10 
LAND & WATER 
October 12, 1916 
continual stream of prisoners passing into the hands of 
the French and the British, the formations are rapidly 
identified and their origin discovered. But I do 
mean to say that a perpetual hurried shiftinj; and re- 
shifting of men in this fashion betrays an intense strain— 
and the strain is not getting less, it is getting greater. 
If the reader asks me why this sort of shui^tling of 
units betrays strain, I would ask him to put himself 
in the position of a local commander who hnds himself 
heavily pressed. UTiat does he do ? He asks for more 
men. " Send me another division." He does what 
Ney did when Napoleon answered : " Men ? Does he 
want me to make them for him ? " Though the German 
commander on the Somme is unlikely to receive so 
Latin a reply. The authorities thus summoned have no 
division ready. That is, they have no fully constituted 
division with all its regular organisation to hand. They 
" make " one. But they can only " make " it by hnd- 
ing out as rapidly as possible at what distant and separate 
points imits can be spared here and there, brigades, 
regiments, sometimes individual companies. They can 
only beat up the required reinforcement by a hasty and 
unnatural association of these disparate factors at the 
last moment. Sometimes the conglomeration is too 
heterogeneous to hold, and it has to be disbanded after 
short use. That is what happened, for instance, to the 
Liebert division, which appeared south of the Somme in 
the 3rd week of July. It was formed of four regiment? 
taken from four separate divisions, widely separated upon 
various parts of the front, and its organisation went tc 
pieces under the strain of the hammering and was dis- 
banded. I have only cited a few examples, publicly 
discussed in the Allied Press, but I think they are suffi- 
ciently significant. H. Belloc 
The Blockade of New York 
By Arthur Pollen 
WITH a sardonic humour all their own, the 
Germans have met the popular demand for a 
more ruthless use of their " most powerful 
war weapon," by a blockade of New York 
Harbour ! It is a master stroke from every point of 
view. Three nations have till recently competed for the 
privilege of being most hated by the Germans — England, 
Russia and the United States. Hindenbcrg, the popular 
idol, has decided between Russia and England, by saying 
that England must be most hated and Russia the most 
feared. The competition then is limited now to the two 
great English-speaking peoples. The blockade of New 
York, being a blow at each of them, surpasses Mackensen's 
decisive victory in the Dobrudja,5Falkenhayn's triumphant 
advances in Transylvania, and the successful issue of the 
latest war loan, as a tonic to Germany's weakening spirit. 
The blow to British shipi:)ing is not, so far as the cam- 
paign has gone at the time of writing, a particularly 
serious one, but it has been inflicted in circumstances of a 
sensational publicity which give it a value in raising 
German moral, second only to a holocaust of lives. But 
the real greatness of the thing lies in combining this with 
as cool and calculated an affront to the Americans as can 
well be imagined. It is exactly this affront that, failing 
murder, was needed which could give its full value to a 
submarine success. For have not the patient, but dis- 
pirited, Germans been told in official bulletins that it 
was only the munitions tliat our sea power enabled us 
to import from America that made our contemptible 
little advance on the Somme at all possible ? The 
blockade of New York, then, will appear as a salutary 
hint to the United States that the kind of neutrality 
which she is maintaining, against which Germany has 
strenuously protested so often and so fruitlessly— is not 
a thing that Hindenberg will submit to lying down. 
Unquestionably a situation of unusual indelicacy has 
been created, and once more we must concede that the 
dishonours of war are with the active naval offensive of 
the enemj'. 
The questions of immediate interest afe. what is the 
British Admiralty going to do, and next, w-hat is President 
Wilson going to do ? To some extent the answer to the 
first question depends upon the answer to the second. 
From quite early days in the war, tne American Govern- 
ment, faithfully reflecting the agitated movements of 
public opinion, began to show a certain uneasiness when 
British cruisers patrolled the approaches to American 
ports. Their " annoying and inquisitorial " presence 
became the subject of continuous, and not too friendly 
comment. The thing culminated in a letter from Mr. 
Lansing in which, as the Daily Telegraph correspondent 
reminds us, he set out, that the United States Govern- 
ment " has always regarded the practice of belligerent 
cruisers patrolling American coasts in close proximity to 
the territorial waters of the United States, and making 
the neighbourhood a station for their observations, as 
inconsistent with the treatment to be expected from 
naval vessels of a friendly Power in time of war." Tlii" 
practice constituted therefore a menace to the frctrdom 
of American commerce and was " vexatious and un- 
courteous to the United States." To this the British 
Ambassador was instructed to reply that, while Great 
Britain could not abandon any of her rights, the Govern- 
ment " would use their best endeavours in order that the 
exercise of such belligerent rights shall be attended with 
as little friction to neutrals as possible." So, by way of 
conciliating American opinion, the British cruising force 
was accordingly withdrawn, with the immediate result 
that the commercial submarine Dculschland was able to 
win and escape from Baltimore, and that the Bremen 
was, at least professedly, sent out to repeat the per- 
formance. The Bremen has never arrived, but, the road 
being now free from British naval friction, it was instead 
f/53 that on Saturday last entered the harbour of New- 
port, having been piloted in by the American submarine 
D2. D2 had taken f/53 for the innocent Bremen. 
But she was received as if she was a very innocent little 
thing herself. There was evidently no idea that she could 
be annoying, inquisitorial, a menace to the freedom of 
American commerce, vexatious, nor even uncourteous, 
to the United States. Her captain called upon the 
Admiral commanding the naval station, a newspaper 
correspondent was welcomed on board, and despatches 
to Count Bernstorff were sent by his hands to be mailed 
to Washington. Admiral Knight, however, with perhaps 
an unpleasant memory of recent notes on the subject of 
belligerent submarines in neutral ports, seems to have 
speeded the departure of the arriving guest, who left, 
we are assured — though not officially — -without replenish- 
ing the supplies needed for the work she was about to do. 
Let us note first, then, that the successful entrance of an 
American harbour by a German war submarine was 
made possible by the withdrawal of British cruisers at 
the request of the American authorities. 
f753's subsequent proceedings are not at the time 
of writing, Tuesday, fully known to, us. But enough 
is known to show that they were of a very startling 
character. By Monday night it was known that 
the British ships Westpoint, Strathdenc, Stephana and 
Kingston had all been torpedoed, and besides, the 
neutral vessels Blommersdijk (Dutch) and Christian 
Kmidsen (Norwegian). L/^53 had left Newport on 
Saturday evening and her first encounter on Sunda> 
morning was with the American steamer, Kansas, which 
after examination, was permitted to proceed. There is 
some confusion as to the precise time at which the six 
ships enumerated were sunk. The Westpoint is said to 
have been attacked at a quarter to 12 midday, 10 miles 
south of Nantucket Island. The .submarine had then 
taken station straight across the westward lane of the 
Atlantic traffic. $tephano was torpedoed at 4.30 in the 
afternoon. She was a passenger steamer bound from 
St. Johns for New York, and there were many Americans 
— the number is variously stated as 30 and 100— on 
board, returning from their autumn holidays. The 
Strathdenc and Kingston are both stated to have been 
sunk at 6 o'clock, and the Blommcrsdiik and the Christian 
Kiiudscn later in the evening. There arc many rumours 
