September 14, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
offensive is. It is not- an advance. Each advance is 
only an index of its character, not the essence of its 
character. It is a pounding. It is a compelHng of the 
enemy to concentrate more and more heavily precisely 
as his necessity increases and his power of concentration 
declines. And coincidently, it is a progressive lowering 
of his power to resist, moral and physical. It is a con- 
tinual increasing delivery of metal against an enemy 
whose power to replv, though very formidable, no longer 
equals the attack upon him. and is falling further and 
further behind in the race. It is a putting to the ordeal, 
more and more severe, of the enemy's decreasing power 
to react. 
It is a pounding which, as each stage of it is achieved, 
perpetually ^idvances, and it does so coincidently and as a 
necessary consequence increases the length of the concave 
line the strained enemy has to hold, and at the same time 
threatens more and more his still distant but vital main 
communications, by which he nourishes the great salient 
that his trenches, when he was pinned two years ago, 
thrust into eastern France. 
To say more than that (and even that is little more 
than repetition) would be redundant. At any rate, for 
the purpose of this weekly analysis in Land & Water. 
But at the same time we must remember that this tre- 
mendous battle is far and away the greatest concentration 
of energy to be discovered anywhere at the present 
moment throughout all the theatres of the war. The 
strain that is here being put upon the enemy is a strain 
which has collected from him upon that one little front of 
30 miles, first and last, 50 divisions, and never less at 
any one time than something close upon a division a 
.mile, to maintain himself at all without breaking. 
The Scale of the Somme 
There are various ways in which we can appreciate the 
scale of the thing. The enemy lost in two months as many 
men by capture as the French before Verdun lost in five. 
The enemy has had to feed that furnace in just over two 
months with more men than the French used to feed 
Verdun in five. 
Another way to look at it is to remember that the 
number of the enemy who have been under fire here on 
this thirty miles is already much more than hail the 
number of the enemy who were struck by Brussilof in the 
whole space between the Marshes and Roumania, when he 
launched his great offensive. 
Yet another way of stating it is to point out that the 
Somme accounts for such a concentration of the enemy 
—permanently maintained under a strain permanently 
increasing — as leaves the rest of the western line, save 
and except before the sector of Verdun, at the very 
minimum of garnishing. He has perhaps one man to the 
running yard for the moment along that line. We may 
note in conclusion that for some reason best known to 
themselves, the German authorities are now publishing 
much fuller lists of casualties. But even so I can but 
repeat what I said some weeks ago in this place, we have 
a clear opportunity now of proving the value of his Hsts. 
The Allies hold a very great number of unwounded 
German prisoners. They know their names and their 
units, and the days on which they were captured. The 
total number approaches 50,000. Very well : Let the 
German lists be carefully followed and let us have con- 
trolled, once and for all : 
(a) The' numbers the Germans have allowed as missing 
to be published compared with the numbers we know we 
have taken. In other words, the balance of falsehood, 
or, if there is no falsehood, the admission, of the truth. 
Of course, the number allowed as missing by the Germans 
should, if it is accurate, far exceed our captures, for it 
includes the number of dead left behind our advance. 
(b) The delay shown in the publication of names. 
(c) The proportion between the results arrived at and 
the earlier results arrived at by the French and the 
Russians under similar circumstances. This is exceed- 
ingly important, for if we find a great discrepancy it 
will prove that while the Germans are publishing fuller 
lists now— under pressure — they had published false 
ones earlier. I verily believe that nothing but some 
strict work of this kind will convince, at any rate before 
the end of the war, those who are still the dupes of the 
enemy's transparent trick in this matter. They know 
Illusions 
By Emile Cammaerts. 
Le chat s' aiguise les griffes au tronc du vieux pommier, 
Une pomme verte tombe sur le gazon ; 
Rien ne vaut un clair matin d'ete 
Pour se creer des illusions. 
De gros nuages blancs, par-dessus les sapins, 
Dressent leurs cimes neigeuses ; 
Du linge, sur une corde, au bout du jardin, 
Bat de I'aile dans la brise rieuse. 
Les figues murissent contre le mur, 
Les roses escaladent le vieux colombier, 
Lfi-haut, un avion passe at foUe allure, 
Les hirondelles virent autour de la cheminee. 
Et, sur I'herbe, une petite fiUe, 
Robe rose, parasol blanc, 
Boucles cendrees et mollets bruns, sautille 
Autour d'une voiture d'enfant. 
Le chien happe une mouche posee sur sou museau, 
L'enfant rit aux eclats, la tete renversee, 
De la fenetre, une voix de femme lui fait echo. 
Tout est paisible, en ce monde, tout est bon ! . < i 
Rien ne vaut vraiment un clair matin d'et6 
Pour se creer des illusions ! 
[All Rights Reserved] 
that the German communiques on naval losses are 
calculatedly -false. They know that the fatuous message, 
" all our airships returned undamaged," was calculatedly 
false. Yet they accept a third form of statement where 
there is a far better reason for falsehood ! 
The German casualty lists are not complete. They 
never have been complete (save at the beginning of the 
war when he was following the model of 1870, believing 
that the result would be that of 1870). It is not to his 
advantage that they should be complete. He has no 
interest in making them complete. But if there be a public 
record of the kind of way in which he is behaving about 
this concrete test, we have him caught by one of two 
things. Either (i) knowing that we make such a calcula- 
tion openly and publish it he will himself begin a true 
record — in which case we shall at once have startling 
contrasts between his present figures and his past under 
similar circumstance, or (2) he will methodically continue 
his old system of minimising losses, in which case we shall 
have the proof of his trick staring us in the face. If it 
be contended that full and exact published hsts (of 
which remember the enemy has already shown us an 
example), will give him too much knowledge — would, for 
instance, enable him to tell who were missing and who 
were dead — then at least let us have the general results. 
I know it will go hard with those who have so long main- 
tained that the enemy casualty lists were models of 
accuracy. But this is not the moment to think of saving 
anybody's face. The one thing the public at home has to 
get is a sound general view of the war. It is a condition 
of health, and it is the duty of every publicist and; I 
may add, of the authorities above all to promote it. 
H. Belloc 
The despatches dealing with the battle of Jutland, the 
greatest naval victory since Trafalgar, have been published in 
various forms, but the best is the shilUng illustrated volume 
for which Irish Life is responsible. The official despatches are 
prefaced by an admirable article by Mr. Arthur Pollen, which 
is explanatory of the battle, and also deals with both strategy 
and tactics. He speaks of the despatch as a " tale of some- 
thing more than patriotism and courage. We are given an 
insight into the inner working, the almost hidden soul of a 
rare order of beings who live a life apart from the rest of us. 
. . . Each piece of excellence, each glorious act of heroism 
is the fruit of an individual lifetime of self devotion to duty 
made possible in a service that exists for no other purpose." 
