Dcci-uibcr 28, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
arc a class ahead of the German Empire and two classes 
ahead of the Austrian. 
This question of cffccti^■cs reacts directly upon the 
whole field. 
\\'hy are we now able to assume superiority in munition- 
ment over the Central Empires ? -Because we have a 
superiority of man-power available. Why are our 
difficult, necessarily irregular but successful efforts at 
munitioning the East worth while and bound to bear 
fruit ? Because we know that we are there equipping 
and pro\iding with missiles a vast human reserve. 
Why can Italy consistently maintain undisturbed her 
pressure upon the Al])ine and Istrian front and make 
certain of indefinitely occupying at least 25 to 30 Austrian 
di\isions — and exhausting them ? Because Austria has 
already begun to call up Class iqiQ, while Italy still 
holds a human " mass of manoeuvre " in hand, greater 
than everything in the Austrian depots or in sight for 
Austria dm-ing the coming year. It is this superiority 
which mans the ships, mines the coal, still exports and 
therefore feeds and clothes, which is turning out heavy 
artillery now at a rate I know not how far superior but 
increasingly superior to the enemy's rate, and which 
gives, to anyone who will only sec things as they are, a 
complete confidence for the future. 
Ci\en the absence of a direct decision, given par- 
ticularly siege conditions, efi"ecti\es are the key to every- 
thing. It was the gradual exhausting of such iTserves 
that defeated Hannibal and Napoleon, and we have no 
such forces against us to-day — to say the least of it. 
It is effectives, and effec lives alone that have moved 
the enemy to all his expedients during the last few months. 
It is to that vi'e owe such political moves as the celebra- 
tion of a great victory upon the Somme — in which he 
lust more than he lost at Verdvm, almost as much as 
Austria lost to Brussiloif , and increasingly more than he 
compelled his opponent, to lose. It is to this we owe the 
exaggeration of the Roumanian loss, and the pi'etence 
that a front extended by some two hur '^ed miles is a 
gain. It is to this we owe the desperate efforts to 
obtain the intervention of neutrals. 
And here perhaps the reader will permit mt — for the 
first' time I think during all the months during which 
these notes have appeared — a political conclusion. 
A Political Conclusion 
Victory is now no longer a doubtful matter to be 
estimated through calculation. The obstacle to victory 
is now no longer material. The only bar is a political one. 
The only uncertain factor in what is now a solved problem, 
is the common determination — on which there can be no 
doubt — the common tenacity — on which there can be 
little less— but also especially a public comprehension 
throughout the Alliance, in all civic discussion and even 
am )ng neutrals, if we can still reach them, of what the 
military situation is. Granted the permanence and 
acti\ity of these political factors and the enemy may 
already be regarded as def(!ated. 
But what is his defeat or the \ictory of his opponents ? 
The old definition still stands and will always stand. 
" Of two opposed military forces that one is victorious 
which by dispersion, attrition, or in any other fashion, 
reduces its opponent to such marked inferiority that the 
continuation of the struggle is no longer worth that 
opponent's while." 
He may after such a point, if he chooses, continue ; 
in which case he will sec the remnant of his force decline 
with extreme rapidity. In point of fact throughout 
history he has ah\ays, as he nnist- always upon reaching 
such a point, submit his will to that of the victor. 
'i'hose who think that the reduction of the enemy to 
this point is impo.'^sible, are not possessed of the -main 
facts in the present situation, and could not, if they were 
put to it, argue their point in detail. They are simply 
wrong. The final decision is always reached after one 
critical nionient before which a period whether of a few 
hours or of years, has passed during which the struggle still 
swung apparently indetenhinate. 
It is particularly true of sieges and of work against 
fixed lines that the period has been prolonged and its 
indeterminate character sujjcrticially but falsely apparent. 
'J'he reality is that this kind of warfare lends itself more 
than any other to a process of calculation, and that when 
superiority has been established upon the one side, the 
nature of the end can, more than in any other kind of 
warfare, be determined. 
But what if for some reason beyond our control, or 
within our control hut due to ignorance, panic, lassitude 
or a preference of private 1(j public \\'ellare, the approach 
. to victory should be halted and terms arranged before a 
decision ? 
If there are those who think that the acceptation of 
defeat (for it would be no less) would in some way sa^•e 
the future and permit the remainder of our time to be at 
least easy, even though it must be ignominious, they are 
quite wrong. 
If Prussia Ls saved from what awaits her by any error 
or even by any accident, not only our time but generations 
beyond us will be occupied in the intense preparation to 
resist future peril and probably in the ultimate failure 
of that effort. Even those who may basely desire it 
will not return to the old ease. They will not be more 
but far less wealthy ; they will not be more but far less 
.secure ; they will not be able to relax restriction, secrecy 
and all the strain of the present. They will have to 
multiply them indefinitely under conditions wholly 
military, and yet at the same time bitter, disappointed 
and declining. No individual or group of individuals 
can at this stage betray civilization without suffering in 
the common ruin. And if this could be true of one 
community more than of another, it is especially true 
of the connnunity which li\-es through' and upon the sea. 
H. BliLLOC 
Farewell to Neutrality 
By Arthur Pollen 
IT would not have beon surprising had the third 
(Trristmas of the war found the \\ hole world talking 
peac(^fully of peace. The hideous incongruity of 
the thing is, that we are indeed talking peace," but 
in a spirit very different from what the season should 
insjMre. In the Christmas message to the shepherds the 
burden of the promise was .not the cessation, but the 
negation of war. Peace was coupled with something 
else. Whether you take one version, and call it the 
promise of " peace and goodwill to men," or the other, 
and reaa it the promise of " peace to men of good-will," 
there is no escaping the fact that it is not i>eacO at any 
price. Thj German offer of peace is unreal precisely 
because there Is no goodwill behind it. 
And now another message, not of peace but suggesting 
a step towards jieace, has come to us fiom that strange 
and fearless man, the twice elected President C)f the 
people of America. It contains a phrase which, e\en 
with its qualification, was almost bomid to %• 
acutely painfiil. The objects thai the op])oscd govern-^ 
ments have in view are manifestly different. Leaving 
aside the brutalities connnittedon land, for the first time 
in the history of war, the old-established proscriptions of the 
sea have gone too. The almost legendary immunity of 
the fisherman vanished from the earliest days. Then 
trading ships were sunk — without the faintest legal 
formalities, not as the exception, but as the universal 
rule. Then the lives of peaceful folk on belligerent ships 
were first threatened and then - taken. And, finally, 
the war on trade became a ruthless war for the exter- 
mination of traders, so that all who put to sea, young or 
old, men or women, belligerents or neutrals, in turn 
became the targets of assassination. Surely these things 
show the concrete objects of the (lerman war so definitely 
that no words could add to or qualifv them.- 
But we should br- wrong if we take offence. Our busi- 
ness is not with words but with- things, not with phrases 
but with forces. Mr. Wilson has not wri-ten for the sake 
