LAND & WATER 
KMPIRE HOUSE, KINGSWAY, LONDON, W.C. 
Telephone: HOLBORN 2828 
THURSDAY, MARCH 30th, 1916 
CONTENTS 
PAGE 
I 
2 
3 
4 
8 
10 
Sinking a Neutral. By Louis Raemaekers 
The Road to Ypres. By G. Spencer Pryse 
The Neutral Choice. (Leading Article) 
The Russian Movements. By Ililaire Belloc 
Germany runs Amok. By Arthur Pollen 
Need for a Balkan Policy. By Alfred Stead 
A Famous Showman. By Desmond MacCarthy 11 
Aircraft Policy. By F. W. Lanchester 13 
Sortes Shakespeariana?. By Sir Sidney Lee 17 
Towards a Better Banking System. By Arthur Kitson 17 
Chaya. By H. de Vere Stacpoole 19 
Town and Country 24 
The West l<:nd 26 
Choosing Kit xvii 
THE NEUTRAL CHOICE 
AT the beginning of the war a distinguished foreign 
diplomatist expressed the opinion that before it was 
over every great civilised Power would have been 
drawn into the struggle. We do not know the grounds upon 
which he based his prophecy, but the inauguration of the 
new campaign of German submarine frightfulness brings 
its realisation within the region of practical poHtics. For if 
the Tubantia and the Palembang, the Englishman and the 
Sussex, not to mention other vessels, have been sunk 
by German agency, and still more if the German Govern- 
ment pursues to its logical end the policy which it has 
thus begun, neutrals can hardly fail, sooner or later, to 
abandon neutrality in self-defence alone. Directly the neutrals, 
however, begin to consider the abandonment of neutrality, 
they are driven to make up their minds as to the side which 
they are going to join, and the question of the defence of 
their own interests as neutrals becomes swallowed up in the 
larger question about which the war itself is being fought, 
and it is, of course, by no means certain that neutrals, if 
forced to take sides, will fight against the Power, or com- 
bination of Powers, which has trespassed upon their rights. 
In view, therefore, of the events of the last fortnight the 
general trend of opinion in neutral countries as to the main 
issues at stake in the war itself becomes of prime importance, 
for it will be their judgment about the war itself which 
will determine the side they will join, once neutrality is 
abandoned. From this point of view an article which appeared 
recently in the New Republic, a well-known New York weekly, 
is of much significance. The Nezv Republic sees that far more 
is involved in the submarine controversy' than the rights of 
American citizens. " If," it says, " the submarine survives 
as a commerce destroyer it will do so at the expense of the 
existing structure of marine law. If on the contrary, the 
existing structure of marine law is to survive, and to be 
enlarged, the practice of commerce destroying by submarines 
will have to be ruled out." " Freedom of the seas, like civil 
freedom on land, must eventually rest upon the orderly 
exercise of authoritative power and control." And that, it 
says, will be impossible if the submarine is recognised as a 
commerce destroyer. Owing to the peculiar combination of 
invisibility, vulnerability and offensive power, possessed by 
the submarine, " the seas, if submarines were recognised as 
commerce destroyers at all, would be violated by a barbarous 
guerilla warfare, which would break down the distinction 
between trading and war vessels, and would endanger the 
lives and boats of neutrals on the high seas, and which would 
make it almost impossible for neutrals not to become in- 
volved in the quarrel. The exis.ting marine law, which until 
recently has made travel on the ocean comparatively safe for 
non-combatants of all nations, would be superseded by a 
kind of anarchy that, in case many submarines could be kept 
actively afloat, would become intolerable." The only 
way out, in the eyes of the Nezo Republic, is for the civilised 
world to treat submarines as they have treated privateers, and 
outlaw them as commerce destroyers. 
The general trend of this opinion is reinforced by American 
comment on the sinking of the Sussex. The essence of the 
position was stated by the World as follows : " The question 
to be considered very seriously by this country and by all 
other neutrals having self-respect, is whether anything is to 
be gained by maintaining any longer the ghastly pretence of 
friendly diplomatic correspondence with a Power notor- 
iously lacking in truth and honour." Neutrals,, in fact, are 
beginning to realise what the Allies have long known, that 
the war is really being fought against a clique which, hiving 
rivetted its despotism on the German and Austro-Hun- 
garian peoples, is now, by the law of its own autocratic being, 
attempting to extend its paralysing sway over all F>astcrn 
Europe as well. In its passion for dominion it has shown itself 
willing to cast not only its own word, but the most elementary 
rights of humanity, to the winds. It has proved to demon- 
stration that it will stop at no atrocity, that it will hesitate to 
employ no invention of science, however devilish in the 
misery it inflicts, if it can thereby subserve its military ends. 
The significance of these opinions lies in the fact tint 
they know that American opinion is hardening, not only 
towards a truer perception of the issues of the war itself, but 
toward the only conclusion which it is possible to draw from 
the facts revealed in this war. If a great and powerful nation 
sets out to attain its own selfish ends, regardless of inter- 
national law, and regardless of the rights and liberties of 
other nations, the only answer is for the civilised world to 
band itself together in active defence of the principles upon 
which civilisation itself depends. The war has sufficiently 
proved the futility of treaty declarations and paper inter- 
national law. Treaty rights and international law are worth- 
less without the armed strength of civilisation behind them. 
It was a general perception of this truth which took the five 
nations of the British Empire into the war. It was the violation 
of the neutrality of Belgium, which finally convinced them 
that Germany was playing the part of an outlaw among 
nations, and that if liberty, and even civilisation itself, were 
to last, the sanctity of public right must be vindicated at any 
cost. If Germany is now proceeding to act even more ob- 
viously than in the past as the outlaw of the seas, she is only 
pursuing her own doctrines to their logical conclusion witii 
the inevitable result that the eyes of neutrals also will be 
opened to the same conclusion. 
This war is not a dog fight between a number of jealous 
rivals. It is a war of principles, a renewal of the time honoured 
struggle between tyranny and liberty, might and right. 
Ivvery day that passes convinces the Allies of the truth of 
this fact. At the outset they were united mainly by a common 
fear of a common enemy. The meeting of the Concert of the 
Allies this week in Paris proves that they are now united by 
the same spirit that animated the Quadruple Alliance against 
Napoleon a century ago— they attend it as crusader nations 
fighting to destroy the poison of Prussianism, and to rebuild 
the world on the foundation of liberty and law. It is not 
inappropriate that this should be the moment chosen by the 
inheritors of the Napoleonic tradition to drive the neutrals 
to consider whether they also should not participate in the 
great work of permanently establishing the principles of 
international justice and liberty as the foundation on which 
the civiUsation of the world shall rest. 
