LAND AND WATER. 
January 6, lyiG. 
BATTLE versus SIEGE. 
By ARTHUR POLLEN. 
THE New \t'HY has opened witli two very 
dreadful naval trjigedies. The destruc- 
tion of Natal, with many hundred? 
of gallant and irreplaceable officers 
and men, and amongst them the last and not the 
least distinguished of her Captains, Eric Back, is 
an appalling misfortune. Two more liners have 
.been sunk in the Mediterranean, in the case of 
the Persia with a hideous loss of life. In normal 
times the destruction of Xatal and the Persia would 
have thrilled the world with horror. The loss of 
Xatal was most probably due to nothing but an 
accident, but the destruction of the Persia is, of 
course, sheer murder and nothing more nor less. 
It ma\- and should have a ^•er\• important bearing 
on the future history of the war. Now that five 
liners have been sunk in the Mediterranean almost 
within a few da\s of each other, the attitude of 
America towards the Central Powers cannot 
remain what it has been. I do not suggest that 
it is inevitable that America will go to war. 
President Wilson has found so many ways of 
avoiding this liitherto that prophecy on such a 
matter is useless. But it must ha\e a negative 
effect on American action. I mean it has become 
impossible for tliat community to take any strong 
line which is hostile to the Allies' blockade. 
Whether resentment in America takes the form of 
belligerency or not, there is no question that 
very bitter resentment exists. 
THE PARIAH. 
These repeated murders or attempts to murder 
have shown the civilised world two things. The 
first is that Germany is a pariah among the nations 
- — for it is beyond question that in this matter 
Austria has taken her pohcy from Germany ; 
and next, that if ci\'ilisation is to be saved, it must 
be saved by the defeat of Germany. The German 
Emperor has been informing his troops that his 
enemies in their madness are reckoning for victory 
on three elements, h^irst their masses— that is 
the number of men they can put into the field is 
vastly superior to that which the Germans and 
Austrians can put in ; next, their effort to starve 
the entire German people- he is alluding not to 
the effort which has been made but which un- 
doubtedly should and will be made ; thirdly, " the 
mischievous and malicious calumnies" which they 
are spreading about the Fatherland and its leaders 
— and by this no doubt his Im]iorial Majesty 
indicates the unpleasant but undoubted truth, 
that Germany has lost caste amongst the peoples 
of the world. But that she has engaged in the 
murder of non-combatants in Belgium and twenty 
times at sea is not a calumny invented by her 
enemies. It is an achievement in which she has 
gloried- whicli, even at the threat of war from 
America, she will neither disown nor discontinue. 
She has invoked upon herself and upon her children 
the blood of the innocent and the curse of Cain. 
The Emperor then has stated the crime, and 
prescribed the method of its ])unishment. The 
method is masses and hunger. The time has 
come for the Alhes to inform the neutral world 
that the full rigour of war has to be enforced 
against the active enemy of the Allies and the 
avowed enemy of the civilisation of all countries, 
and the announcement will surprise the neutrals 
far less than the enem\'. 
The full rigour of war ! War is waged prm- 
cipalh- bv two processes, battle and siege. Victory 
is attained either by the defeat of the enemy's 
main armed force in battle, or by it being made 
impotent for battle b\- direct privation or by 
being bereft of the spiritual support of the civil 
population from wliich it is drawn. The civil 
population cannot support the army when it is 
demoraUsed bv the privations of war. To defeat 
the enemy in "battle involves maintaining against 
him larger armies than he possesses, and armies 
better equipped, capable of suffering and wiUing 
to endure greater sacrifices of life to finish the 
business. Siege only invoh-cs the making of the 
blockade, both of our enemy's ports and of the 
neutral ports which supply him, an effective 
instead of a farcical procedure. Siege involves no 
risk to any Allied belligerent, and therefore no 
sacrifice of life. It need involve no sacrifice or 
real loss to any neutral. By real loss I mean 
deprivation of any profitable trade which existed 
between neutrals before the war. Siege then is a 
form of war which is far more economical in life 
and treasure than is battle. 
Is it as effective ? If the blockade can be 
made absolute, there is little question that it would 
inflict hardships and privations on the German 
civil population, which might easily become in- 
tolerable the moment that population reahsed that 
its governors were powerless to reheve them. They 
would be quickened in reahsing that defeat must 
be acknowledged if, at the same time, it was made 
clear to them that neither Great Britain nor any 
Ally intended at any future time to allow a German 
ship to put to "sea, or any trade to pass between 
Germany and any Allied country, until full repara- 
tion had been made for all the losses which Germany 
has inflicted in Belgium, France, Poland and 
Serbia, and on merchant shipping. Whether 
the blockade could by itself, and without battle, 
cause the surrender of Germany, is doubtful. But 
it is not doubtful that it could assist towards 
causing it, still less doubtful that the more the 
blockade is mitigated, the more the Allies will 
have to increase their military effort. 
\t this moment we are in the throes of a 
political crisis in England precisely because our 
own contribution to the military force of the Allies 
is insufficient. It has become necessary, if our 
army is to grow to the required dimensions, to use 
compulsion to obtain recruits. Compulsion has 
raised two forms of opposition. Some, like Sir 
John Simon, object on conscientious grounds to 
Englishmen being deprived of what an ingenious 
French writer calls their *' primordial ri^t " to 
light only when they volunteer. Another form of 
opposition arises from the fear that once the prin- 
ciple of compulsion is admitted, there itlay be no 
limit to military demands and certainly no means of 
opposing them. But if the army grows from 
three million to four and from four to five and from 
five to six, it cannot so grow without ruining Great 
