December 28, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
OLD SERJEANTS' INN, LONDON, W.C. 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1916 
, CONTENTS 
Berlin, August 5th, 1914. By Louis Raemaekers 
Berlin, December t4th, 1916. By Louis Racmaeker 
Not Pertinent. (Leader) 
1917. By Hilaire Belloc 
Farewell to Neutrality. By Arthur Pollen 
No Man's Land. By Centurion 
Strategy and the Balkans. By Colonel Feyler 
The Old Brigade's Christmas. By William T. Palme 
Books to Read. By Lucian Oldershaw 
The Empire's Future. (Review). 
Royalty at Home. (Review), 
The Colden Triangle. By Maurice Leblanc 
The West End 
Kit and Equipment 
PACK 
I 
S 2 
3 
4 
7 
10 
1.1 
r 1.5 
16 
17 
17 
18 
24 
xi 
NOT PERTINENT 
THE Note which the President of the United 
States has addressed to the belligerent nations 
is not pertinent. Had Mr. Wilson chosen to 
write it, say, two years ago, it would have 
been more opportune and more comprehensible, and 
so far as the Allies were concerned, the concrete objects 
• for which the war was being waged could have been stated 
in half-a-dozen words. Britain was fighting in defence 
of her pledged word to Belgium ; France and Russia 
were defending their soil against the aggression of the 
Central Empires. Germany had b'-oken her pledged 
word to Belgium because in her expressed opinion 
tims was the essence of success over France and Russia, 
and she feared delay had her armies been flung against 
the French fortified frontier of Alsace-Lorraine. Trusting 
implicitly in his armed might, the Kaiser, as a studied 
part of his military strategy, sanctioned the practice of 
atrocities in Belgium and the invaded districts of France 
which had never been excelled in the cruellest wars of 
mediseval and barbaric times. Surely that was the 
right hour for the President of a great neutral 
nation, who had at heart " the future peace of the world " 
and who recognised that " no nation in the civiHsed 
world can be said in truth to stand outside the influence 
of the war," to speak. His words would have 
been pertinent ; his Note to the point. But two years 
ago the silence was unbroken. Belgium dripped with 
innocent blood, wantonly shed beside the altar of her 
liberties, and the White House was dumb. 
Two years have passed. Serbia, Poland and , a large 
part of Roumania have shared the fate of Belgium and 
the northern districts of France, and the agonies of the 
latter countries have been intensified by a process of 
Babylonian captivity. Only a small remnant is left of 
the A.rmenian populations, which have been destroyed 
with a wanton thoroughness that would have evoked 
mercy in anj^ other breast than the heart of a Hun, who 
regards all humanity as a mere stepping-stone for 
Prussian ambitions. And now at last the President 
speaks. " He takes the liberty of caUing attention to the 
fact that the objects which the statesmen of the belli- 
gerents on both sides have in mind in this war are 
virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their 
own peoples and to the u-oyld." The italics are ours. 
Are we seriously to understand that the death-cries of 
the butchered nationalities have not reached the ears of 
the President, quick as they are to catch the genera^ 
terms of German statesmen ? Dots Mr. Wilson attribute 
no significance to repeated acts of merciless inhumanity ? 
He has at his disposal ample means of ascertaining the 
exact truth of the devastation and defilement caused by 
the war-chariots of the Huns, for private citizens of the 
United States have played a noble part in mitigating, so 
far as lay within their pow er, the cruelties of German 
mihtary occupation. But , does he seriously accept the 
words of Bethmann-Hollweg and shut his eyes to the 
Kaiser's measures of frightfulness by land and sea ? 
No better answer can be given to Mr. Wilson's Note than 
in the very words which appeared in this column last 
week before his Note was published : " The end for whicli 
we are fighting does not consist in certain terms which 
we are now prepared to state nor in any scheme for the 
sparing in this or that degree of the enemy. The end 
which we' are now approaching is Complete Military 
Victory, and only when that is achieved will the opinion of 
free men tolerate the discussion of further matters upon ^ 
such success." There is nothing more that can be use- 
fully said on these peace proposals , no matter whence they 
emanate. We are resolved to destroy, to wipe out the 
corporate tradition and the spiritual organism which 
has threatened us. We are determined to put into the 
hearts of those who had thought themselves our superiors 
a conviction that they are our inferiors. " The whole story 
of the human race "■ — we are still quoting what we wrote 
last week^" consists in the affirmation through battle 
of one will over another. The conquering will has sur- 
vived and the concjuered will has gone under." Were a 
concrete illustration of the truth of this saying demanded, 
everyone would point unhesitatingly to the American War 
of Secession. The spirit which animates the British Empire 
and indeed all the Allies in this hour cannot be more 
exactly or more finely expressed than in Abraham Lincoln's 
words : " With malice towards none, with charity towards 
all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the 
fight, let us strive on to finish the work that we are in." 
The work has been none of our seeking. It was thrust 
on us by the Hohenzollerns' mad craving for world 
domination. ^Ve are fighting not for ourselves but for 
posterity, and courage shall not fail us. The wish has 
no doubt often been father to the thought that the war 
would have been over before this , but three years was the 
period set by Lord Kitchener and the length of time de- 
fined in the raising of the new armies now carrying on 
the struggle. There is no reason for Mr. Wilson to 
imagine it would have ended in shorter time. And 
when he writes that " every part of the great family of 
mankind has felt the burden and terror of this unpreced- 
ented contest of arms," he must not lose sight of the truth 
that those of this great family who have already sur- 
rendered sons to secure libeiiy to the nations stand in a 
different position from others who have for the most part 
been onlookers. Every life that has been laid down 
is a new pledge that those in whom the breath of life 
remains shall not weaken until military victory iscomplete. 
There is a duty to the dead as well as to the living, and 
the former weighs heavier in the scale at a great national 
crisis like the present. This duty is the animating 
principle which inspires the nation to accept uncom- 
plainingly every self-sacrifice that its leaders demand 
of it. The full strength of our resolution has not yet been 
gauged ; there are still unplumbed depths in the character 
of 'the British democracies. At Crecy the knights dis- 
mounted and stood shoulder to shoulder wi.th the archei-s, 
and so the battle was won. And it is exactly the same 
in this fight. The whole Empire stands shoulder to 
shoulder irrespective of class and social distinctions. 
I-Iowe\'er good and well meaning may be the intentions 
of the peace-makers, their voice is as tinkling cymbals 
until the ti-umpets of \ictory sound. 
