January 6, igib. 
la^jda.nd water 
Russians by a vigorous offensive, or even by the 
mere massing of troops, can compel considerable 
agglomerations on the part of the enemy. They 
can inflict wastage uponenemy units — and he fears 
wastage now more than anything. But it is im- 
probable that they can as yet advance seriously. 
Remember the conditions. . 
An advance against a strongly and continu- 
ously entrenched position involves very heavy 
preliminary artillery preparation. The Russians 
have not yet, it may be presumed, a fuUequipment, 
as compared with the enemy's provision. 
Even if they had, the function of this arm in 
modern warfare depends mainly upon motor trans- 
port. But motor transport in Volhynia and Bess- 
arabia at this moment — at least motor transport 
of very heavy material — is almost out of question. 
AN EXAMPLE OF MISLEADING. 
Talking of wastage, is it not an extraordinary 
thing that after a full sixteen months of this great 
war the last ten of which at least have turned en- 
tirely upon the factor of wastage, and at a moment 
when every single commander, enemy or Allied, 
has that one matter in his head to the exclusion 
almost of all others, our . a'aily Press in 
London should continue to ignore this absolutely 
fundamental point ? . 
I find, in the Daily Mail of New Year's Day, 
a column and a half of editorial advice proffered 
to the General Officers who are conducting the great 
war, and I learn from this singular essay in the 
military art the fact that a modern entrenched line 
cannot be worn down. It cannot be forced, and 
therefoi-e two such lines facing each other constitute 
an eternal deadlock. The original, but anony- 
mous counsellor of war goes on to suggest that the 
only solution is to fly over the enemy's head with a 
very great number of aeroplanes. 
Now cannot the writer of such matter 
be got to see his folly ? Can one not make him 
and his readers ashamed ? How will you land, 
say, one division (and half your one division 
must be trained aviators !) behind a Une of 
nearly a hundred divisions, unless you have at 
least 10,000 machines? And what on earth is 
that one division going to do, coming down in 
hostile country without guns, without sheUs, with- 
out limbers, without horses, without waggons, 
without food, without hospital equipment, without 
explosives, without petrol, without oats, without 
field kitchens- — without anything at all except 
men's bodies, rifles and a few cartridges ? 
It will go to prison. 
Now suppose you were to say to a man of 
this sort — to a man who writes like this and thinks 
he can teach the Higher Command the art of war — 
" Could you hold the Hne from the Swiss moun- 
tains to the North Sea with lo men and ten 
machine-guns ? " He would be compelled to 
answer : " No, I could not." Even he could not. 
For you must remember that this kind of talk is 
not the product of lunacy, but of ignorance. 
Then, suppose you were to go on and say : 
" Could you hold it with a thousand men and a 
thousand machine guns ? " He would perhaps 
be able to visualise 500 miles as something like 50, 
and he would see that 1,000 men with 1,000 
machine guns would be done for in half an hour 
upon a front not of 500 miles or 50, but a front of 
a day's walk. 
RAEMAEKERS' CARTOON. 
The supreme poiver of genius lies in its ability 
to illumine by a flash, to transfigure^.iuto concrete 
form by a few strokes of pen or pencil the desires, 
aspirations and anguish of humanity. Never has 
this power been more nobly illustrated than in the 
cartoon "Their Sacrifice," /which Mr. Louis ^ 
Raeniaekers has draivn specially for Land and ' 
Water and -which is our frontispiece to-day. During 
the Christmas of igi$ good wishes have been checked 
upon the lips, thoughts of happiness have been 
chilled within the heart by the remembrance of all 
the sorrows and sufferings of the war. The only 
gift which this sad winter the festival of the Christ 
Child bj^ught into thousands of homes of Christen- ■ 
dom it'as the sword i&hich pierced through the soul 
of the Virgin- Mother. 
It is " their sacrifice '[ — the sacrifice of the 
mothers of Christendom " for the sake of humanity" 
■ — which is in truth to win for the iforld freedom ' 
and peace in the future. Contrast this vieiv of one 
Neutral with that view of the other Neutral, which 
found expression in popular verse " I did not raise 
my son to be a soldier." Which is the higher and 
truer concept — " Their Sacrifice " or "I did not 
bear a son to be a Saviour " ? 
Ciirious testimony to Hhe poiver of Mr. Rae- 
maekers work has been given us by an anonymous 
postcard in disguised handwriting, which has come 
from Torquay. It is reproduced on page 670 0/ 
this issue. It would be interesting to know who 
the writer of it may be. 
Ultimately, by this tedious but socratic 
method, the self-appointed adviser to the French 
and British armies in the field would discover that 
there was some minimum necessary to the holding 
of the line. He would perhaps be astonished 
to hear that this minimum has been thoroughly 
thought out by the enemy's commanders as well 
as our own, and that we know it to within a fairly 
small fraction. One might next proceed to the 
necessary instruction of such a man by telling him 
what minimum is necessary to the holding of 
any given front, and what therefore to the holding 
of 1,500 miles of front, and, one might further show 
him by the use of a map and of tables after what 
point the holding of such fronts would become 
perilous and after what further point disastrous 
to forces suffering a given rate of wastage and 
commanding only another given rate of recruit- 
ment — unless before the catastrophe they should 
have obtained a decision. 
When the lesson had proceeded so far one, 
might go on to more technical but very necessary 
details, such as the role of the machine gun. The 
writer could be made to look at little sketches of 
how a machine gun is put into a trench. He 
could be made to carry one about and appreciate 
its relative mobility compared to that of the rifle. 
He might be taken to some sector where he would 
observe the effects of distant bombardment upon 
the machine gun shelters, and after all this ex- 
pansion of his ideas he would be ready for the 
startling truth that you can have too much of 
any given weapon in the delicate compromise of 
armament. And that this is why no matter 
what the neiv instruments devised to strengthen the 
defensive, a certain minimum of men is always 
necessary to the holding of a given line. The 
Allies arc fighting to reduce the enemy plus that 
miniraura. H. Belloc. 
