October 5, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
up by an advanced lateral line 4, 4 on which the 
junction of Achiet is the vital spot. Light railways 
supplement the old permanent lines and petrol 
supplements all railway service to an extent undreamt 
of before this war. But the permanent railway 
lines still have a preponderant value. We had a 
capital instance of this in the determination at very 
heavy loss which the enemy made and was able to 
maintain to save the lateral railway in Champagne last 
year. We had another example of it in the considerable 
effect adverse to the French at Verdun, produced by the 
fact that one loop of the Ste. Menehould railway was 
directly under the enemy's fire. 
Achiet le Grand then, if not vital to the service of 
the German line, is at least very useful. It is perhaps 
already under the Alhed tire. Vein, as yet out of range, 
similiarly controls lines 2 and 3. Very little further 
advance northward makes both unusable as the junction 
behind Chaulnes has already been made unusable by 
the French, and the whole German front on the Somme 
will be dependent almost entirely upon road traffic for 
supply. 
The Grown Prince's Interview 
A shrewd observer of the' present phase of the cam- 
paign has said that one of the indications of its approach- 
ing end will be the taking up by the enemy, in his propa- 
ganda among neutrals, of military arguments in place of 
the vague and quite unmilitary generalities which he has 
hitherto seen fit to provide. The suggestion is that when 
a man is being beaten so visibly that the most distant and 
uninstructed neutral can see it for himself, he must give 
a military excuse or explanation. But that while his 
position on the map is stationary or while he can still 
pretend to success in the eyes of those unaccustomed to 
military history and calculation, he is free to talk whatever 
nonsense he thinks politically advisable. The great 
modern example of this sort of thing is the apologetics 
of Napoleon's Government in 1813 and 1814, although in 
that case the eyewash was intended not for neutrals but 
principally for the citizens of Paris. You lind that 
Government still using general, vagus and confident 
affirmation long after Lcipsic, that is long after the 
position had really become hopeless. But when the 
invasion of 1814 is begun and there can be no doubt at 
all of what is toward, when every peasant' in France 
understands that the system has broken down, then you 
have not only one of the finest bits of military work in 
history accomplished by the losing side, but its official 
pronouncements begin to deal more and more with the 
true military aspect of affairs. 
I am not sure that I shall agree with this critic in the 
present instance. The Germans have proved themselves 
so wedded to routine, so incapable of leaving any deep 
groove they have cut for themselves, that I should doubt 
their abandoning their methods even at the last. But, 
at any rate, they have not abandoned them yet. The 
statement, officially drawn up for American consumption 
and ascribed to the Crown Prince of Prussia, a statement 
published in the British Press of to-day, Tuesday, October 
3rd, is on the old lines — only more so. It is not as comic 
as the solemn official prophesy sent out by the German 
agents in Washington that the Crown Prince would be in 
Verdun upon August ist, or a Httle earlier. Nor is it as 
startling as the confident affirmation of Bernhardi ju^tar 
year ago in the American Press' that his countrymen were 
about to break the Allied line in the West and pour over 
France. But it is on the old lines of putting the military 
situation so that the simplest mind cm thoroughly mis- 
understand it : It is parallel to the German Chancellor's 
fatuous remark about looking at the map! The gist of 
the so-called " interview " (a communicated article, of 
course), which is of very great length, is contained in ita 
central sentence. The translation runs thus : 
" What are our enemies trying to do ? I suppose they 
are trying to kill us off or tire us out. Will they succeed ? 
No." ' ■ > 
-Stupid as that is I do not say that it is ill-framed for tho 
consumption of any reader who is bored with and ignorant 
of military history and the study of war. It is not stuptder, 
for instance, than the idea that if it takes you one day to 
advance one mile in a particular offensive, it will 
take you a year to advance 365 miles. It is not stupider ' 
than the classic nonsense about " deadlocks." But it is 
amazingly untrue to the situation. If the sentence* had 
run differently by only one or two wprds, it would' have 
been as illuminating as it is meaningless. Consid^ such 
an amendment as this : 
" What are our enemies trying to do ? I suppose they 
are trying to wear down our line until somewhere it snaps'. 
Will they succeed? I hope not." If the official scribe 
had put such words as these into the Crown " Prince's 
mouth he could have continued with serious argument 
showing that the Central Powers had such and such 
reserves for drafts ; that the AUies might grow weary of 
their task, etc.. etc. But the propaganda directed from 
Berlin never will take civil opinion seriously. It is one, and 
I think not the least, of the great psychological errors it has 
made throughout this war. Neutral opinion and 'civilian 
opinion in general is confused, often misled, and is not 
infrequently open to absurd suggestions like that 
piece of panic which regarded the Austro-German 
advance through Serbia as a move, towards- India. 
But to-day when whole nations are mobilised and 
after two years' experience of war, it can no longer 
be controlled by statements obviously addressed to aii 
audience which was ignorant of the simplest element 
of the campaign. There is hardly anyone now who does 
not know that victory consists in destroying your enemy's 
cohesion, that is, his existence as an organised armed force, 
and that this is accomplished by cutting and by 
enveloping ; and that so far from this being identical 
with mere killing some of the greatest and most 
decisive actions in history have been singularly inex- 
pensive, while nation after nation in history with plentj; 
of moral and physical energy left to continue the combal 
has been unable to continue it for the simple reason that 
its power of producing organised armed forces, save 
sporadically, has been destroyed. That is all the Allies 
are out to do to the Central Powers : To bring them to a 
state in which th'ey no longer can keep in the field organise(^ 
armed forces capable of meeting their opponents. And 
that state of affairs has often been produced in a long 
and weary campaign quite suddenly within a few weeks 
of its close. The longer the fronts you try to hold the 
larger the task you have attempted, and the more it 
exceeds your ultimate reserves of strength the more 
rapid as a rule is the final collapse. H. Bellog 
Submarines : Neutrals and Peace 
By Arthur Pollen 
THOSE of us who read the German Chancellor's 
speech in the eager hope that it would give us 
some clue to the enemy's naval intentions, have 
had to reconcile themselves to disappointment. 
We can console ourselves with the knowledge that his 
German hearers are even less satisfied than we are. 
They had come to hear him say that at last the sub- 
marine tap would be turned on full, and their strongest 
and most persistent enemy deluged. They had to con- 
tent themselves with the platitude that any German 
statesman would be lucky to get off with hanging, if 
having means at hand for really hastening the finish of 
the war, he neglected to use it. They were intended to 
make the inference that the submarines were doing all 
that they could possibly do. There is, of 'course, a very 
acute controversy proceeding on this very matter, and 
Bethman Holwegg begged the whole question by the 
adverb. Perhaps in the secret sessions now proceeding 
he will give chapter and verse for thus moderating German 
hopes. This is only one of the many points oj^ which the 
German people have been deluded and must now be 
undeceived. The fear of the Government is that the 
resolution of the country will crack in the process, as 
well it' may, for the transition from the assurance of 
