April 13, iQi*^ 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
EMPIRE HOUSE, KINGSVVAY, LONDON, W.C 
Telephone: HOLBORN 2828 
THURSDAY. APRIL 13th, 1916 
CONTENTS 
PAGE 
I 
4 
10 
13 
A Zeppelin Bag. By Louis Raemaekers 
A Refugee Ship. By G. Spencer Pryse 
German Character (Leading Article) 
The Right Perspective. By Hilaire Belloc 
Combined Arms in War. By Arthur Pollen 
Spring in Gallipoli. By Eden Phillpotts 
German Chancellor's Speech. By G. K. Chesterton 13 
When the Men Come Home. By Professor J. H. 
Morgan I5 
The Spirit of Russia. By L. B. Namier 16 
Sortes Shakespearian;^;. By Sir Sidney Lee 17 
Germans on the Stock Exchange 18 
Chaya. By H. de Vcre Stacpoolc 19 
Town and Country 24 
The West End 26 
Choosing Kit xix- 
GERMAN CHARACTER 
Wi 
'E have no time for rhetoric. Stronger than 
rhetoric is the might of facts and we let them 
speak for us." We thank you, Bethman- 
Hollwcg, for teaching us these words. Strange 
though it may appear to many, they were actually uttered 
by the German Imperial Chancellor in his speech to the 
Reichstag. It is by the might of facts that Germany 
is indicted at the bar of civihsation, and we have to see 
to it that rhetoric has no part either now or hereafter in 
swaying our judgment. In the same issue of the Times 
which contained the text of tl^e Chancellor's speech, 
appeared the report of the awful conditions prevailing 
at the camp for prisoners of war at Wittenberg during an 
outbreak of typhus. Rhetoric cafi never wipe away this 
infamy ; it passes into history among the unpardonable 
greater barbarities of war. Its horror is heightened by 
the fact that this crime against defenceless prisoners was 
committed with the concurrence of a whole town, and 
that the arch-offender was a doctor — a man of sufficient 
scicntilic knowledge to be fully cognisant of the sufferings 
and death to which he was condemning these poor 
captives by his cowardly callousness and neglect of duty 
— a neglect for which he has been given the Iron Cross, 
a decoration which might fittingly have been instituted 
by Herod or Caiaphas as a distinction for cruel men to 
commemorate the part they had taken in putting to a 
shameful death Him who showed to mankind divine pity 
and compassion. 
Hideous facts succeed one another so quickly that by 
the very weight of their numbers they almost crush the 
heart and mind into a state of apathy. Words either 
fail to describe them or else have lost their significance 
by constant repetition. But we have to keep steadily 
before our eyes that those horrible facts, which we would 
gladly lose sight of, are the true German character — the 
writing so to speak in which the Teuton nature expresses 
itself. Raemaekers' cartoons are no exaggeration ; they 
arc only the pictorial representations of actual occurrences 
or Hving truths. Regard the Kaiser gloating over a 
^^cppelin bag on the previous page. Its inhumanity 
ivould appal, did we not know that it represents the exact 
mental attitude which the Kaiser and his entourage 
i^issumc towards the results of airship raids. They hope 
to terrify Great Britain into demanding an early peace , 
wherefore the more British women and children that are 
slaughtered, the more they triumph. 
In the Reichstag last week, the well-known Socialist 
member, Dr. Leibknecht protested vigorously against the 
Chancellor's flagrant perversions of truth. No doubt he 
does not stand alone, but those who are with him form 
such a small minority of the German people that one is 
reminded of Abraham's unavailing plea for God's mercy 
on the cities of the plain. Professor J. H. Morgan, who 
speaks with the authority of experience has declared 
that " the whole people is infected with some kind of 
moral distemper. To regard Germany as the misguided 
pupil of a mihtary caste which alone stands in the way 
of her reformation, seems to me to ignore the volume of 
evidence as to the comphcity of oificers and men in those 
orgies of outrage." The Wittenberg infamy is yet further 
evidence of the same nature, and we doubt not that other 
testimony will continue to be forthcoming, for we have 
not plumbed to its uttermost depth German foulness in 
war, which is an integral part of the German philosophy of 
life. Mr. Asquith understands this, and has expressed 
himself more than once in 5uch plain and explicit terms, 
that those are mistaken who consider he was whittling 
away his previous determination when in his speech at 
Lancaster House he attempted to define what he meant 
by the destruction of the military domination of Prussia. 
On the following afternoon in the House of Lords Lord 
Crewe made this quite clear when he rebuked Lord 
Courtney of Penwith in this straightforward manner ; 
When Lord Courtney tries to separate German enter- 
prise from German militarism and the character of the 
German people from the ambitions of the German General 
Staff, he is undertaking an impossible task. 
The best answer which has been given to the German 
Chancellor's speech is Mr. G. K. Chesterton's brilliant 
analysis of it in Land & Water to-day. He turns 
the big pronouncement inside out, and by placing in 
juxtaposition its ludicrous contradictions and non- 
sensical falsehoods reveals in a clear light its insincerity 
and hypocrisy. He points out that while it is true that 
Prussia is the only country that the AlUes or any other 
people in the civilised world have any reason to put 
under lock and key, it does not mean Prussia is threatened 
with destruction in the way it has destroyed for its own 
ends Belgium and Serbia. No phrase could better 
describe the object we have in view — that German,y is 
to be put under lock and key for a term of years until 
it gives the world indisputable evidence that its whole 
national character is changed ; and it must be deprived 
of power and organisation to do evil. We know that 
many of the foul offences committed during the war 
which she endeavours to justify on the ground of necessity, 
or on some other equally heinous pretext have had their 
counterpart in times of peace in business transactions. 
That acute student of modern Germany, Dr. Arthur 
Shadwell, has remarked on the low commercial morality 
of German merchants. The main object of the Paris 
Conference must necessarily be the adequate protection 
of Allied countries against a repetition of an unscrupulous 
commercial offensive after the war is over. 
Character does not change of an instant ; blackest 
turpitude is not a sudden occurrence. We have seen 
how Germany has used the lawful occasions of commerce 
in order to betray her neighbours and has gloried in hei 
cunning. There is not a capital or industrial city in 
Europe which cannot tell a story to match the one 
related in these columns to-day of how the Germans have 
over-run the London Stock Exchange. The purpose of 
the Paris Conference is to formulate a plan of campaign 
which shall have for its aim the placing of Germany 
under lock and key, that is of depriving her of the freedom 
she has utilised hitherto to exploit and undermine the 
industry of other nations for her own merciless ambitions. 
