March 30, 1916 
LAND & W A T E R 
war has no means whatsoever of determining. But it is 
possible to lay down certain principles with regard to 
such an adventure upon the enemy's part. They may 
be of only academic interest. If the thing is not at- 
tempted their discussion will be worthless. If it is they 
will be still more completely forgotten. 
(i) The enemy will not attempt, and cannot attempt, 
a campaign in force. He has not the men for it, ancl 
even if he had the men, nothing done here would save 
liim. His life hangs upon the western front between 
Belfort and the North Sea. 
(2) Therefore the object of such an adventure is 
strictly political. 
That word is ridiculed by those who do not under- 
stand the part which intelligence plays in human affairs. 
Their attitude towards military study is the attitude of 
Sancho Panza's wife towards the study of literature. 
" She would not be pestered with all those meaningless 
little black dots." 
Those who take reasoning a little more seriously 
know well what the distinction is between an operation 
])urely military and an operation mainly political. The 
former is only concerned and directly concerned with the 
destruction of the enemy's main force. The latter is 
mainlN' coticerned (though it is of course military in 
general character and local effect) with the affecting of 
opinion, and with the disturbance of enemy government ; 
or with the acquiring of Allies, or with the prevention of 
neutrals joining the enemy, etc., etc. 
Now a raid upon the shores of this country under- 
taken as it would necessarily be by only a small body of 
men,' and undertaken with the full knowledge of its 
authors that no far reaching military results could 
possibly follow upon it diratly, would be almost entirely 
aimed at the creation' of political chaos here, and hence 
at an indirect and ultimate effect on the campaign. It 
will be nothing more than the air raids upon a larger 
scale. It would necessarily be ephemeral. It would 
almost certainly be accompanied by the vilest of those 
\ile practices by which the enemy has earned immor- 
tality. Its whole motive and direction would be terror. 
When it was over the remaining object of the enemy 
would be to leave the threat of its recurrence —but 
nothing more. 
( ;) The very fact of such an effort would prove even 
more conclusively than the piece of suicide under Verdun 
the straits to which the enemy is now reduced. 
The Last Card 
It was said in these columns months ago, and it may 
nsefuUy be repeated now, that the enemy's using his fleet 
and the enemy's attempting a raid would essentially be a 
mark that in his own opinion he had come to the end of 
his tetlier. The thing is or should be self-e\'ident. It is 
n(jt the strongest, but it is the last card of the hand he held 
when he declared war upon the older ci\-ilization from 
which he has drawn his \'ery incomplete measure of 
instruction. 
He hopes, when or if he plays that card, to add 
suddenly to his failing margin of 'strength by reducing 
our weight in the balance against him. He can only do 
this if his action obscures the form of government to be 
incapable of ordering a nation as a whole and. in par- 
ticular, incapable of controlling a few imscrupulous 
newspapers. For we may be perfectly certain that the 
handful of wealthy men who raised a panic about nothing 
last autunui will do all they can to raise one ten times 
worse if there is a raid. 
Meanwhile, the three points remain. The principal 
men in authority know them as all educated men do, 
and can, if they choose act upon them, (i) The raid 
could only come in numbers small, relatively, to the 
whole campaign ; (2) Its whole object would be panic ; 
(j) It would bi; proof positive of the enemy's extremity. 
If these three points are made clear by official 
IMonounccment, the mad adventure, should it be 
attempted, will fail of all effect. In proportion, as we 
fail to bear them in mind, in proportion that is as we 
allow exaggeration or panic or lack of perspective in the 
matter to affect us, in that proportion we shall bring 
the Germans nearer to victory. 
An Official Pronouncement upon the Fall 
of the Enemy's Credit 
Lacking in matter for analysis as this week has 
been, it is impossible to conclude these notes without 
mentioning the appearance a day or two ago of one of 
those very rare official pronouncements which illuminate 
and conftrni public opinion. 
The readers of this journal know how often the value 
of such government action has been pointed out in L.and 
.^ND Wateu and how we have pleaded for a succession of 
official pronouncements at regular intervals. They would 
have made all the difference a few months ago when the 
wildest panic was being deliberately spread by a treason- 
able section of the Press, and they are almost as necessary 
to-day. But we have at least had this week one example 
which has been of real importance. It has taken the 
form of an authoritative, lucid and highly-informing 
criticism of the value, sin'ctlv military, to the Allies of the 
fall of the German mark and of the Austrian crown. 
These two units of exchange have fallen, the one by well 
over thirty per cent.,. the otlier by about twenty-hve 
in the neutral markets of the world. There have been 
plenty of fools to tell us that this meant the collapse of the 
enemy from lack of " money." As thougli a nation would 
stop lighting because it was hampered for the medium of 
exchange while it still had food, metal and chemicals and 
men ! No, the fall of the mark and of the crown has only 
one military significance, but that is a very fundamental 
one indeed. It signifies that the man power of the enemy 
is failin;^ him in industry as it is in his effectives. 
A nation at war is always met by a compromise 
between these two factors. You cannot " run the 
nation " with too few men, and there comes a point when 
you must either starve your effectives or your factories. 
As to the enemy's effectives we know very well in 
what state thev are. Germany has put 1916 into the 
held and has begun to put the first elements of iQij. 
Austria-Hungary has put 1917 partly into the field and 
has actually warned 1918. 
But the converse effect, the depletion of men for 
production, is equally important. And the fall of the 
exchange is the proof of this. 
Germany is not now importing as is France, for 
instance, great masses of food, munitions, and necessaries 
of war. She is importing comparatively little. That im- 
port, however, she mu^t pay for by export. No more than 
any other belligerent will she let go her stock of gold. In 
the case of the Allies it is the industry of Great Britain 
mainly, in part that of the remainder of the Alliance, which 
]3revents the exchanges, high as they have gone, from 
becoming dangerous. Germany and Austria could have 
kept their exchanges down had they been able to maintain 
an active export to the neutrals from whom alone they 
can buy. Little as they have been buying during the last 
three months their exchange has none the less fallen 
during that same period with jjecnliar rapidity. It is 
because they cannot maintain their old rate of produc- 
tion, and that is a state of affairs that must necessarily 
get worse. 
H. Belluc. 
Mililarv Land sea f>e Sketching and Target Indication, 
by W. G. Nc^vton (Hugh Rees), is a little manual by a member 
of the .\rtists' I'Jiflcs.'by means of which practically any niau 
of ordinary intelligence can learn in a very short tinis how 
to make field sketches with sufficient clearness to convey all 
the information that can be transmitted by this method 
The instructions given here are concise and completu- , 
Red Screes, by Cecil Headlam (Smith, Elder and Co. 6s). 
is written by a man who knows and loves his English lake 
scpnery, and perusal of the book is as good as a walk among 
the fells of Westmorland, while an epic chapter on Cumbrian 
wrestling, and another concerning a fine fox hunt, are too good 
to be missed. The actual story concerns the daughter of a 
Yankee millionaire, a young doctor, and a scheming lawyer 
who wanted the millionaire's daughter for her inoniy — but it 
is the minor characters of the book wlio count most. The 
old doctor, who gave his guest brandy in which, as an ardent 
naturalist, he " had only pickled one bifd," is a character 
worth knowing, and the retired naval captain whose wife 
7i'oidd wear pyjamas is another interesting creation on the 
author's part. The book is breezily written, obviously with 
intimate knowledge of the lake scenery among which its prin- 
cipal events transpire, and knowledge, too, of the dalesmen 
and natives of lakeland- 
