December 14, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
3 
LAND & WATER 
OLD SERJEANTS' INN, LONDON, W.C. 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY/DECEMBER 14. 1916 
CONTENTS 
PAGE 
Holland and Germany. B}' Louis Kaemackers i 
Tlie New Government. (Leader) 3 
The Lines of the Sereth. By Hilaire Belloc 4 
Foundations of Victory. By .\rthur Pollen . Q 
Strategy and Politics. By Colonel Feyler 12 
Wealth, Robbery and War. By L. P. "jacks 13 
The Faith of Tommy. By A Line Officer 15 
Books to Read. By Lucian Oldcrshaw 17 
Days by Salmon Pools. By W. T. Palmer 18 
The Golden Triangle. By Maurice Leblanc 20 
The West End 26 
Town and Country 
Kit and Equipment 
xvi 
.xi.x 
THE NEW (GOVERNMENT 
THE most notable fact about the new Government 
is the defeat of the parliamentarians. Hitherto 
every Prime Minister in constructing his Govern- 
ment has been compelled to take account of 
personalities and politics in the House of Commons. 
The result has been the steady expansion of Cabinets 
Irom the figure of six or seven in the eighteenth century 
to twenty-three, according to the latest record. A 
Cabinet of these dimensions, even if entirely composed of 
angels sent down from Heaven, would be quite un- 
workable. In practice Cabinets are not composed of 
angels ; they are, or were, composed of pohticians who 
hud not necessarily any special competence for the work 
entrusted to them, and many of whom were frankly 
more concerned with their own personal ambitions or 
with political influences in their constituencies than with 
the efficiency of the public service. 
There was a further factor which the general public 
has not even yet sufficiently appreciated. Any politician 
\\ho is placed at the head of a large government depart- 
ment discovers within a very few days that he must 
either adapt himself to the wishes of his permanent 
officials or find his path blocked by more or less organised 
obstruction. Consequently, under the old regime when 
the Cabinet was composed of men who were also depart- 
mental Ministers, every Minister felt bound to fight in 
the Cabinet for the interests of his own department. 
There was no external force to control these internal 
ciuarrels. By separating the Cabinet from the general 
body of Ministers, Mr. Lloyd George has cut at the very 
root of this vicious system, and if he had done nothing 
else would, on this account alone, have deserved well of 
the country. 
The new Cabinet consists of only five men, the 
Prime Minister, Lord Curzon, who holds a purely titular 
office. Lord Milner and Mr. Henderson, who hold no 
office at all, and Mr. Bonar Law the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, who, according to official statement, is not 
expected to attend regularly. The inclusion of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet is sound, for 
his oftice differs fundamentally from any other depart- 
ment. The Treasury, by the fact that it has to provide 
the money to meet all expenditure, must of necessity 
exercise some control over all other departments, and on 
this ground it is right that the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer should be consulted by the Cabinet in all ques- 
tions of policy involving expenditure. The Cabinet 
thus constituted Mill be a real Executive Council. 
Tlie second most notable feature of the new Govern- 
ment is the introduction of nien who have made their 
reputation by other methods than speech-making in the 
House of Commons or on political platforms. One can 
dimly picture the gnashing of teeth which has been in 
progress among the place-hunters in the House of Com- 
mons since these announcements were made. Of 
necessity a number of new offices have had .to be 
created to meet the special needs of the war, such 
as the P'ood Controller, the Shipping Controller 
and the Labour Minister. While the Prime Minister 
was creating these new offices he ought to have 
swept away the old political offices which are mere 
survivals of past conditions, and reconstituted others 
which ought to be treated as unpolitical. The most 
prominent of these latter is the Lord Chancellorship. 
This office is now to be transferred from Lord Buckmastcr 
to Sir Robert Finlay, and it is gratifying to see that the 
new holder of the office expressly stipulates that he is to 
be allowed to refuse the pension which goes with the 
office. One of the financial scandals of our judicial 
system is the practice of assigning a pension of £5,000 a 
year to every ex-Lord Chancellor even if he has only 
i.''ld office for a few months or a few days. But the worst 
defect of the present system is the combination of a 
judicial office with political influence. The Lord Chan- 
cellor of Great Britain is the supreme judge of the king- 
dom, and indeed of the Empire. It is scandalous that a 
man holding such an important office should be chosen 
for political reasons and should be constantly subjected 
to political influences. One of the most urgent reforms 
in our governmental system is the dissociation of this 
judicial office from politics. 
It is to be hoped that Mr. Lloyd George, though 
his temperament does not work that way, will 
give attention, or encourage Mr. Bonar Law to give 
attention, to yet another point^thc necessity for greater 
economy in the .utilisation of our national resources. 
Before the war began there was a great deal of un- 
necessary lavishness in our public expenditure ; there 
has been very little check to this pre-war lavishness on 
the ci\'ilian side of the government, and there has been 
inevitable new lavishness in the expenditure upon- war 
services. It is right that we should spend generously on 
supplying the necessaries of life and the necessaries of 
war to our soldiers and in providing for their after-war 
maintenance, but it is wrong that we should fool away 
money as is now being done on a wholesale scale through 
lack of proper central and detailed control. 
The new Ministry represents a distinct advance in its 
method of construction, and no good purpose can now 
be served by enquiring into the methods by which the 
change was brought about. It would be ungenerous, 
however, to bid farewell to the old regime without paying' 
a just tribute to the late Prime Minister, who for the 
past two and a half years has borne a heavier burden 
and responsibility than any other man in England. 
We think he has deserved well of his country, and his 
generation, and he has less reason than most men to fear 
the verdict of history. It may be that his Government 
(for no Government is infallible) has made mistakes, 
but the responsibility for these mistakes rests equally 
on his associates, many of whom still control the 
destinies of the nation. It is comforting to i^eflect that 
politicians, like humbler men, learn lessons from ex- 
perience : and the downfall of the old Government may 
prove a warning to the new. In any case, we can heartily 
endorse Mr. Lloyd George's own words : " Their one 
predominant task is the vigorous prosecution of the 
war to a triumphant conclusion." That is the only 
answer to the spurious terms of peace which Germany, 
suddenly smitten with the pangs of conscience, has 
audaciously offered to the Allies. 
