December 28, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
spasmodically and insufficiently, while the permanent 
anxiety of the West is raw material and food. 
In the held of strategy this geographicalse paration. 
also has its strong adverse effect. The Alliance cannot, 
could not, even if it had one united command, move 
troops at will and exercise pressure at will upon any 
sector of any front. It is as limited in this respect as the 
enemy would be should he be compelled by some im- 
passable barrier running from the Baltic to the Alps to 
use his forces in two quite separate groups, each succeed- 
ing or failing in its own sphere, and each unable to rein- 
force the other. All that the Alliance can do to rectify 
this disability is to co-ordinate its various efforts, as for 
example the great offensive of Brussiloff was co-ordinated 
last June with the Italian resistance to the enemy offen- 
sive in the Trentino. But valuable and necessary as 
such co-ordination is, true as it is that for general pur- 
poses the Alliance considers all the various fronts as 
one, it is still no more than a.'pis-allcr, it does not replace 
true unity of action, which is only possible to com- 
manders who have all their commands in touch with one 
centre and a\'ailable over any part of one unbroken field. 
3. Tlic Alliance is a Confederation. 
This is a moral, not a material or purely strategic 
point. And while we are considering the disability it 
involves, we must not forget the moral advantages it 
also con\-eys. Of these, however, I will speak later. 
For the- })rescnt I am considering only the disabilities. 
Prussian Control 
The enemy is for the purposes of will and direction 
one long established and purely military power, Prussia, 
whicii has the complete control of a great number of 
dependents. It has under its control, first of all and 
absolutely the Northern Germanics other than the purely 
Prussian, and about a third of the Polish race. It has 
further, under its complete control, and organized from 
long before the war, under the modern title of " The (ler- 
man Empire," certain of the Southern (iermanies and 
particularly Bavaria. The modern German Empire 
was, on its political side, far from being entirely Prussia, 
though it was constructed in the interests of Prussia ancl 
was mainly a Prussian thing, but on its military side 
it was entirely Prussian. The superficial autonomy of 
Bavaria, and two other lesser military groups within it 
was unimportant and wholly disappeared under the 
conditions of war. Prussia, even before the war, over- 
shadowed and to a considerable extent directed the. 
military policy of the Southern Germanics outside the 
modern German Empire, that is, the German-speaking 
people of Austria proper ; there was only excluded from 
the control German-speaking districts of Switzerland. 
Through their unity under the Crown of Hapsburg- 
Lorraine Prussia similarly overshadowed and to a con- 
siderable extent directed" the military force represented 
by the native Bohemian populationjialf the Southern 
Slavs, a great body of the Polish people, the Hungarians, 
and such Roumanians as were subject to the Hungarians. 
\Micn war came, this control was accidentally and 
suddenly emphasized by the peril in which Austria- 
Hungary found herself. She suffered grave defeat at the 
very outset, nothing but unity under Prussian control 
could save her, and from about October or November, 
1914, that control was absolute. 
In a somewhat less strict fashion Prussia controlled 
the Bulgarian military unit when that unit came into the 
field against us last year, and with the opening of the 
communications to Constantinople, Prussia acquired full 
control of the Turkish contingents as well. When I say 
" full control," I must mention later the disabilities 
attaching to the new Allies, which could not be used 
everywhere and anywhere as could the forces of the two 
Central Powers. But meanwhile, those two Eastern 
Allies were but Small additions, though important, to 
the vast resources of the original belligerents, obeying 
the governments of Vienna, Buda Pest and Berlin. 
Absolute unity of control existed over the vast majority 
of the forces deployed against us, and a considerable 
measure of unity over the whole. 
The Alliance enjoyed no such military advantage. It 
was composed originally of three great" Powers, each of 
which had had a perfectly distinct military organisation, 
each of which had liad political aims of its own, neces- 
sarily divergent in many respects even from those of its 
friends. A fourtli great Power, Italy, joined the Alliance 
last year bringing in valuable new resources, but also a 
separate military machine and political objects which 
were those of its own traditions and necessities. Disaster 
would have increased unity — but it was a price which, 
thank God, we had not to pay — and the very advantages 
flowing from a confederation of proud, strong and in- 
dependent nations involved of its nature the disability, 
not of a divided, but of a confederated control. 
It involved discussion, balance and arrangement. 
The .position of Britain in the confederation alone is a 
striking example of what I mean. Britain originally 
supplied to the Alliance the incalculable advantage of 
her sea power, upon land no more than a small, though 
excellent, expeditionary force. Britain, by an effort, the 
parallel to which does not exist in all history, and which 
posterity will regard as the noblest and most successful 
example of national energy, produced within two years 
an armed force as it were out of nothing : An armed 
force multiplied in some branches a hundredfold, but 
that could only be done upon lines essentially national, 
local and peculiar. The very success of that stupendous 
piece of creation was an object-lesson in the separate 
moral qualities and separate political genius of one out 
of the four Allies. 
Now a confederation of this sort, in spite of the very 
great moral value it has o\-cr the enemy's conditions — • 
to winch moral value we shall return in a moment— has 
also the ob\-ious disadvantage of replacing immediate 
decision by conference and single action by multiple 
action. This is not only inevitable, it is right that it 
should be inevitable. 
It is the price paid for something well worth that 
price, but it is a high price and we must recognise it. 
Such are the three great divisions into which the 
present disabilities of the Alliance fall. I do not include 
that disability in material, which I have so often em- 
phasized in these columns, because it is included in the 
first division of the length and vulnerability of our true 
communications as compared with those of the enemy. 
The enemy controls much the greater part of the plant, 
machinery, mines, and skilled artisan labour of Europe. 
There lie within its lines the overwhelming majority of 
this sort of resources available within our Continent. 
But as it is this which has compelled us to the maritime 
supply of which I have spoken it would be counting things 
twice over if I were to make of it a separate category. 
We suffer, then, from these three great drawbacks : 
(i) Length and vulnerabihty of communication. 
(2) Physical separation between East and West. 
(3) Confedei-acy. 
So much for the Debit side. Wliat of the Credit ? 
The Credit Side 
If we examine soberly the contiast between the enemy's 
position and our own at this entry into the year 1917, 
we shall find that there is upon the other side of the 
account matter which much mare than compensates for 
the drawbacks just considered. We shall find that an 
enemy authority drawing up a balance-sheet with the 
desire to obtain a true judgmej.it and to avoid false 
political effect would discover tha;t balance to be heavily 
against him. 
Let us tabulate those disadvan'cages of his. 
They are again three : The Blockade ; The absence 
of combined effort— a moral pofmt— -and lastly, much 
the most important of all, the exhaustion of effectives, 
I. The Blockade. 
The effect of the Blockade, which Bnitish Naval power 
has established, is somewhat obscured, from the public 
vision by its gradual accomplishment amd the necessary 
imperfection of its results. In other wo rds, because too 
much was expected of it, too little is understood of its 
value. 
This is not the time or the place to 1 discuss whether 
or no at the beginning of the war an immediate or a 
gradual policy of blockade were advisable. There were very 
weighty arguments upon either side. 1 hey were fullv 
considered. I myself brought forward ir i these columns 
in the first autumn of the war, all that cc mid be said for 
the prevention of any cotton from enteri ng the Central 
Empires. But I know what necessities \ :ould be urged 
