B 
LAND & WATER 
August 17, 1916 
one noticeable change should be marked. The summit 
of the little local watershed between the Albert district • 
and the Bapaaime district has been reached. How far 
it has given us yet a proper chain of observation posts 
we are not told naturally, and it may be doubted from • 
the extremely sUght gradient of the dccUvity upon the 
further side whether these will make much difference 
until a rather lower level has been reached. Neverthe- 
less, the possession of nearly all the ridge marks a distinct 
step in the business of driving in this perilous wedge 
towards the main communications of the enemy. 
It is remarkable that our knowledge of this position 
is due to the message of a private correspondent. We 
owe it to the Daily Neies of last Tuesday, the 15th, the 
day on which these lines are written. He further tells 
us'that the only point in which there is higher ground 
above us still is on the right centre between the High 
Wood and the Delville \\'ood. This should mean that all 
the highest ground of all, and especially the windmill of 
Pozjeres on which we have hitherto had no news of an 
official kind, is in the hands of the British. 
When I speak of " expectation," it is in connection 
with a theory, which is only a theory, but which has been 
very widely discussed by competent authorities during 
the last few weeks. 
That theory concerns the enemy's intention of attempt- 
ing one last offensive. 
Exhaustion of Reserves 
The enemy's position with regard to reserves is perfectly 
well known" It is a clear point which has been made 
over and over again with ample proof at its back in these 
columns, and which would be common knowledge to all 
public opinion at this moment had it not been confused 
by a mass of impossible nonsense, like the famous " fresh 
German army of two million," which has been published 
in this country, though in this country alone. The enemy 
came to the end of his new formation of units in February 
iqi3. He then went on feeding drafts, to make up for 
his losses, into these units ; and he found the men for 
these drafts out of his normal recruitment until October 
1915. It was in this month, towards the end of it, that 
he came to the end of his normal efficient reserves of 
effective man-power, and began to take to abnormal 
methods. In October 1915, he summoned for re- 
examination all the men who had been rejected on 
medical ground, and in December 1915, he began calling 
up his 1917 class. All this while the enemy— or at least 
the Germans— had kept a considerable strategic reserve ; 
there were always at any one moment a considerable 
number of divisions "resting," not in the immediate 
neighbourhood of the fronts and ready to be thrown 
where they should be needed. The idea was possibly 
after settling the great offensive at Verdun to support 
Hindenburg in a movement against the north-east. Any- 
way, the miscalculation of Verdun ate up nearly all the 
strategic reserve when there came the tremendous news 
of Brussiloff's success ; next the failure of the Trentino, 
and on the top of all that the great offensive on the 
Somme. 
The unexpected pressure on the two new fronts at 
once absorbed all that \vas left of the strategic reser\;e 
and for more than a month past every available unit 
Austrian and German has been in play. 
What has the enemy got with which to feed these units 
as they melt away during the tremendous fighting of this 
summer ? tt , x l 
We know exactly what he has got. He has got the 
hitherto rejected balance of 1917. He has got 1918, 
which is only just beginning to train, and he has his con- 
valescents ; This for Germany. For Austria there is 
not much balance of 1917 ; a good deal of 1918 has 
already been put into the field ; and there are also the 
convalescents. He may try to impress later men from 
o«;upied territory. Hitherto he has not dared. 
With such exceedingly abnormal reserves he can con- 
tinue to maintain his units— supposing there is no break 
or decision and no consequent very heavy loss— for several 
months to come. They mean in Germany a good deal 
less than a million of worsening material and they mean 
in Austria-Hungary perhaps half a milHon, perhaps a 
little more. ,^ . ,• , 
The enemy may, if he chooses, pursue that policy of 
lengthening out the war in the hope of maintaining his 
fronts intact, and of seeing something political turning 
up in the delay. 
He may, however, adopt the opposite and more heroic 
poHcy of letting his effectives dwindle to a dangerous 
limit on the fighting fronts ; of forming behiild them a 
nucleus of rapidly trained troops out of what would other- 
wise have been the drafts for the fighting front, and of 
using this nucleus for a last attempted offensive upon some 
point of that big crumbling ring which, as it breaks, 
wholly determines his fate. I say he may' have that policy 
in mind. If he adopts it he will be beaten the more 
quickly. There has, I think, hardly ever been a distinct 
pre-judgment in these columns but that can be admitted 
without fear of error. Short of some almost inconceivable 
political folly or quarrel an attempted new offensive by 
the enemy will very rapidly advance the date of his 
military execution. Failing such an offensive he will 
maintain the business pf furnishing drafts from his 
dwindling material and of gambling upon the last possible 
date for a break and of something happening to help him 
in the interval on the political side. 
With his legend what it is, his deception of his civilian 
population the ' gross thing we have seen in the last 
week or two, with the dynastic interests his despotic 
government has in view, and with the inabihty of his 
psychology to face reality in any field, let alone the 
terrible test-field of war, it is the former course that is 
the more probable. But only the futurexan show which 
he will adopt. 
THE BLOCKADE 
Throughout the last year the blockade has been grow- 
ing in importance. I do not propose to discuss now the 
reasons for the prolonged delay in tightening the 
blockade.* My readers will remember that as long 
ago as the winter of 1914, I insisted upon the 
crucial importance of cotton and 'the necessity of 
forbidding the entry of that commodity into the 
Central Empires. The authorities preferred a slower 
method of action which spared the susceptibiUties of 
neutrals, which I shall not here discuss, though it is 
worthy of remark in passing that if cotton had been 
absolutely stopped, even as late as the month of March 
1 91 5, the enemy would have been defeated long ago. It 
is true that many substitutes can be found for cotton in 
the production of modern propellant explosive, but these 
would mean experiments, disorder, delay, all over the 
field of the enemy's activities and, most important of all, 
alteration of all his guns. I do not believe that he could 
have faced such a crisis successfully in the midst of a great 
war. 
To proceed, however, from this political debate into 
which, as I have said, I will not enter, we may sum up the 
effects of the gradually tightening blockade (gradually 
tightening as the Foreign Office made one arrangeiiieiit 
after another with groups of neutral merchants) as fol- 
lows : 
I. There could be no question of " starving out " 
the Central Empires as Paris, for instance, was "starved 
out " by the Germans in 1871. It is unfortunate that 
this should be the case, because this road to victory would 
have been at once simple and absolutely decisive ; while 
the fact that the enemy was himself responsible for its 
chief model and had always ad\ocated it would have 
made it peculiarly suitable to the present war. The 
reason that " starving out " in the complete sense of that 
phrase was impossible was that the German and Austro- 
Hungarian Empires between them are amply able to 
provide the necessities of life for their 123 millions of 
population. The foreign territories occupied by the 
enemy's armies might be left to shift as best they could. 
Even if no requisition were made from them the terri- 
tory of the two Central Empires sufficed for the support 
of their population. The calculations based upOn the 
actual consumption in time of peace and proving that 
that consumption could not be reached in time of war 
were accurate : but the suggestion that the difference 
would cause in itself the defeat of the enemy laboured 
(•) I use the word " blockade " here not in its technical sense, but as 
an equivalent of the French Blocus, which simply means the preven- 
tion of an invested enemy from receiving any material whatsoever, 
whether by sea or by land. 
