January 4, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
t5 
as well able to judge the military situation as anybody 
else ; that it is evident from the map, and so forth. 
Now it is precisely here that I desire to join issue with 
you if you will bear with me. 
The character of the war ever since the Battle of the 
Yser has been such that it was increasingly easy for the 
military situation to be misrepresented by the enemy, 
and misunderstood even by men of first-rate judgment. 
A military situation is not an easy thing to understand. 
It is one of the most difficult. That is why a good 
military history is such a very rare thing. 
The reason this is so is that the mind naturally and 
perpetually compares the action of armies against one 
another to the action of individuals against one another, 
and the analogy is not only misleading, but actually 
contradictory. An individual does not " retreat." If 
you see him backing out it means that he is defca,tcd. An 
individual has no " communications." An individual is 
never compelled to " a siege " ; an individual has no 
calculable " wastage " or " recruitment." The false 
analogy and the false conclusions drawn from it .apply to 
all wars, but they apply particularly to this war because 
this war is eminently one of military calculation. It is a 
siege war of attrition and that upon the most gigantic 
scale conceivable, and therefore with all the known ma- 
terial elements in the problem present to the calculators. 
\Vliat do you think is nOiV the great dominating military 
feature of the whole thing? It is the fact that ovir 
enemies control most of the raw material of this 
continent, but tlu' Allies the last reserves of the men— 
that is it in a nutshell. Add to it that the British Fleet 
permits supply to the Allies from abroad and the whole 
affair is before you. 
Very well. These things being so the situation is surely 
clear enough. The enemy is beaten, and to save himself 
from all the disasters tiiat threaten he must ha\e inter- 
vention. When we find intervention proposed we con- 
clude, from our knowledge of .the field, that this 
iuterx'cntion is in his favour. The ignorant conclude 
that it is deliberately in his favour. The better instructed 
conclude that it is not consciously in favour of the enemy, 
but are somewhat indifferent to the motive when they 
consider how stupendous the result might be. 
Our ancient civihzation has been challenged. It 
despises as much as it loathes the Prussian bully. It was 
not prepared or organised to, meet that bully, simply 
because the rational and well-developed man treats arms 
as only part of life. But, once challenged by an inferior 
and murderous thing, having had the good fortune to 
stave otf the first treacherous attack, it bent itself to the 
novel task of executing an international criminal. With 
the most severe and bitter sacrifice civihzation has estab- 
lished its supremacy again. Surely you can understand 
how intolerable, on the eve of such events, is the proposal 
to interfere with the natural process of justice ! 
It is not pleasant to mention in connection with such 
work as this the great story of the Napoleonic Wars. It 
is like comparing a great and noble drama to the trial of 
a common murderer. But on the strictly military plane a 
parallel is possible. 
When was Na])oleon beaten ? When one \ving of his 
enormously extended front stood close to the frontiers 
of Portugal and the other was in Moscow ! 
Every step of his decline after i8o() — and all those 
steps can be exactly noted, and are now quite clear in 
history— was some act of the offensive, and even of the 
triumphant offensive. Yet opinion then as now— I mean 
general opinion, not his own, for he saw what had hap- 
pened — could not see the truth until they saw a retro- 
gression upon the map. And even then general opinion 
was in doubt. Even after the vast disaster in Russia it 
was in doubt. Even 181.5 did not convince it. There are 
perhaps educated men still going about who do not know 
that the final disaster was Leipsic. Even the Campaign 
of France in 1S14 did not prevent the enemies of Napoleon 
in the Hundred Days from thinking that all their successes 
might yet be reversed': So true is it that men will not be 
at the pains to dig to the roots of things. 
But if what is required among you before your second 
intervention (which I suppose will come hi due time) is a 
movement upon the map, you will have that without 
too much delay, and I suppose that when it comes we 
may discuss the matter upon easier terms. 
Londoner. 
Imperial Problems 
REFERENCE was made in Land & Water 
last week to the increasing interest which the 
problems of Empire are attracting, in view of the 
Imperial Cabinet which has now been summoned. 
These problems, so obvious in their outlines, yet so compli- 
cated and delicate in their details, demand close and 
accurate study and all literature that tends to promote it 
is heartily welcome. Nothing could be more opportune 
than the publication of the addresses which were dehvered 
by Viscount Milner, Earl Grey, Lord Islington, Sir Ceorge 
Foster and Lord Sydenham at the Conferences between 
representatives of the Home and Dominion Parliaments 
held at the House of Commons last summer. It is not 
expected nor indeed is it desired that there shall be 
complete agreement with the various views, but they 
do tf^ow a flood of new light on the questions of high 
Imperial importance with which they deal. 
Lord Milner spoke on " The Constitutional Position " 
between the British Isles and the Dominions ; he sketched 
out a new Imperial Parliament which shall concern itself 
solely with aftairs aftecting the Empire as a whole, leaving 
local affairs to local Parliaments. No utterance has ever 
brought home more forcibly the enormous difficulties 
which surround the creation of a central Imperial admini- 
stration, and only when these difficulties are compre- 
liendcd can one look for measures to overcome them. 
The speaker thus depicts the present position : 
If we desire, as we all. desire, that the Empin; shall endure . 
as one State, and shall constitute, as it alone can, the greal 
biilwark of freedom and progress throughout the world, 
then we must see to it that the Empire has at its head an 
authority, which can deal for it with the rest i^f the world 
as the representative of all its self-governing peoples. 
Such a government cannot grow of itself out of the ground. 
It can Dnly be the result ot a great and deliberate effort 
of constitutional reconstruction. 
Earl Grey's address dealt with " Emigration after the 
War," a question which touches the homeland more 
nearly than many realize. He urged closer co-operation 
between England and the Dominions in the future and 
backed the suggestion of the Commission appointed by 
the Ontario Government that an Imperial Migration 
Board should be organised. While we desire to help the 
Dominions with our surplus peoples, we do not want our 
finest manhood drawn away beyond the seas. So this, 
too, is a big and difficult question. And so is " Trade 
and the Empire after the War " on which Sir George 
Foster, Canadian Minister of Trade and Commerce, spoke 
to the point. Lord Islington, Under- Secrctai-y of State 
for India, furnished striking facts and figures illustrating 
the extraordinary social and economic development of 
, our great Eastern dependency in recent years. Tha world 
seems to move so fast nowadays that even the East has 
to hustle. Finally, the most important subject of 
" Naval and Military Defence " was very ably and 
succinctly handled by Lord Sydenham. These addresses 
are issued in one \olume (2s. 6d.) by the Empire Parlia- 
mentary Association, 64, Victoria Street, Westminster. 
" Advertising," writes Mr. Charles Higham, in Scientific 
Distribution (Nisbet and Co., 12s. 6d.), "can so cheapen the 
cost of production that one-time luxuries become everyday 
necessities, with the result that a thousand refining influ 'nces 
are let loose upon society at large." This is a big statement, 
and the truth oi it turns on the author's idea of " refinmg 
influences." Champagne at luncheon is a luxury, but if 
through advertising a coarse-minded man were able to drink 
it most days of the week, would he bc'rcfined through its 
influence ? So long as Mr. Higham confines himself to 
concrete cases, liis book is interesting, but the attempt to 
prove that the advertising agent or expert, the term which 
he prefers, is the pivot of civiHsation does not succeed. 
Advertising as a matter of fact, is repugnant to the British 
temperament ; we have seen this over and over again through- 
out the war. The average Briton loathes "publicity" ; he 
has won a good manv things including freedom without its 
help, and lie still believes that a vital idea will live without 
being placarded on hoardings or boosted for a fee and at 
so much an inch in newspaper columns. In business it is 
possible to carry this objection to foolish extremes, and for 
business men of that state of mind, this volume is an excellent 
alterative, for it is advertising— scientific advertising wc 
-presume wc ought to call it— from cover to cover. _ ' 
