April 13, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
Spring in Gallipoli 
13 
By Eden Phillpotts. 
Gcncyal Sir Charles Monro's despatch on the withdrawal of the Allied troops jrom the Gallipcli Peninsula 
ivas published on Tuesday. It emphasises once again the heroic eharactey of this adventure. " 'J he 
position occupied by our troops presented a military sitiaition unique in history," writes General Mo 
nro. 
There is a fold of lion-coloured earth, 
With stony feet in the .ligean blue, 
Whereon of old dwelt loneliness and dearth 
Sun scorched and desolate ; and when there flew 
The winds of winter in those dreary aisles 
Of crag and cliff, a whirling snow-wreath bound 
The foreheads of the mountains, and their miles 
Of frowning precipice and scarp were wound 
With stilly white, that peered through brooding 
profound. 
But now the myrtle and the rosemary. 
The mastic and the rue, the scented thyme 
With fragrant iingers gladdening the grey. 
Shall kindle on a desert grown sublime. 
Henceforth that haggard land doth guard and hold 
The treasure of a sovereign nation's womb — 
Her fame, her w^orth, her pride, her purest gold. 
Oh, call ye not the sleeping place a tomb 
That lifts to heaven's light such everlasting blooin. 
They stretch, now high, now low, the little scars 
Upon the rugged pelt of herb and stone ; 
.\bovc them sparkle bells and buds and stars 
Young Spring hath from her emerald kirtle thrown. 
Asphodel, crocus and anemone 
\\'ith silver, azure, crimson once again 
Ray all that earth, and from the murmuring sea 
Come winds to flash the leaves on shore and plain 
mist Where evermore our dead — our radiant dead shall reign. 
Imperishable as the mountain height 
That marks their place afar, their numbers shine, 
Who with the first fruits of a joyful might 
To human liberty another shrine 
Here sanctified ; nor vainly hav'e they sped 
That made this desert dearer far than home. 
And left one sanctuary more to tread 
For England, whose memorial pathways roam 
Beside her hero sons, beneath the field and foam. 
The German Chancellor's Speech 
By G. K. Ghesttrton 
^HE German Chancellor has once more delivered 
a long speech on the situation, in the course 
T\ 
of which he says that the Allies are troubled 
with a brutal lust of destruction and annihilation, 
that we have the discomfort of having on top of us big 
and broad mountains of bitterness and deception of the 
people, that peace can now only rise from a flood of blood 
and tears and from the graves of millions, that Germany 
is being treated as a scape-goat and must answer with a 
sword, because (it would seem) we have tried to put back 
a clock, and might have succeeded had not history since 
advanced with an iron step ; and, finally, that he has no 
time to use rhetorical expressions. He considers with 
some care what it can be that makes him and his imme- 
diate neighbours morally and mentally better than other 
people : and, finally, comes to certain conclusions about 
what it is " that makes our hearts and our nerves so 
strong " : so that if it only made our heads a little 
stronger, we should be quite complete. 
For the main element revealed by such a Prussian mono- 
logue is merely a sort of weakness of mind. The Prussian 
will have it all ways ; his greed is full of fear , like the 
timidity of a climber who will not let go of one foothold 
though he has found another. This gives some significance 
even to this first point of form ; the strong silent man 
standing on his mountain of metaphors. He must be 
talking, to draw attention to his well-known taciturnity- 
The political philosophy of the speech is of the same 
blend. .It is full of precisely that kind of bumptious 
sliiliy-shallying which marks the man in a three-act farce, 
who cannot be off with the old love before he is on with 
the new. Mr. BcUoc has often pointed out in these columns 
the impossibility of prophecy in war, or even in politics ; 
and perhaps the nearest approach to a safe prophecy is 
■hat whatever happens the Prussian will go on praising him- 
self. But though consistent in praising himself, he is 
not consistent even in the nature of his praise. He 
praises his wonderful heroism in enduring to the end a 
starvation which his wonderful foresight has made im- 
possible from the beginning. 
I do not know whether it is worth while at this time of 
day to explain to the Prussian the elemcntarv ethics of 
such things as the blockade. It is obvious that for 
anyone remote, as Prussia has alwavs been remote, 
from tlie tradition of chivalry (and therefore unguided by 
an instinct in the matter) a sopliist may draw the line 
anywhere, on the plea that all war affects women and 
children more or less. Such a sophist will sec at one end 
of the incline the breaking of a woman's heart by killing 
her .lover, and at ^.he other end the breaking of her ribs 
by jumping on her with heavy boots ; and if he has no 
chivalric \tradition, there is obviously only one other 
distinction he can employ. It is the question which 
party has made innovations of ferocity, and has extended 
the license of war to cover things which it did not pre- 
viously cover. In the present case, to ask such a question 
is to answer it. 
There have been hunger-sieges in war ever since war 
existed ; and the reduction of districts by cutting off 
supplies has been the special policy of r.ome of the loftiest 
publicists, like Lincoln, and some of the lowest, like 
Bismarck. There has never been anything resembling 
the baby-killing of the Zeppelins before, and it is not 
only desirable but jjrobable, that there never will be again. 
But it is idle, as I have said, to urge even anything so 
obvious as this in order to justify a shortage which, by 
the enemy's own account, does not exist. The contra- 
diction is only worthy of note as one of the examples of 
the special weakness of mind which is here in question ; 
that omnivorous and indiscriminate greed of vanity which 
wishes to be admired at once for its squareness and its 
rotundity, for its bluntness and its sharpness, for its 
lightness and for its weight. 
As the Prussian politician pays a mass of contni- 
dictory compliments to himself, so he flings a mass of con- 
tradictory charges against his opponents. He says that the 
three principal Allies united against Germany with the 
aim of putting the clock back to ancient times (whatever 
that may mean), and proceeds to prove that their aim is 
a wrong one, in the following further description of it. 
" What can the enemy coalition to-day offer to Europe ? 
Russia the fate of Poland and Finland. France the 
preten.sion to that hegemony which was our bane. Great 
Britain, the state of dissension and of continual irritation 
which she called the balance of power on the Continent 
and which is the internal cause of the unspeakable misery 
which this war has brought upon Europe." 
It is tiresome to attempt to unpick this tangle of noa- 
