LAND & WATER 
December 28, 1916 
1917 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THE drag, upon operations which mid-winter 
necessarily impo>es has been einphasi/od in the 
past week by an almost complete lull. With 
the exception of a slight Russian retirement in the 
North Dobrudja there has been no movement or 
attempted movement in any theatre of war during these 
days. 
the moment is therefore suitable for some revit-w 
of the military position as a whole at this close of the 
year and of the situation in which the Allies enter 1917. 
The Debit Side 
We shall do well to begin such an appreciation by as 
emphatic a statement as possible of the disabilities under 
which the Allies still labour. They are nothing to what 
were the disabilities of the Allies two years ago or even 
eighteen months ago, and if ill-instructed opinion was 
then less gloomy than it is now that is the fault not of 
surrounding circumstances but of its ignorance of those 
circumstances. 
But though our disabilities are less by far than they 
were, especially in comparison with those of the enemy, 
yet they are formidable in themselves. And it is per- 
haps the fact that they have been unknown in previous 
wars upon such a scale that has unduly depressed the 
public mind. 
Most of us are acquainted especially with some one 
or other of these disabilities, and oddly enough a full 
acquaintance with some one seems to affect a man more 
than a general conspectus of the whole. It is paradoxical 
but true that a person Surveying the whole field of our 
difficulties sees the future more cheerfully than one' 
who has specialised upon a particular corner of that 
field. 
But \s-hether it be to our gratification or no the im- 
portant matter in all )udj,ment is the exactitude of evi- 
dence, so we will begin by tabulating the series of handicaps 
under wliich the Alliance suffers. 
I. The Communications of the Alliance are exceed- 
inglv long, in the main maritime, and therefore perpetually 
vulnerable. 
This is an exceedingly important point. By far the 
most important strategic point against us, and it has 
not been sufficiently emphasized. 
Communications do not quite mean in the present war 
wliat they have meant in the past. 
•Under modern conditions, that is, under the twofold 
necessity of highly specialised instruments, and wholly 
mobilised nations, the true character of communications 
is a trajectory between the manufactory and e\en the mine 
and forest and the front. 
When Napoleon went into Russia in 1S12 his com- 
munications grew long enough, Hea\en knows I They 
were hundreds of miles long before he had reached Moscow, 
and he had lost upon them by that time more than three- 
(|uarters of his total strength. Still he coulil regard the 
Valley of the Vistula, 01 even that of the Nicmen, as his 
base. The things that were required for war at that time 
were for the most part to hand in any occupied and settled 
district from which the operations started. 
To-day that is not the case, both because the instru- 
ments necessary to war are so highly specialised and 
because their numbers are so vastly increased. The 
Allies have not, for instance, betvs-een them all the mere 
metal required for the war ; the Western .'Mlies have, not 
the food required for it. They are within a close margin 
of the coal retpiired for it. A great proportion of things 
necessary to the continuance of the struggle must come 
to them from far over sea and often from inland districts 
which add hundreds of miles to the communications even 
before the sea voyage begins. 
I wonder how many people realize that one main 
branch of the Russian communications alone is nearly 
14,000 miles long and invohes at least two tranship- 
ments, and that some 6,000 nv'lcs of that trajei ini\ is 
oceanic. Another \ ital Russian communication is nearly 
.5.000 miles long, is inlerrupted by the Arctic ice, 
and the Arctic clarkness, constantly exposed to the 
submarine, and necessitates one most diliicult piece of 
transhipment at the junction of the land and water 
communications. 
The Salonika communications are. for the greater and 
latter part, wholly maritime, equally subject to the sub- 
marine menace:' in one case nearly 2,000, in another 
some 3,000 miles long. While even for the fully 
equipped Western Allies there are certain most important 
branches of communications which involve the whole 
breadth of the Atlantic and the supply of food stretches 
further afield to .A.ustralasia and to the East. 
.Now communications of this sort, immensely lengthy 
and largely maritime, do not compare for difficulty with 
the easy internal, comparatively short railway communica- 
tions of the enejuy. Maritime communications have 
always been more vulnerable than 'land communications, 
even when there was no under-sea lighting and when the 
radius of action of the maritime defensive was limited 
to the range of the gun. To-day they are far more 
vulnerable. 
Again, these very lengthy maritime communications 
in\olve an expenditure of transport far more serious than 
the land communications of the enemy. It is true that 
weight of metal for weight of metal, and ton of coal 
for ton of coal, a big ship is a more efficient vehicle than 
a train of trucks drawn by a locomotive, but it is much 
slower, it involves transhipment, and it works upon a 
less amount of available stock. The rolling stock of the 
Central flowers is, like the rolling stock of England and 
I'Vance and Italy, -sufficient, if no more than sufficient for 
the land communications of those belligerents. But 
the enormous maritime communications, upon which the 
Allies so largely depend, have "put a far more serious 
strain upOn the existing tonnage of the world. That 
is why the enemy has concentrated upon the reduction 
of that tonnage without any regard to decency or honour, 
or to the common conscience of civilization. 'Ihe 
reaction is felt in every department. It affects domestic 
fuel, the staples of food, hghting ; everything. 
I have emphasized my first point at this length, because 
it is without doubt themost important of the drawbacks 
under whicii the Alliance suffers in comparison with the 
enemy. 
2. The Allies are strategically separated. 
This is an accident inevitable to the conditions, the 
geographical conditions, under which the war is being 
fought. 
It lias two bad effects, one in the field of main .strategy 
and one in the field of supply. 
Separation and Supply 
In the lifld of sui)i)ly the Eastbrn portion of the 
Alliance, that is the Russian Empire to which we must 
now add Roumania, has a surplus of food, of wood, of oil, 
and suffers from a grave deficit of industrial power. 
The \\estern Allies now at last enjoy a surplus of in- 
dustrial power, though their material must come from 
outside their own boundaries to a large extent. 
Suppose the Alliance to be not separated geographically, 
but united as are the Allied territories of the enemy, it 
would be clear that in such a case this handicap would 
disappear. The immense stores of raw material now 
shut up in the Arctic Ocean and by the closed Darda- 
nelles would in that case be poured into the granaries, 
manufaclorii's and stores of England, Erance and Italy. 
C^onvtrs.ly, the \\est could munition t'he East as easily 
as Bohemia and \\estphalia and Silesia munition Hungary, 
Bulgari;>. and Turkey to-day. 
As it is the handicap is as permanent as it is 
^ir'on^. The East is munitinncd witli urcat diffirnlty, 
