14 
LAND & WATER 
August 10, 1916 
and material that it either possessed when the siege 
began, or can raise from the soil or win from the bowels 
of the earth and convert to practical use within the 
area in which it is alone free to work. From time 
immemorial such a combination of warlike processes 
has been recognised as essential to warlike operations. 
Sometimes it has resulted in famine ; more often 
it makes the prospect of defeat certain, so that the 
general will to continue to fight becomes enfeebled. 
In August 1914 there were many things the immediate 
future was to develop that no human intelligence could 
be expected to foresee. But one thing was luminously 
self-e\'ident. It was as ob\ious to the enemy as it was 
to the Allies. The terrified surprise of Bethmann Holl- 
weg in his last interview with the British Ambassador 
in Berlin, bore a reflection of it. The frenzied animosity 
against Great Britain of the whole of Germany— crystallis- 
ing as it did in the \-enomous verses of IJssaucr- — made 
the popular perception of it patent. It was that the 
British Na\-y could isolate the German nation— could, 
in short, confer upon the Allies the power of ruthlessly 
besieging. This was a menace indeed, in a war in which 
Germany would have to mobilise and arm her entire 
male population of military age, in which — from the 
kind and the scale of war that liad been prepared — she 
was clearly doomed to consume her imported stores at a 
rate that must soon leave her short, in which the de- 
votion of so large a proportion of the active population, 
either to fighting or to the making of munitions, would 
make her husbandry imequal to the task of raising the 
normal supply of food just when war must necessarily 
send up the consumption of food to a highly wasteful 
rate. It was obvious, then, that the power of siege 
was sure, and that never had the process of siege pro- 
mised to be more necessary to one side or more dis- 
astrously effective against the other. 
Why we Refrained from Siege 
Of the many suggested explanations of its not having 
been employed, the most plausible is that in so far as 
the matter was determined by the diplomatists, our 
policy was governed by the pacific and humanitarian 
principles that had led to the negotiations of which the 
abortive Declaration of London was the result. So far 
as the decision was naval, it was a by-product of that 
prepossession of the defensive in war which has been the 
mark of all Admiralty policy in the last fifteen years. 
But a third element must be added. It is that the 
Government, as a whole, so far from appreciating the 
simple and obvious analysis of war which, at the risk of 
wearing the reader, 1 have stated above, had become 
the victim of a sort of anti-blockade bias, as if there was 
something unsportsmanlike in using our sea power for 
siege purposes — -at the best as if a success against the 
enemy to which this siege contributed, would be both 
unreal and ultimately ineffective. In the months of 
June and July, Sir Alfred Hopkinson, who I beHeve has 
taken a most active and useful part in steering the ship 
of state through the troubled and dangerous waters of 
our blockade policy, contributed two articles on this 
subject to the Westminster Gazette, and in the last of 
them gave expression to a sentiment that would seem 
to be altogether extraordinary, if a similar statement 
had not, early in June, been made by the War Secretary 
himself, while he was still in charge of the Munitions 
Department. Sir Alfred Hopkinson's words are : 
" It is clear . . . that the enemy's resources are 
now being seriously crippled, but it would be fatal to 
rely on any measures of tliis kind for bringing the war to 
an end without victory in the field. Even if it were 
possible by any form of blockade to force the enemy 
to sue for peace, the peace so obtained would not be 
durable. The task of the AlUes must still be to crush by 
direct means the hideous military despotism. . . ." 
On the 8th June, Le Journal of Paris published an 
extremely interesting interview with Mr. Lloyd George. 
It contained this passage : 
" I have never taken the view that the defeat of the enemy 
was a light task, but I have never been despondent. 
Who could while France lives, and while the Allies arc 
stimulated by her noble example ? Victory is ours. 
It is sure, but it may not be swift. We must pursue the 
enemy relentlessly. We must crush his military power. 
I welcome the blockade as a means of depleting the 
supplies of the enemy. It is a great factor in the war ; 
but it is not the factor which will bring us a complete 
victory. Victory must come after a military' defeat. 
I would not like it to come in anv otlier way, because 
only by a military victory will Prussian militarism be 
destroyed and civilisation protected from a repetition of 
the present calamit\-. A peace forced on an impoverished 
Germany, impoverished in food and material, would not 
be a lasting peace. It would be a moral defeat for the 
Allies." 
Surely confusion of thought could go no further. We 
make our enemy surrender by the full use of our land 
and sea forces ; his surrender enables us to impose our 
wdl upon him, and we enforce that will by disarming 
his forces and occupying his country with our own 
armies, and the result is a moral defeat" and a peace that 
cannot last. 
The curious character of the argument becomes obvious 
if we subdivide the processes of war a little further. I 
venture to paraphrase the eloquent Secretary's words : 
" In contests between armies victory is, in the last 
resort, obtained by the armed men of one side being ' 
killed by, or surrendering to, or flying from the armed 
men of the other. Missile weapons, from the naval 
gun mounted in the rear of the lines, through all the 
gamut of 15-inch, 12-inch, lo-inch. 9.2, 6-inch and 4.5 
howitzers, the field gun firing high explosive and shrapnel ; 
the machine gun, the rifle, the trench mortar, the air 
torpedo, the bomb, and the hand grenade, all of these 
are only used for the preliminary destruction of as many 
as possible of the enemy before the final and decisive 
contact is brought about. 
" But as it is this last struggle — of lance against lance, 
sword against sword, bayonet against bayonet, or 
dagger and club against each other— that is decisive, 
we must not exaggerate the importance of the guns and 
munitions. I welcome the help of all those things— 
they are factors of great value in the war, but not 
factors that will bring complete victory. That victory 
must come by the contact of soldier with soldier. I 
would not like it to come in any other way, because, not 
till superiority of man over man is proved, will Prussian 
militarism be destroyed and civilisation be protected 
from the repetition of the present calamity. 
" A peace forced upon the enemy by our out-arming 
and out-munitioning him, brought about by bombarding 
and burning his depots of food and shells, by destroying 
his defences, and by battering his regiments into mangled 
corpses, would not— nay could not, be a lasting peace. 
It would be a triumph of material over men. It would 
be a moral defeat for the Allies'." 
Honestly, it does not seem to me that this last speech 
is any less reasonable than the other. The fallacy in 
each is the same fallacy. It is an elementary truth of 
all human operations that not only cost but success are 
factors of time. li you are going to make a railway 
across England, it will cost you much less to employ 
500,000 men and, at almost any cost, use every mechanical 
aid that science can supply, and begin at fifty points 
when all your preparations are made, than to employ 
10,000 men, equip them cheaply and begin at one point. 
It is not only that by the latter method your project 
would take you a hundred times as long. You would 
endanger the commercial success of the whole by interest 
charges. You would not have, which you most want, 
the railway in use. War is by long odds the costliest of 
all human undertakings — the one in which complete 
success is always most uncertain. It is, therefore, an 
elementary principle of the military art to employ from 
the first all possible means that arc open to you to attain 
your end. 
THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND 
I do not propose to tell again here the story ot this 
battle, which must be still fresh in the recollection of 
the reader. But certain saUent considerations with 
regard to it should be recalled. In the first place, the 
forces and considerations which brought the German 
Fleet out arc by no means certain. The first German 
official account spoke of there being an enterprise to the 
North which the Fleet had saUied forth to execute. 
This is a somewhat vague objective, and can be held to 
