8 
LAND & WATER 
May i8, 1916 
in his favour. He has impartially destroyed the monu- 
ments of the one portion of Belgium as of the other. 
The violation, the tortures and the burnings have pro- 
ceeded from a general desire to feel great at the expense 
quite as much of those who speak Flemish as of the 
Walloons. He has further, which is especially foolish of 
him, shown an utter lack of thoroughness in this as in 
his other experiments in terror. 
When he has found that his actions adversely affected 
neutral opinion, especially American opinion, he has 
apologised for them and restricted the activity of his 
agents, then foolishly allowed their activity to break 
out again. The whole thing here has been on the same 
model as the incredibly stupid bombardment of the 
Cathedral of Rheims. There was no conceivable reason 
for that outrage at its beginning save to show to the 
French that Prussia was perfectly ruthless, and lliercfore 
to be feared. To prove this Prussian gunners were 
ordered to destroy the national monuments to which 
the French were chiefly attached. They dropped shell 
in conformity with their orders upon the Cathedral of 
Rheims, which was at the moment being used as a 
hospital, and was flying, 1 believe, a huge Red Cross flag. 
When they had ruined the glass, and burned the roof and 
destroyed a certain number of statues attached to the 
building, they ceased their efforts, apparently in surprise at 
the way in which they had been received by the civilised 
world. ' But the enemy did not cease them altogether. 
From time to time he would launch a shell in the direction 
of the cathedral in order to do a little more damage. He 
did himself the maximum of moral harm with the mini- 
mum of effect. And he is still at it. The Cathedral of 
Rheims is a target at a range of a httle over 6.000 yards 
from the foremost of his guns. It is larger than West- 
minster Abbey and is not concealed by tall surrounding 
buildings of aiiy sort. He cannot plead error. It is sheer 
fatuousness. It is the alternative emotion that men pass 
through when they do not quite know on what platform 
they stand — and so it has been in Belgium and in Eastern 
France. There is no guarantee that the long period of 
repose through which some districts have passed may 
not at any moment be followed by another outburst of 
violence. 
In Poland there has been another history. Poland 
was occupied in connection with the great advance against 
the Russian armies. The military object of that advance 
was clear ; it was the destruction of the Russian armies 
by envelopment. It failed altogether. Its attempt was 
only possible through the lack of munitionment from 
which the Russians suffered, but on the other hand, the 
Austro-Germans were correspondingly tied by their heavy 
artillery, and on six successive occasions six successive 
plans for the envelopment of a great portion of the Russian 
forces failed. When the effort was exhausted Poland, as 
a whole, was occupied by the enemy's armies and 
evacuated by the Russian Armies. The race and the 
people had suffered enormously. They had already 
been divided between three Powers, the Prussians, the 
Russians and the Austrians, of whom they hated the 
Prussians by far the most. With the Russians they had 
a long hereditary quarrel only somewhat softened in 
modern times. Their situation under Austrian rule was 
by far the best. One might have thought that Austro- 
German armies appearing in the country with such an 
historical foundation for their rule would have taken 
immediate advantage of what was but an accidental 
result of their failure to destroy the Russian forces. One 
might have imagined that they would have consolidated 
this moral opportunity by some sort of statecraft, how- 
ever clumsy, as they did the material opportunity by the 
establishment of their trenches. Nothing of the sort. 
There has been a perpetual change of plan in their dealings 
with the Polish and Jewish population, so far as the 
Prussians were concerned ; and the Prussians were more 
and more the masters. They seemed unable to decide 
whether they would consolidate or wiiether they would 
merely bully the miserable remains of the population. 
Whatever be the situation of the Pohsh peasants now 
subject to Austrian rule alone, it is certain by every 
account we receive that the Polish and I.ithuanianpopula- 
tion under Prussian rule has suffered from the unstable 
policy of the Prussian commanders as no other district 
in Europe has suffered. It continues to suffer even in the 
simple matter of victualling. Prussia cannot make up 
its mind whether it is better to leave memories of starva- 
tion among these people or to see them fed. 
What is happening in the Balkans exactly we do not 
know. Accounts are confused. But so much is certain 
that the wise playing of the Serbians against the Bul- 
garians has not been attempted. There has been nothing 
but the crude overrunning of the Serbian districts accom- 
panied with every form of torture and barbarity. It has 
been a sort of revenge taken against a thing which proved 
at last much weaker than the power which was exasp erated 
by its former resistance. There has been no trace of 
statesmanship in the matter. Only of hatred. , 
Now the sum total of these blunders would seern to. be 
this. So long as the Central Empires can maintain their 
extended lines and can govern by merely military rule the 
populations within those lines, the national questions 
remain obscure. But the moment a shifting of the lines 
begins, the moment the military grasp ceases to be suffi- 
ciently iirm to maintain so vast an extent of territory, 
there will be no moral result left in support of the Austro- 
German cause. 
Bohemia wished to be Slav, but never wished to be 
attached to any Slav group. 
Catholic Southern Slavs in Croatia had their difference 
with the Orthodox Serbians of the same race. The Rou- 
manian population subject to Magyar rule was largely 
Uniate and garrisoned, geographically, as it were, by Ger- 
man settlers and Magyar colonies. 
Of all these opportunities no advantage has been 
taken. 
With the first shaking of the line now covering the 
Austro-Hungarian monarchy every one of those national 
riddles will again present itself for solution. 
In the case of the Germans the matter is differently, but 
much more intensely true. When the Russians reappear 
in Lithuania and in Poland the age-long quarrel between 
them and the Western Slav will exist no doubt, but it will 
be accentuated in no way by a new feeling produced in the 
course of the war in favour of the Germans. It will 
almost certainly be the other way. And there is no con- 
ceivable standing ground now— as there might so well 
have been a few nronths ago— for divided opinion in 
Belgium at the moment of a general retirement. That 
retirement will produce nothing at all but a sensation of 
relief. 
In the mere mechanics of the war this factor of national 
feeling will have very little effect. The nations arc too 
highly mobilised, their manhood too completely employed 
for civilian opinion to count in the field as it counted in 
the old wars of professional armies. But it remains true 
that the settlement of Europe after the war will be 
adverse to the Central Powers in a fashion that it might 
not have been if they had used the few months of their 
unexpected territorial expansion (as much unexpected 
by them as by us, and as little connected with their victory 
as their defeat) wisely and upon a consistent plan. 
They were unable to show such wisdom. They were 
unable to follow a sustained plan because they entered 
the campaign, and particularly Prussia entered the cam- 
paign, with a dehberate scorn for the sanctity of a nation. 
Immorality on that scale is stupid, and stupidity is the 
main agent of defeat in war. H. Belloc 
There is much food for reflection in Prisoner of War, by 
Andre Warnod (Hcincmann, 3s. 6d. net.) The author took 
part in the great battle of the Grand Couronn e, went up to 
the nortliern frontier, and then, while tending woundctl, 
fell into German hands. This brief record of his experiences 
in the prison camp of Merseburg is terrible through its 
simplicity ; it is a bald, soldier's tale of unforgettable in- 
dignities, at the hand of a race that knows no refinement, 
no kindness, no tact, and no respect for a captured f»c, but 
is sunk in a vast conceit. Such a book ought to be in the 
hands of every person who still thinks that Germans merit 
the treatment that is accorded to ordinary people or that 
they are animated bv the decent motives that govern civilised 
life. Over sixty drawings amplify the text of the book, draw- 
ings French in character, and as illuminative as they arc 
original. Altogether, this is a book not to be missed. 
At Prince's restaurant, Piccadilly, Mr. Archibald Joyce, 
tlic celebrated composer has been engaged to play every 
night with his wonderful orchestra. 
