l''cl)i'iia!\' S, Kjij 
LAND 6i WATER 
Alliances now sec that a final or real \ict0r3' for citlicr 
sidf has become impossible." 
1 think my readers will agree that such a statement 
so presented to readers in the United States is a document 
of great value to us. It maintains to the end the simil 
\vhicli has inspired all (jcrman ixjlicy between the end 
of last October and tlie now sudden mood of desperation 
])rovoked by the recent firmness of the Allies and their 
rejection of the enemy's proposals. 
fhe Prussian Government is careful to tell America 
that it can no more claim decisi\c victory than we can. 
It is magnanimous. It says : " Well, well, we both 
ihought that wc were going to win. Now we hnd that 
■neither of us can. We frankly admit that we are afraid 
of our own people finding out how they ha\'e been deceived 
- and so of course are you on your side. But it is qtiite 
i li ar that there can be no victory and only an insane 
jiian would think it possible after all that has happened." 
We know how that suggestion was met by the Allies. 
'file " sane man " who was at the same tiine instructed 
and had some knowledge of what he is talking about, had 
seen things quite differently, so had the Prussian Higher 
Command. Mr. Asquith in a perfectly plain and straight- 
forward speech in Scotland the other day ; General Ni\ell(' 
in an equally j^lain and straightforward order of the day be- 
fore Verdun, six weeks ago ; (leneral Brussiloff in yet an- 
other simple statement a few weeks earlier, had put the 
matter as it appears not only to high authorities such as 
they are, but to anyone who cares to read the history of war 
and to ffillow the course of the present great campaigns. So 
far from \ictor\' ha\ing got less and less possible and 
being now outside the field of practical consideration, 
it is just the otlier way. • The victory of the one side 
iind the defeat of the other ha^e been a matter more and 
more susceptible of calculation as the war has proceeded. 
Ihe event is at tlie present moment more certain than it 
was, say, last (Jctober ; last October, it was more certain 
than it was, say, last June. And this calculable victory 
is a victory for the .A.niance and a defeat for the Central 
Empires. 
That is why Prussia is desperate and has suddenly 
decided in her desperation to challenge the strongest of 
the neutrals after keeping up to the last moment a bluff 
of stalemate in all her presentation of the case to that 
neutral. 
The very best proof of this on the moral side (that is 
apart from the calculations of effectives and resources) 
that Prussia is defeated is the fact that .she should have 
thought it necessary during a full three months to abandon 
all her traditions and to declare herself incapable of victory 
in order that the world might be persuaded of our incapa- 
city as well. The bluff failed. Then and' only then she 
suddenly turned round and went savage. 
fhe combination and the succession of those two 
methods, a violent rage following upon a declaration of 
stalemate, the second as sincere and futile as the first 
was calculated and false, are perfectly convincing to any- 
one who has watched the workings of ill-balanced but 
cmiying men in the last stage of a hopeless resistance. 
H. Bei.I-OC 
Germany versus The World 
By Arthur Pollen 
SINCE our last issue there have occurred three 
portentous events, all arising out of the un- 
anticipated course of the war at sea. On Friday 
morning the world knew that Germany had 
denounced the pledge, given to America after the attack 
on the Sussex, and would Jienceforth hold herself free 
to sink, at sight , any sliip, belligerent or neutral, that came 
within a certain zone contiguous to these islands. On 
friday night the obvious consequences followed. Count 
Bcrnstorff was dismissed and Mr. Gerard was recalled 
by President Wilson. On Saturday morning Lord 
Devonport appealed to the nation to put itself volun- 
ta'-ily on rations. These things inaugurate a new, and 
})erhaps a final, development of the war. But it is pro- 
bably more correct to call them epoch marking, rather 
than epoch making, events. The distinction is perhaps 
academic. But it will add to our understanding of 
them to note that each arises naturally from what 
has gone before. Germany, seeing no other escape 
from luilitary defeat, has the choice of subduing (ireat 
Britain by famine or herself surrendering at discretion, 
'fhe United States, resolutely convinced that it is not 
their business to intervene in Europe for Europe's sake, 
arc faced b}' a threat which may compel them to inter- 
\ene for their own. The British Government, after si.x 
months of a submarine campaign which the Admiralty 
has been unable to prevent or materially to mitigate, 
at last realises that, being besieged, wc must act as all 
garrisons in such uncompromising conditions have to 
do. And, doubtless, we shall soon to be told that the 
Admiralty has taken on the building of supply ships. 
It is a convention in the world of journalists that the 
most significant events shall be reported as occasioning 
surprise, stupefaction, bewilderment, etc.— as if such 
events were always unexpected. And, in due course, 
we liave been told tliat Washington and New York were 
" thunderstruck " by Germany's Note of last week, 
and Berlin, in turn, " thunderstruck " at its reception 
by President Wilson and Congress. Even to Lord Devon- 
])ort's urgent warning, there has been attributed the 
pleasing merit of originality. It is no doubt possible 
that there were many people in America so ignorant of 
the military and civil situation in Germany that they 
failed to see that, in resuming the practice of indiscrimi- 
nate murder, the German Higher Command was acting, 
not from choice, but from compulsion. And there may 
have been many more in Berlin who, interpreting Presi- 
dent Wilson's action by a misreading of his words, 
supposed that the ultimatum of April last could be 
treated as the Lusitania Notes were treated, could be 
ignored just because the President's Christmas message 
and Senate speech had gi\'en passionate emphasis to 
America's love of peace and longing for neutrality. 
They may have failed to understand the difference be- 
tween the personal protest of the chief executive of the 
American nation and the national decision of the nation 
itself. Like many people here, they may have failed 
to see that Mr. Wilson was passionate in his appeal for 
peace and neutrality precisel}- because he knew that the 
knell of both had sounded. It could only have been a 
minority in this country to whom the only element of sur- 
prise, at ^our being rationed, \\as not wonder at its being 
so long delaj^ed. 
Reversal of the Roles 
We mu.st not bemuse ourselves by regarding these 
things as surprising and sensational events. It is in 
no spirit of boasting that I remind the reader that all 
of them have been discussed both recently and far back 
in these columns as ine\'itably resulting from things we 
knew. They are scenes in the strange transformations 
of war that we have seen. In August, 1914, people asked 
how Cicrmany's invincible land army coukl be balanced 
by Great Britain's invincible sea fleet. It is part of the 
topsy-turveydom in which we live, that the greatest land 
force and the greatest sea force in the world have achieved 
everything expected of them — except victory. The 
failure to achie\x; victory has given time to each side. 
Time, in which wc have been able to produce a new kind 
of army that Germany will not be able to resist, time for 
(iermany to produce a new kind of navy which we do not 
seem yet able to fight. The truth of the first of these 
propositions seems to be manifest from last year's ex- 
perience on the Western front. It is the plain and obvious 
message contained in Sir Douglas Haig's dispatch. That 
Germany has staked everything on the truth of the 
second, is evidence that she knows the first is true. It 
is the business of the British Admiralty and the British 
Government to prove that Germany's faith in her under- 
water na\'y is misplaced. 
The situation demands an answer, if it can be given, 
to some \-ery grave questions. What exactly do we 
know about the capacity of the enemy's new navy to 
