August 17, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
under the eiTor that peace consumption was Umited 
to a strict necessity. This error, though almost self- 
evident, appeared in many of these assertions. But 
when we consider that in any complex community the 
reduction of the standard of living, even down to the 
scale of the regularly paid labourers, would keep the 
population not only alive and healthy, and would yet 
enormously reduce consumption of the whole com- 
munity, we can see that it would need a very large differ- 
ence indeed between internal produce and total con- 
sumption to starve out a community the great majority 
of which (if we take the two Central Empires together) 
was agricultural. 
2. Nevertheless, the blockade as it increased in 
efficiency produced what is very valuable in war, and 
that was a strain upon the enemy. This strain was 
chiefly felt, and is being increasingly felt, by the wealthier 
classes ; not the very wealthiest of all, but the well-to-do 
bourgeoise or middle classes of Germany and the mass 
of the squines. This is important because the German 
Empire is essentially plutocratic in constitution. It 
would ha\'e been better if we could have made the great 
fortunes suffer, but even as it was, to make the class 
immediately below them severely uncomfortable was 
a thing which was bound to have its moral repercussioii, 
upon the whole war. It was not the least of the factors 
which changed the attitude of this class towards the 
campaign and modified its original folly. In a word, the 
blockade produced among those who do the writing and 
the teaching of the Germanics a feeling of permanent 
ill ease, a dread of the future and a physical consciousness 
of the presence of war which the absence of enemy troops 
from fierman soil had hitherto spared them. 
It is less easy to discover the e.xact effects of the 
blockade in Austria-Hungary, both because the censorship 
in that Empire is more efiicient than it is in Germany, 
less cluhisy and apparently better co-ordinated ; cer- 
tainly less in fear of wealthy influences ; and also because 
the Austro-Hungarian Empire is so disparate that an 
economic phenomenon like the blockade will produce 
very different results in different parts. So far- as one 
can judge from the evidence, however, the effect of the 
blockade in the eastern parts of the Empire, and 
especially in the great towns, has been very severe. It 
has been less felt, as might be imagined, in the. Hun- 
garian Plains. It has perhaps been most burdensome 
in the Galician centres of population where there have 
been added to it the terrible ravaging of the country side 
by the successive passage of two great armies. 
Blockade and the Armies 
3. The blockade has not, during the period under 
review, affected in any marked degree the victualling of 
the enemy's armies. Chance anecdotes to the contrary 
have no weight against the general conclusion to which the 
Intelligence Departments of the chief belligerents have 
come in this matter. The combatant elements of the 
enemy's forces have been throughout this second year 
of the war, and are still, nourished in a fashion quite 
sufficient for their purpose. 
4. The chief value of the blockade does not reside 
in the effect it has already produced during the period 
under review, but in the dread of the future which it 
has realised in all minds throughout the territories 
occupied by the enemy. There is bound to come with the 
summer of the present year a certain rehef, for in the 
first place the harvest will be gathered, and in the second 
place pastures will be reopened for ■ cattle. Further, 
the more quickly maturing animals which are used for 
food, such as pigs, can be increased in number. Never- 
theless, this period of relief will be a short one. The more 
slowly maturing animals, notably cattle, will not be 
present in anything like sufficient quantity during the 
third winter of the war, and perhaps most important of 
all, fatty substances which are essential for, explosives, 
will be lacking in a degree even more severe than that 
which was so remarkable during the second 3'ear. It is 
upon this point, the dilemma between the use of fatty 
substances for explosives and their necessity in human 
sustenance, that the blockade has its best effect. There 
is, for instance, quite enough milk in the enemy's terri- 
tories if all its constituents could be used for human 
sustenance. But the fatty products are wthdrawn 
for the making of explosives. It is- this, 'and this alone, 
which. has led to a famine (which will increase) in this 
essential article. The same is true of the fat of meat 
and indeed of all similar substances. 
5. While the blockade has this partial but excellent 
and happily growing effect upon the general sustenance 
of the enemy, it has a much more marked effect upon 
special substances essential to the conduct of war. The 
enemy controls a much larger field of production than 
do the Allies for the older necessities of warfare, notably 
coal and iron. He is, however, badly hit for manganese 
for his steel, of which only a very small portion is found 
within his ovm territories. He has sufficient petrol and 
crude oils so far by import from Roumania and from 
the Cjalician oilfields. Indeed, it was the recovery of the 
latter which was the chief economic effect of his advance 
upon the Eastern front last summer. Though he does 
not produce copper sufficient for his needs he possesses 
so large a reserve of that metal, not only in his own 
territories but in the territories occupied by his armies, 
that he need be in no fear of a dearth so far as military 
uses of it are concerned. But in sundry modern essen- 
tials and particularly in rubber the blockade hits him very 
hard. Synthetic rubber he cannot produce in any useful 
quantities, and his efforts to procure natural rubber have 
been almost grotesque : an excellent proof of the state 
to which he is here reduced, he is tempted even to import 
it in small postal packets. Nor should we forget that a 
year ago, before the public sale of the article was for- 
bidden and the stock virtually commandeered by the 
Government, rubber was fetching from four to five times 
as much as it fetched in the free markets outside. We must 
further remember that rubber is a perishable material. 
The stocks of it even when one possesses it in sufficient 
quantity cannot be kept indefinitely, as can stocks of 
copper, for instance. And, in general, the lack of rubber 
with its multiform and necessary uses in modern war is 
the chief effect produced upon the purely military side 
so far by the blockade. 
I cannot -leave this department without further re- 
marking that the severity of the blockade, which it is to 
be hoped will be made quite absolute, has this great 
modern advantage for us, that it is sound and legitimate 
war involving us in none of those departures from decent 
Christian trachtion which have defiled the enemy's repu- 
tation. A strict blockade, especially in the matter of 
food, as well as the blockade of material necessary for 
arms, is not only a thing which has been universally 
permitted throughout all European conflicts but a thing 
which the enemy in particular has insisted upon as an 
elementary right upon which he will always insist, and 
one which he has himself consistently used. 
CHANGE IN THE GERMAN 
OFFICIAL NEWS 
In considering the psychology of the North German 
and the consequent political necessities of the Prussian 
Higher Command in its relation to its civilian population, 
we shall do well to watch very carefully the new German 
method of keeping their public opinion at home in 
order as the strain upon the Central Empires increases. 
There has been a complete revolution in this since the 
new situation developed with the increasing pressure upon 
every front, the appalling losses they have suffered upon 
the Somme and the breakdown of German troops in 
particular against the Russians in Galicia. 
Our means of studying this new method are an 
analysis of the statements published by official authority 
in the German Press and the official notices sent out for 
domestic consumption. 
The first thing we notice is a deliberate and, in our 
eyes, .foolish phantasy in the matter of figures. The 
German authorities have taken for the first time to pub- ' 
lishing a statement about Allied losses compared with their 
own losses, and they have framed these statements with- 
out any regard to the knowledge possessed by the Allies. 
The whole thing is quite clearly designed for domestic 
consumption. 
Here are two examples. They have multiplied by 
nearly two the French real losses at Verdun and given 
their people figures of the Allied losses on the Somme 
which are not indeed double the truth but exaggerated 
bv quite 50 per cent. At the same time they have given 
