty-two 12-inch guns into 
action on the broadside. To get a serviceable 
superiority, say 40 per cent., the Germans would 
have to employ the whole of their live Kaisers 
and say three of the new Koenigs. That would 
give a broadside of 70 guns against 52, and at some 
trainings a slightly larger margin. And even with 
this superiority the Russian fleet could not be 
opposed without the certainty of considerable loss, 
and a high probability of a very serious loss. 
Was it likely that any such risk would be run ? 
For, if victory were purchased at the cost of 
three or four of these ships, German sea strength 
in the North Sea w'ould be negligible, while the 
fruit of victory — namely, communications with 
Riga, would still remain uncertain, unless the 
submarine menace could be removed. The indica- 
tions were, therefore, that no effort to win control 
of the Baltic would be made. And, as a fact, 
there have been no naval activities north of Libau, 
except the two reconnaissances, one in the Gulf 
of Riga, whose achievement was the unsuccessful 
attempt to blockade Pernau, and one in the Aland 
Islands, which achieved nothing. The price paid 
for these reconnaissances was doubtless too heavy 
to invite a repetition : it was, at any rate, clear 
that the Russian navy could not be attacked with 
impunity, and if the attack was to be renewed, it 
must be w ith cnerwhelmhig strength. The deter- 
mining argument against a renewed attack was 
the evidence that even if successful it might be 
fruitless. 
For these adventures coincided with the 
stranding of £13 on the Island of Saltholm, and 
while the Slava and Sivonlch were punishing the 
German cruisers in the Gulf of Riga, British 
submarines were attacking the German fleet else- 
where, and in point of fact got a torpedo home in 
the bows of the Moltke. It was an open secret 
IT is some months now since I first began in 
these columns the discussion of Germany's 
probable course with regard to establishing 
a serviceable command of the Baltic. A 
command, that is to say which would enable her to 
use the Courland ports for the supply of her army 
invading Russia. The position as I saw it was 
as follows : It would be impossible for the left 
wing of the German forces to advance very far to 
the North East, unless they could count upon 
avenues of supply far more ample than the railway 
services between Prussia and the Balkan provinces. 
It seemed quite certain that no advance to Petro- 
grad could be undertaken unless the ports in the 
Gulf of Riga became available, and highly impro- 
bable that the forces stretching from Riga to 
Dvinsk could be adequately supplied unless 
Windau and Libau were free to transports and 
supply ships coming from Koenigsberg and Danzig. 
To use Riga and the other ports in the gulf of that 
name, would involve not only the capture of the 
town of Riga itself, but manifestly either the 
destruction or the effective blockade of the Russian 
main fleet. No regular service could be estab- 
lished through the Dirben Channel, if four Dread- 
noughts and two very effective modern ships of an 
earlier type were lying within striking distance of 
that entrance. 
On the other hand, even if the Russian fleet 
were defeated or interned, ports so far North would 
be no reliable bases of supply, if the sea service 
to them could be effectively interrupted by sub- 
marine attack. Now it was obvious from the 
urmament of the Russian fleet, and from the \erv 
high reputation which the naval service of our 
afly has for gunnery, that it would be useless for 
the Germans to seek an action with that fleet 
unless they brought a force greatly superior in 
numbers against it. The six Russian ships alluded 
1.5 
