February 3, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER. 
LAND & WATER 
Empire House, Kingsway, London, W.C. 
Telephone : H JLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1916. 
OPTIMISM & PESSIMISM. 
Two words wliich have come into constant use with 
regard to the war are the words " optimism " 
and " pessimism," nnd they are used to mean 
statements or opinions supporting a hopehil 
view for the Alhes, and statements or opinions support- 
ing an unhopeful view. 
We need not delay upon the misuse of terms which 
properly only relate to systems of philosophy and 
properly have no meaning in this connection. The word 
" optimist " no more means a liopefiil man, or the word 
" pessimist " a despairing man, with regard to a par- 
ticular event than the word Cow means Mangel-wurzel. 
But tliese journalistic expressions take root and wise 
pe p 2 do not waste time in discussing their origins or 
ultunate value. For the mass of linglish people to-day 
these two words mean hopeful and unhopeful statements 
of opinion with regard to the progress of the campaign. 
Now there arises in this connection a curious and even 
dangerous confusion of mind which must be carefully 
guarded against by anyone who desires to preserve a 
just view of the tremendous business upon which the whole 
future of Europe and of this country turns. 
From noting, ..s every sensible person must, that a 
passing mood, quite apart from reason or from original 
motive, will affect action, one passes to dishking bad news 
or unpleasant but reasonable conclusions to thinking 
such statements or judgments positively harmful to the 
nation, and one may easily end by regarding them, how- 
ever true, as treasonable if they are expressed. 
On the other side, from fearing that neglect or 
belittling of the war or of our peril may lead to slackness 
in recruiting and in munitioning effort and the rest, and 
thence to disaster, a man may very easily begin by 
suspecting every favourable statement or hopeful judg- 
ment, and soon end by regarding any such with anger and 
aversion. 
In the first case a man decries what he calls " pessim- 
ism and the pessimists" and tries to counteract or to 
deny every statement or judgment that would increase 
his alarm ; in the second case he is compelled to the 
exact opposite and is led to counteract or deny almost 
every statement or judgment that would make him hope- 
ful. The nation in a moment of highly anxious tension, 
never relieved ard exasperated by the immobihty of 
the great siege lines, gets divided into two groups. The 
one suspecting or hating what it calls " optimism " ; 
the other what it caUs " pessimism." Very much worse 
than this the nation gets to swing, in the great mass of 
its opinion, from one pole to the other. There will be 
weeks (like those of last April) when warnings are disre- 
garded and the chances of immediate victory are absurdly 
exaggerated ; there will be months (like those of last 
October and November) when the great bulk of men are 
at the opposite extreme, will hardly believe the simplest 
and most obvious truths that would make for their 
heartening, and violently suspect all favourable conclu- 
sions, however moderate and guarded, to be deliberately 
misleading and ruinous to the national temper. 
It will be clear to everyone who thinks over the 
matter at leisure that both these moods are irrational. 
But it is also common knowledge backed up by all human 
experience that unreason — irrational moods — are the 
very gravest peril any individual or society can run 
when they are under a strain. Panic, which is the deadly 
poison of an army, wild speculation, which is the ruin of 
a man, proceed equally from the one mood or the other. 
Everyone is agreed when the matter is soberly stated 
that the chief requisite for action, especially in com- 
petition or struggle against other human wills, is to keep 
the whole problem quite steadily in view, playinsi one's 
judgment upon it coolly and tenaciously as every new 
development arises. That spirit is not one which gradu- 
ally fades off into vaguer and less efficient moods ; it is 
something very highly limited and rapidly dissolved. 
When a man loses grip of reality under a strain, he tends 
to lose it at once and altogether. The curve is very 
steep from the moment that the process of a dissol'itio' 
in judgment begins. But a short interval sepc.rate;, k. 
times of great crisis, the solid use of reason from the folly 
of rashness or despair. Experience tells us that this is 
so, and we know that it must be so from the very na'ure 
of things : since men in a great crisis are peculiarly 
susceptible to nervous revolutions. 
The moral would seem to be that we should, during 
the progress of this awful task, constantly feed upon 
reality. 
In the question of numbers, for instance, we should 
concern ourselves not with whether this or that state- 
ment is depressing or the reverse, but rather with the 
proofs attaching to it. In the matter of movements we 
should not incline to the description of our own side or 
our opponent's, we should weigh with as ample experi- 
ments as possible the probable bases of either statement. 
Your own side claims in a subsidiary local action in Alsace, 
rather more thaii a thousand unwounded prisoners from 
the enemy. The enemy in- another action on the Somme 
claims a similar number. It is a simple matter but a 
good test of mood, whether the little success i doubtt (.1 
because it would lead to optimisrii and the little failure 
accepted with exaggerated headlines because it is bad 
news. Both attitudes are as foolish and dangerous as 
would be the reverse, an exaggeration of the first, a 
behttlement of the second. The sane man accepts both, 
and sees that both are trilling. 
Again, the whole of military history is there to tell 
one the significance of the occupation of enemy territory 
during the course of a war ; its political effect ; the 
crucial matter of the extension of front it usually in- 
volves ; the nature of communications to the occupied 
territory ; the economic effect, and the effect upon 
neutrals. You have a hundred campaigns in the past 
to guide your judgment in such a matter. If you say 
the occupation of enemy territory is negligible simply 
because it solves no strategical problem you are mis- 
taken. If you say that it is decisive and final — a test 
of strategical success — you are making a far worse 
mistake. Were the enemy to evacuate Brussels and 
Lille to-morrow without great loss and, according to 
his own plan and on his own initiative fall back upon a 
shorter line, he would be stronger and his chances of pro- 
longing the war would be greater. It would be im- 
possible to avoid an immense wave of enthusiasm in the 
Allied countries should that event take place, but the 
wise man in judging that event would not yield to that 
enthusaism. 
The converse is equally true. It would be foolish to 
say that the occupation of all Serbia and Montenegro 
was not of high political effect in the Eastern theatre of 
war, in spite of the fact that it perilously extends the 
obligations of the half-exhausted enemy. 
The whole matter may be summed up by saying that 
those, though a minority, who are concerned only with 
positive facts and reasonable deductions therefrom, will 
be the best fitted to judge the future trend of the war. 
They will by their sobriety probably profit as individuals. 
That nation which most nearly reaches and maintains 
such a stand will certainly profit most in the final settle- 
ment. It is of good augury to note that of all the 
belligerent nations, that one most hopslessly out of touch 
with reality to-day is the mass (not the higher command) 
of the German Empire. 
The present war fully justifies the prediction made in 
Among the Ruins, by Gomez Carillo (Heinemann, 3s. 6d. net) 
to the effect that the complete disappearance of permanent 
fortifications will be one of its results. M. Carillo's book is a 
record of sightseeing among the wreckage of war, which he 
visited after the battle of the Marne. His descriptions of 
Epernay, Rheims, Clermont in Argonnc, etc.. form yet another 
indictment of the infamous methods lof the Germans. One 
of the most striking incidents in the book is the burning of 
Auve, a village in which no act of war took place, but which 
was utterly destroyed by the Germans as a sort of revenge 
for their defeat on the Marne. Tragic though the book is in 
character, it expresses the belief of the French people — as 
distinct from the Army — in ultimate victory. 
