November 30, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
OLD SERJEANTS' INN, LONDON, W.C. 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30. 1916 
CONTENTS 
The Great Sacrifice. By Louis Raemaekers 
FoUv of Delay. (Leader) 
The" Roumanian Retreat. By Hilaire Belloc 
Mr. Balfour's Dilemna. By Arthur Pollen 
German Reserves. A Reply by Mr. Belloc 
Field Punishment. By Centurion 
PAGE 
I 
3 
4 
6 
9 
^ ^ II 
The New Warfare at'' Verdun. By Arno Dosch 
Fleurot I3 
What we are Fighting For. By L. March Phillipps 15 
The Coming Trade War. By Arthur Kitson 16 
Books to Read. By Lucian Oldershaw 18 
The Golden Triangle. By Maurice Leblanc 19 
Influence of the Y.M.C.A. By The Editor 24 
The West End 26 
Town and Country 
Kit and Equipment 
XVI 
xix 
T 
THE FOLLY OF DELAY 
K 9 ^HE Government in our opinion has made a 
serious mistake over the delay in appointing a 
Food Controller. Any man endued with the 
powers which Mr. Runciman implied were 
necessary in order to make the office effective, will have 
to act in diametrical opposition to the ordinary and 
conventional ideas of the liberty of the subject. His 
powers connote an interierence with the sacred laws of 
supply and demand which no class of person has been 
more conspicuous in upholding than pohticians of the 
very shade to which the President of the Board of Trade 
belongs. Notwithstanding these facts, this new appoint, 
ment was received cordially, thus marking the degree to 
which the individual is prepared to go in order to make 
sure of victory. It has come to this that the man in the 
street and the woman in the home are perfectly willing to 
place themselves in subjection to rules which the Govern- 
ment may issue, once they realise they are essential, but 
they do not and cannot understand why, if they are 
essential, the Government should allow one day after 
another to slip away without definite action being taken. 
The business man or woman (for women nowadays have 
learnt by experience almost as much about business as 
men), express open amazement that seeing a Food Con- 
troller had become necessary, the necessary man was 
not discovered before the announcement was made. This 
seems to them the obvious thing to have been done, and in 
view of Mr. Runciman's speech, everyone not unnaturally 
thought it had been done. 
In these pages we have never indulged in recrimination 
of the authorities for actions or policies which have gone 
awry. We have always recognised it is not fair to pro- 
nounce judgment on a case until the full facts are avail- 
able. Nor have we allowed ourselves to be carried away 
by popular clamour. Take the present newspaper 
attack on the Admiralty. It is on the face of it popular, 
but we have reason to believe much of it is based on error 
and misconception. Our Naval writer, Mr. Arthur Pollen, 
deals ably with the subject to-day. But as regards 
this appointment of a Food Controller, it is manifest that 
if proper procedure had been followed, no waste of time 
need have ensued. And this delay gives colour to the 
often repeated charge that tlie Government suffers 
from neurasthenia. For one of the commonest symptoms 
of this malady is an inability to arrive at a decision. Pro- 
bably many persons never realise that to make up one's 
mind — to use the common phrase — demancTs a high 
expenditure of nervous energy, and the reason ^4'hy people 
find it hard when out of sorts to decide on any given 
question is simply because nervous force is at a low ebb. 
And so it comes about that when the Government, not 
necessarily from lack of energy, but becaiuse it" halts 
between two opinions, is slow to make up its mind, it 
lets loose on itself a volume of adverse criticism which is 
good neither for itself nor for the country, nor for the 
prosecution of the war. And it is the active pushing on 
with the war which is the one and only thing that occupies 
men's minds at the moment. Let the Government 
be strong on this one point, quick to decide when action 
is necessary, and it has no cause to fear. It will find 
that as it was with kings of olden time so it will be 
with it — it can do no wrong. 
Captain Charles Bathurst, M.P., a practicsi and scientific 
agriculturist, in a letter to the Times on Tuesday, drew 
attention to the need of immediate action by the Govern- 
ment if home-grown food supply is to be increased 
materially next year. Seed-time does not pause for 
Cabinets. If the area of wheat and other products is to 
be extended largely in 1917 action must be taken at once. 
" While food ships continue to be sunk," writes Captain 
Bathurst, " unprccedentedly large areas of our own arable 
land remain uncultivated and unsown, and there is as yet 
no vestige of a Gox^ernment scheme for placing under 
spring wheat, potatoes, and oats in the first quarter of 
next year large areas of land which will otherwise remain 
fallow, foul, and unproductive." Those who know 
the writer of these sentences are aware that they come 
from the pen of one of the most sincere and straight- 
forward men at Westminster, a man who would scorn 
to write anything sensational. They represent the 
absolute truth. It is inconceivable that this advice should 
be ignored unless indeed ths adverse critics of the Govern- 
ment state truly that its members cannot make up their 
minds, that they are neurasthenics. 
There can be no question that food supply is the topic 
of the hour throughout the country, even more so 
than man-power, vital though that be. No estate is top 
high or lowly to display an active interest in food. 
The shortage of crops in Northern and Southern America 
compels these islands to look to the Antipodes ior its 
extra supphes, but the opinion grows that if only Govern- 
ment would give immediate encouragement, local pro- 
duce might be enormously increased. Take potatoes, 
for instance : Germany produces close on fifty million 
tons, while the production of the British Islands is under 
six miUion tons. This proportion of 50 to 6 is melan- 
choly and ridiculous ; it requires only the smallest effort 
on the part of the Board of Agriculture, put forth in the 
right direction and at the right time, to double at least this 
production. But to quote Captain Bathurst again, 
British agriculture for half a century has been the victim 
" of almost contemptuous Government neglect." This 
is no Party question. St. Stephen's does not under- 
stand the meaning of Agrarians. Landowner, farmer, 
land-labourer, herdsman and shepherd — their votes 
have never commanded real political power, their 
members in the House have been few and scattered, 
I lacking the weight of organisation, wherefore once 
the elections have been done with, their peculiar claims 
have been jettisoned. But the country at last reahses 
that God made the cornfields, man the towns ; and 
they are asking why it is that these cornfields do not 
give their full yields. The fault in the past has lain 
in the man-made towns, who were ever ready to sacrifice 
well nigh anything to the fetish of cheap food. They 
are awakening to their error to-day, and are ready to 
rectify it for their own sakes. But it is the Govern- 
ment which must take action, immediate action. Further 
delay were folly, worse than folly. 
