LAND & WATER 
February 22, 1917 
Political Position of the Combatants 
By Hilaire Belloc 
I. AM notable this week, through absence abroad, 
to describe any movement upon (he various fronts, 
,1 propose therefore to consider those general points 
which have much more bearing on civilian opitiion 
than on the military side of the campaign : I mean the 
foUtkal (or moral) advantages and disadvantages which 
the present situation produces for either combatant. These 
points it is especially suitable to consider in the short and 
tense period of waiting through which all the combatants 
are passing and which will be resolved soon enough into 
what may be the final clash of the opposing forces. 
These three points are : ist, the enemy occupation of 
allied soil ; 2nd, the political constitution of the two 
parties ; 3rd, a very different thing, the determination 
to achieve desired victory. 
I. — The Occupation of Allied Soil 
The least important strategically, the most important 
politically, of all the features the campaign now wears 
m this the approach to its last phase, is the occupation 
by the enemy of Allied soil. We should begin any 
examination of his political advantages and disadvantages 
by weighing this fact and its effects. 
When we say that it is strategically of least conse- 
quence, we mean that the student of strategics treats 
the surface of this globe like a chessboard, considers 
obstacles, artificial and natural, distances, calculations 
fa{' material resources and so forth, and eliminates frontiers 
because frontiers are not obstacles or communications 
or-anything else that concerns his study. 
..But to consider war merely as strategics is pedantic and 
false. The great masters of war have never so treated it. 
War is a struggle between human beings, and the action 
of human beings depends upon the mind ; the affection 
of the mind by invasion, let us say, or any other political 
side to war is an affection of the whole fighting body. 
It was a great soldier who determined that Carthage 
might win in Italy through the political effect of invasion ; 
it was another great soldier who invented the phrase of 
"carrying the war into Africa." To the student a 
retreat or an advance is no more than a military move- 
ment, but the greater the captain the better he knows 
that it is of high consideration to the conduct and to 
the result of war, not only over what natural features, 
but through what a population you advance or retire. 
The enemy happens at the present moment to hold in 
Europe territory which before th.e war was everywhere, 
save in a portion of Galicia and the Bukovina, on the 
Isonzo, and in a few Alpine valleys (and a few square 
miles of Alsace), the territory of those who are now his 
opponents. His line includes nearly all Belgium, a 
portion of North-Eastcrn France, not large in area, but 
very valuable in material, and conspicuous for great 
monuments of the past. He holds the whole of Serbia 
and Montenegro ; the Wallachian provinces of modern 
Roumania, and the Lithuanian and Polish provinces of 
the. Russian Empire. 
,. . There is no need to emphasise the effect this occupation 
has had upon opinion, especially upon civilian opinion, 
and more especially upon civilian opinion in this country. 
Politicians and others who are indifferent to the study 
oi war, .talk indeed in no other terms, except the terms 
of. this occupation. Such an attitude is, of course, hot 
only exaggerated,' but absurd. It is putting the un- 
important thing before the important, or rather to the 
exclusion of the important. For the important thing is 
obviously the militarj' posture of the enemy and not the 
particular measure of the ground on which he stands 
for the moment. But, I repeat, this occupation, like all 
other major political considerations, must be weighed. 
How did it come about and what is its full effect ? 
The first thing for us to grasp is that it came about very 
differently in the East from what it did in the West. 
It is true of nearly everything in this war that the Western 
and the Eastern aspect are in sharp contrast. Tiie 
enemy line in the West, that is against the British, 
I'-rench and Ita^lians, is nowhere a result of plan. The 
ItaHans never said to themselves : " We propose to 
hold Cortina, the lower triangle of the Trentino, and what 
used to be politically Austria up to the Isonzo, and there 
we shall stand." The Germans never said to them- 
selves : " W'e propose a line running south from Nieuport 
to near Compiegne thence eastward round Verdun, 
thence southward again to the Ballon d'Alsace." In 
both cases, in every ease from the Adriatic to the North 
Sea the line " crystallized " or " froze " after a period of 
movement, advance or retirement, chiring which period 
the movement depended entirely upon the local strength 
of the two combatants. Germany struck at her own 
hour when she was prepared and in great superiority. 
Therefore, she cpuld invade. Her invasion was broken 
and she was pinned to a certain line. This line happened 
to include a portion of French territory? and nearly all 
Belgium. Had it, on the contrary, run through German 
territory, the result in mere strategics would have been 
the same with this difference : That it would have given 
the enemy on the whole a shorter and easier line to defend. 
The same is true on a much smaller scale of what 
happened on the Italian Alpine frontier. An initial 
superiority permitted initial advance which crystallised 
very soon in the present line and upon that line the long 
siege wqrk began. 
In the East it is otherwise. The territory occupied 
upon the East by the enemy at the present moment is 
territory over which he has advanced of set will long 
after the campaign was in full swing. The hmits to 
which he has advanced do not represent a limit with 
which he is satisfied or a line upon which he had pre- 
viously determined to stand. But they do represent the 
results of a successful war of movement. And it is to 
be noted on the whole Eastern front .from the Ailgean 
to tlie Baltic and from the Persian (iulf to the Caucasus 
that movement has been continual. This is because the 
effectives for the stabilisation of so very large a front 
cannot be present and because the mass of good com- 
munications and material which permit of stabilisation 
cannot be present cither. For a long time an apparently 
stable front gave the Russians nearly all Galicia and 
was established upon the Carpathians. It then crossed 
Russian Poland on a line that was maintained for many 
months immovable. It permitted the observation 
and harrying of Eastern Prussia by our Ally. The 
conditions were reversed when the enemy advanced in 
the summer of '13 up to the line Czernowitz — Riga, 
and from the Danube in the autumn to the gates of 
Salonika — which door to the /Egean was luckily locked 
in his face just in time. 
This last summer there was movement again, the 
Russians getting back on the southern portion of their 
line to the Carpathians and past Lutsk, and later the 
.•\llies re-taking Monastir. 
In Armenia and Caucasia you have first movement 
into Russian territory ; then after some months of 
stabilisation a counter-move which took Erzerum and 
Trebizond and is then for months stabilised. 
Even in Mesopotamia you have the same phenomenon. 
A British advance ; its retirement (involving the loss of 
the Kut garrison) ; a re-advance, which is still in pro- 
gress. 
To sum up : Upon the West the enemy accidentally 
occupies Allied territory and fights upon it, but fights 
w-here he has been pinned to and not where he chooses, 
although it is upon alien soil. The line is almost im- 
movable for more than two years. 
Upon the East there are successive advances and 
retirements. .The line is far from immovable, but at 
the present moment it divides territory very unequally, 
leaving b\' far the greater part of vshat was formerly 
Allied territory in enemy occupation, and much less- 
