8 
LAS\U & WATER 
October 19, 1916 
line. Any retirement extends it, and no one knows 
that better than his Higher ("omniand. Bnissilov's suc- 
cess had already extended it by Kit) miles, the Roumanian 
entry by another 350, though it is true that. the lattt-r is a 
mountain line demanding a much smaller number of 
troops than the line further north. 
But upon the West there was still an opportunity for a 
material reduction of his liabilities. 
As we know the enemy refused that op])ortunity and 
maintained the 500 odd miles of trenches which stretched 
from the North Sea to the Alps and include the great 
salient of Noyon. 
•It was not until after the Somme offensive had developed 
and even until the enemy appreciated its continuous 
character, that the talk about the shortening of the 
Western front reopened. But this time it reopened, 
curjously enough, not uni\-ersally or specially in the 
Allied Press, but, undoubtedly -by order, in the German 
Press and in the Austrian. 
Now this is a curious accident which we will do well to 
look at closely. As long as it was well within the enemy's 
power to retire in goocl order and before he was subject 
to any very serious pressure at any point of the great 
salient, not a word was said upon Jiis sidi- about retire- 
nienti All of a sudden, and some time after the great 
battle of the Somme had begun tb put him in jeopardy, 
he produces, under the eye of his strong censorship, a 
mass of open discussion to prepare opinion at home for 
such a retirement. What does that mean ? 
It certainly does not mean that he is proposing an 
action of that kind of his own free will. It is too late. 
If he shortens his line now in the West he shortens it 
under the worst possible conditions, and \mcler con- 
ditions which get more and more diflicult for him with 
every week that passes. He talks of the line which was 
the old French defensive line of the north-east covering 
Lille, Maubeuge, Meziercs (his present headquarters), 
and Verdun. It would save him at the very mbst only 
60,000 yards — say, six divisions — and the retirement 
would be undertaken imder really disastrous conditions, 
with troops unfit for such an effort and in the presence 
of the enormous pressure to which he is now subjected. 
We have further the analogy of history to guide us. 
Many a wise commander has shorteaed his line while 
there was yet time. Many a one has fallen back from ex- 
tended positions in the open to some quite small perimeter 
of defended positions — Torres Vedras, for example. But 
no commander, great or little, wise or unwise, has done it 
in the' last stages of a desperate issue. Napoleon refused 
to do it' in '14. One may without too much straining 
of language describe his bold stroke in '15, at the 
very last moment of his hazard, as;a deliberate extension 
of front. 
The reason for such a policy is obvious : It appears in 
every operation, commercial and civil no less than mil- 
tary. Caution, reserve, husbanding, is the attitude of a 
power in full possession of itself, secure of an ample 
margin and playing for time. It is not the action of a 
power which has already overstrained it.self, and is playing 
for luck. A really serious shortening of the line — falling 
right back to the Meuse, for instance, abandoning half 
Belgium and all but an insignificant strip of the occupied 
district of France — though it would save perhaps double 
the number of men saved by the Lille- Verdun line, could 
not be undertaken. The first operation would almost 
certainly cost far more men and material than it would 
save ; the second would promise such lo.sses as would be 
disastrous. What then is the object of this curiously 
open discussion in the enemy press ? 
I take it that these descriptions and surmises are per- 
mitted in order to prepare opinion in case a retirement 
should at last be forced on the enemy. In other words, 
it would seem to be such a preparation of domestic 
opinion in Germany as would make the German public 
regard enforced retirement as a voluntary act. 
Consider how the news would affect Germany if opinion 
were thus prepared. The losses in men, if the thing 
could be done without the line breaking, could be mini- 
mised for a long time. The losses in material would 
certainly be completely hidden. Opinion, already pre- 
pared, would regard the disaster as a piece of wise 
strategy on the part of the enemy's command. 
We must never forget that, according to the accounts 
of all trustworthy witnesses, German opinion as a whole 
is still ignorant of the Battle of the Marne. The very 
phrase is unknown. Those who jirofess technical lan- 
guage speak of " the retirement on the .A,isne," and men 
of good education and position throughout the (ierman 
Fmpire, men following the war closely and judging it 
soberly, still regard that operation as something due to 
the initiative of the (ierman Higher Command. The 
populace and the rank and file of the soldiery are content 
with a maj> which shows the five great (ierman armies 
which were defeated between Paris and the Argonne and 
which, in their defeat, lost the war for their masters, as 
" advanced posts " which were called back to the line 
of the Aisne for superior reasons. 
Now, knowing this policy to have been successful, we 
may reasonably conclude tluit it will, in the last phases of 
this war be repeated, for it will give a breathing space, 
and if a short further lull can be imposed, after the bad 
losses of the retirement, opinion, during that lull at least, 
could be stabilised if it had been taught to regard retire- 
ment as due to the initiative of its own commanders. 
That, I take it, is the meaning of so public and open 
a discussion upon so delicate a matter. As for a volun- 
tary withdrawal to the advantage of the enemy and 
on his own initiative, it is now too l.tte. 
H. Belloc 
Messrs. John Murray have just published a little manual 
on First Aid for the Trenches (is. net.), which deals in concise 
and instructive fashion with tlie means of treating wounds 
and injuries. The information given is intended to be supple- 
mentary to the work of a medical officer, and the book is 
one which sliould find a place in the pocket library of every 
officer on Service. 
Mr. John I^ane has added to his list of soldier stories 
Russian Chaps, by M. C. Lethbridge (is. net), in which volume 
a series of charming little' sketches gives many aspects of 
Ivan Ivanovitch " and his friends. The author, who has 
intimate acquaintance with the real Siberia, also knows 
European Russia very well, and in this too slight volume the 
main characteristics of the Russian soldier are delicately 
and yet forcibly reproduced. 
Notes on Trench Routine (6d. net), published by Messrs. 
Forster Groom and Co., is a little booklet of hints which every 
junior officer would do well to have in his pocket on service. 
The same may be said of Trench Cons/ruction (is. net) published 
by the same firm, and not jnerely embodying theories on the 
subject of making trenches, but also containing useful hints 
on equipment and the nature of the work, together with a 
quantity of illustrative plans and drawings. Both these 
manuals should form part of every subaltern's library. 
It is a pity that Mr. Gilbert Cannan does not devote his 
undoubted talent to the handling of better — one might 
almost say cleaner — material than is evident in his latest 
book, Mendel. (T. Fisher Unwin, 6s.) Mendel is -a Jew boy 
of the slums, who comes by devious and sometimes unsavoury 
ways to Cezanne and post-impressionism, and to love of 
Morrison, the Christian girl whose soul is far greater than his 
own, and whom he can never love quite as well as he loves 
himself. The book is sordid and yet brilliant, giving one the 
feeling that tarnished gilt might give ; it is, too, a piece of 
detailed analysis of a young man who, like some of Compton 
Mackenzie's young men, is not worth the trouble. Before 
August of two years ago Mendel — the man, not the book — 
might have been tolerable, but the young men of to-day are 
concerned (sucii of them as lay claim to manhood) with 
greater things than these. 
When a girl proposes marriage. to a man whom she has 
never met socially, one assumes that there is something 
wrong with the girl ; the assumption is correct in the case of 
Ouenride Chidcock, the heroine of The Honest Laivyer, by 
(i. v. McFadyen (John Lane, 6s.), and yet before one has 
read half the book one is in love' with the girl, and with 
Kenelm Ridley, the honest lawyer, as well. This early 
Georgian romance leads the reader on irresistibly from 
chapter to chapter and from mystery to greater mystery, ^he 
interest being maintained not so much by the complexity of 
the plot — which is at times a little improbable, especially 
when Ridley deduces the whereabouts of a missing will from 
next to no premises at all — as by the fact that the author 
has portrayed a manly man and a very lovable woman, 
and has made them real. It is an excellent novel, deserving 
of a large public. 
