LAND & W A T E R 
April ij, 1916 
THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THOSE who read the mihtary history of the past 
al\va\s remark one piizzlin;^ feature n that 
history ; it is the eontrast between the sinipHeity 
i>f the mihtary problem and the complex, because 
incomplete, fashion in which that problem is usually 
attacked. 
The fundamental cause of that contrast is, of course, 
what has been called in all these" articles the " political 
factor. " 
The nearer one is in time to a military problem, or the 
more concerned one is with its result, the more one under- 
stands why this "political factor" conies in to disturb 
the comparatively simple military problems. 
We, for instance, marvel to-day at the Allies in 1793 
di\idin{,' their forces for the siege of Dunkirk. We marvel 
that such a blunder was possible. We regard the victory 
of the French at Wattignies as something given away by 
the folly of the divided EngHsh and Cicrman commands 
to their opponents. 
But the reason we mar\el is that we feel none of the 
passions of contemporaries ; that we have not before us 
the actual men with their conflicting wills and separate 
interests ; and, most of all, we know the future. 
When we exclaim at the folly of the Allies in separating 
their forces 'in 179 5 it is because we know that their failure 
to destroy the revolutionary armies while there was yet 
time would breed the whole business of the Napoleonic 
wars. 
The lesson of history in all these matters is surely clear 
enough. It may be summed ujj, I think, in the following 
simple proposition : — 
The great styuggles, in ivhich ullimate issues arc involved, 
always reach a complete decision sooner or later. 
In other words, to cry off before you are yourself 
disarmed or have disarmed your opponent, because you 
happen to think some other matter (such as your present 
wealth, or physical or mental suffering) more important 
than victory, is not to achieve a compromise but simply 
to sign a foolish truce in the midst of what will necessarily 
be — taking history as a whole— a still further prolonged 
war. 
Victory once achieved, the defeated party is defeated 
usually for ever, always for generations. Short of this, 
the struggle is but briefly postponed. 
\\ith historical events we see this truth quite clearly. 
With contemporary events it is confused by the false 
proportions we give to things that are too "near us or 
with which we are too much concerned, and by the 
multitude of objects disturbing our judgment. 
Whether non-military considerations will or will not 
mar the effort of one party or the other in this great 
struggle duly the future can show. But with regard 
to the present moment of it — I mean the situation 
as it stands in this particular Passion Week ol iqi6 — the 
attitude of the future historian will be very simple. The 
\iew presented to the future historian will be what all the 
soldiers have long seen, and what it would be well fo ■ all 
others to see as clearly as the soldiers do.. It is this : 
In a conflict the 'ultimate issue of which was at best 
the new form which European civilisation should take 
on, and at worst, the life or death of that c.vilisation 
(for myself I believe it is a struggle of the latter and not 
the former sort), the military problem was clear. Of the 
two groups of combatants one came to enjoy after the 
winter of 1914— through the collapse or insignificance 
of all others in its orbit— a direct and simple control : 
Prussia organised- and used with >m(iuestioned authority 
much the most of the machinery and much the most 
of the metal production of Europe, and the man-power 
of nearly 160 million people. Against this enormous 
force (which, according to one view, was trying to 
. niodify the future of Europe, in its own image f accord- 
ing to anotiier could only destroy European civilisation, 
being impotent to create) were chiefly opposed three 
western .-Mlies, less in population, far weaker in pro- 
ductive power, but representing the old and intense 
civilisation of Europe. Happily they had the aid of 
another body lunncrically large — the I\u:.^ian Empire. 
But this .Ally was cut off from them and from Iuiro])<au 
aid, and in resources and character differed wholly frcni 
the western group upon whose resistance would ultimately 
turn the fate of the war. The western group had railways, 
machinery, ships, mines and could call, in a very great 
extent for food, to a much less extent for metals and their 
products, upon the New World, which was not yet 
involved. It was superior to its enemies in the factors 
of intelligence and skill. It was immeasurably their 
superior in morals. But it was not actually and 
mechanically united, however strong its agreement, upon 
the common end. Not one part}' within that group was 
even the admitted leader, let alone the unquestioned 
master of the whole. Their very aims were somewhat 
divergent, for what each desired from the war differed 
somewhat from what each of its fellows desired. Italy 
could not but seek the control of the Adriatic and the 
security of her Northern frontier, France the positive 
destruction of a new and menacing barbarism beyond 
her frontiers ; Britain, the continuation of an economic 
position and h^mpire built up by two centuries of magnifi- 
cent adventure. 
The resources each party could bring in aid of the others 
similarly differed. A reduced but very considerable 
\olume of manufacture for exchange remained to dreat 
Britain, who further kept the sea open for her Allies. 
The French had been first and best prepared with the 
purely military machine. The Italians, from the narrow- 
ness of their front, were using a lesser proportion of their 
total mobilisable forces than the rest. The Eastern 
ally with only one narrow gate of entrance for foreign 
supply (separated by half the world from the field of 
battle) undeveloped industrially, lacking for many months 
anything like an adequate armament, represented in the 
combination an exception which further disturbed the 
unity of the whole. 
The victory of the Alliance against Prussia and her 
dependents was none the less certain, and had already 
virtually been achieved in the April of 1916, if the problem 
were regarded as a purely military one. 
But it could not so be regarded. Not only a certain 
necessary divergence - of aim but the divergences of 
national temperament and recent experience, affected 
particularly the western Allies. The interest of the late 
spring of if)i6 (as this future historian will say) lay in the 
contrast between these disturbing political factors and 
the clear military problem. 
Prus.sia could ultimately be disarmed. There was no 
conceivable accident to interfere with this conclusion 
if the war were pursued to its conclusion as a purely 
military task. In spite of her original enormous pre- 
ponderance in men and her existing prepc^nderance in* 
metal and machinery, exhaustion threatened her as it 
did not threaten her western opponents. Mere ex- 
haustion did not threaten her eastern opponent at 
all. This exhaustion Prussia felt particularly upon 
the score of men. And it was clearly one of her main 
objects at the moment at once to conceal this ex- 
haustion as much as possible by misleading statements, 
and to achieve a decision before it should become fatal. 
Therefore did she perpetually and at vast expense con- 
tinue to attack, her attack being no more than the attempt 
to break the lines of the great siege. But she further 
relied upon affecting non-military opinion, especially in 
the western powers opposed to her. So much did r.he 
rely upon this ,that two incidents at that particular 
moment — the late spring f)f 1916 — which will be to that 
historian of the future quite plain in character, wore as 
a fact distorted by the passions and the inevitable lack 
of proportion affecting the judgment of contemporaries. 
These two incidents were tlie enormous attack ujjon 
the sector of Verdun and the isolation of a very smal 
British force in the remote h^ast at Kut el Amara. 
Such a historian would marvel at first that any mi^ 
conception was possible : that such phrases as " the 
taking of ^■erdun " or the " peril of Kut " should be 
