July 6, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
EMPIRE HOUSE, KINGSWAY, LONDON, W.C 
Telephone: HOLBORN 2828 
THURSDAY, JULY 6. 1916 
CONTENTS 
The Inevitable End. By Louis Raemaekers 
Reconstruction. (Leading Article) 
Battle of the Somme. (A Summary) 
The Final Phase. By Hilaire Belloc 
A Real Blockade ? By Arthur Pollen 
PAGE 
I 
3 
4 
5 
. _ . 'o 
How Germany Pushed her Trade. By Lewis Freeman I2 
The Attack. " By Patrick MacGill i6 
Greenmantle. (Opening Chapters). By John 
Buchan ^7 
Ufiion jack Club Extension 23 
The West End 24 
Town and Country 2^ 
Choosing Kit xvn. 
RECONSTRUCTION 
WHILE the British Army is engaged in the 
fiercest and biggest battle in the country's 
history — a battle in comparison with which 
Waterloo and Blenheim were mere skirmishes 
—we at home have to engage our thoughts and energies 
in a reconstruction of the Empire and the nation, so that 
Freedom henceforth shall be housed in security and 
Liberty safeguarded against her most potent enemies. 
Already events are moving towards this end. The 
Heclaration of London has been finally scrapped. In the 
House of Lords an important judicial decision has been 
given, which will have a far-reaching effect on the vexed 
question of trading with the enemy, reversing, as it 
does, judgments recorded in the Courts of Law. The 
Home Secretary has informed the House of Commons 
that it is not at all his intention that ahen enemies, at 
present interned, shall be permitted to resume business 
in this country when peace is restored. These incidents, 
each important in itself, have a cumulative significance 
in that they all occurred within the same week. They 
point to a vital alteration in opinion, effected through 
the powerful circumstances of the time. 
An influential Committee has been appointed by the 
Board of Trade to prepare a scheme for providing British 
commercial firms with improved financial facilities for 
trade. A Special Committee is to be formed to inquire 
into the neglect of the teaching of science and to advise 
the authorities on the best procedure for the application 
of science to commerce and industry ; it is to work in 
close concert with the Board of Education. The final 
report of the Departmental Committee appointed bj? the 
Board of Agriculture to consider the settlement and 
employment on the land in England and Wales of dis- 
charged sailors and soldiers has been issued. This report 
enters deeply into the present conditions of agriculture. 
It is something more than coincidence that the announce- 
ments regarding these three Committees, concerned 
respectively \\ith the future of trade, education and 
agriculture, should have appeared on the very same 
morning. It is evidence that a new life is stirring within 
these islands. 
This agricultural report .is a most weighty document. 
Our greatest industry has been studied with minute 
care and without prejudice ; the recommendations, if 
carried into effect, will revolutionise rural life and in. 
augurate healthier and happier prospects for all who are 
directly employed upon the land. There are two reports 
one signed by the Majority of the Committee ; the other 
by a Minority. The former appear to lack the courage 
"f their convictions and do not grasp the urgency for 
action. They think agriculture can be left to work out 
its own salvation, forgetting they are dealing with the 
most conservative industry in the world. In some ways 
the British farmer is quicker to change his ideas than the 
husbandmen of other lands, but from the very nature of 
his occupation, he is, if left to himself, a slow mover, 
especially when seasons are good. The Minority have 
realised this ; they call on the State for immediate action. 
" The necessary measures to put the proposals in force," 
they say, " should be regarded, not as controversial but 
as emergency legislation to be passed during the war." 
This minority consist of the well-known agricultural 
authority, Mr. E. G. Strutt, Lord Rayleigh's brother ; 
Mr. Leslie Scott, K.C., Conservative M.P. for a Liverpool 
Division ; . and Mr. G. H. Roberts, the Labour M.P. for 
Norwich — three men of very divergent outlook. But 
they are unanimous in their suggestions of reform and 
regarding the great peril of delay. The gist of their 
proposals is set out in this sentence : — 
Our view is that the State must take action, on the one 
hand, to establish and maintain a proper standard of 
wages for all farm workers, and on the other to ensure 
to the agricultural industry such measure of security and 
prosperity as will encourage the employment of labour at 
such wages. 
The quiet summer 'air over Kent, the garden of England, 
throbs nightly wth the devastating explosions of war. 
Men's thoughts run in strange channels when British 
guns, fighting a strong and stubborn foe, are audible in 
British homes. We know that they proclaim glorious 
deeds of daring and devotion ; that they ate sounding the 
requiem of many young and gallant lives. And we who 
stop at home can render no help to the players in this 
terrible game ; we have, so 5t seems, to sit still and look 
on. Yet there is courageous work also for us to do, 
different in degree, but if we choose to make it so of 
the same high quaUty. Those familiar words of Ruskin 
have never shone out with more splendid truth than in 
these days : " Our estimate of the soldier is based on 
this ultimate fact — of which we are well assured — that 
put him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures of the 
world behind him and only death and his duty in front 
of him, he will keep his face to the front ; and he knows 
that his choice may be put to him at any moment." Is 
there any less truth in these other words of Ruskin that 
occur in the same chapter ? "In true commerce as in 
true fighting, it is necessary to admit the idea of occa- 
sional voluntary losss — that sixpences have to be lost 
as well as lives, undea: a sense of duty ; and trade may 
have its heroisms as well as war." 
It is a question that in some form or other we all are 
called upon to ansrwer if national reconstruction and 
reorganisation are to be carried out efficiently, for all 
of us are in tradfe either'as buyers or sellers. Are we pre- 
pared to risk our sixprnces, or to give support to heroic 
measures in order that when the harvest of victory is 
ripe, it may be garnered in fullest abutndance ? In the 
old fat days of peace the reproach most commonly 
levelled at stay-at-home Englishmen by their brethren 
who had dwelt in ruder and rougher lands where punish- 
ment is apt to follow closely on the heels of any sin of 
omission or commission, was that they hiited action. 
They talked a lot ; they occasionally wrote complaints 
to their pet newspapers, but for the most part they were 
quite content to sit still and do nothing. They had 
handed over the affairs» of the nation to a few trained 
swordsmen who were in the arena for notoriety of riches ; 
and they themselves loofced on public life as a gladiatorial 
game and were satisfied to lounge on the benches, apf-'laud- 
ing or averting the thumb at the right moment. '.That 
point of view has disappeared. Nowadays it is .the 
recognised duty of all individuals to take a personafiv 
active part in affairs of State, jtist as though it had' 
fallen to their lot to serve their King on the field of battle. 
