LAND & WATER 
February 22, 1917 
Austrian troops was Prussian in organisation and plan. 
At the same time the strenj^th of the huge alliance against 
us is Prussian. It is the Prussian discipline and the 
Prussian conception of war which has permitted the 
resistance to be so prolonged. The propaganda abroad 
has been Prus^ian and the word of command, the 
organisation of units, the homogencitj' of the whole 
of the enemy's action, is a Prussian homogeneity, (ier- 
man troops "stopped the rot when Austria broke on the 
Eastern Front. C.erman troops have been employed on 
the decisive Western front from the beginning. But 
when we look at the campaign from the point of \ie\v 
of human material, this rough generalisation of Prussia 
or Prussianised North Germany at grips with Europe is 
wrong. It makes us quite misunderstand the power of 
Prussia herself and it makes us exaggerate it ; as it also 
makes us exaggerate the power of the so-called German 
Ivmpire which she dominates. Without her subjects or 
Allies Prussia would be unable to continue the war for 
a week. It is her grip upon the Turkish Committee 
which closes the Dardanelles and blockades Russia. 
It is her ability to summon all the Austro- Hungarian 
recruitment and use it at will which has hitherto kept 
the front unbroken, and when we look into the com- 
position of the forces opposed to us, their moral com- 
position, v.-e appreciate what is too often forgotten : 
That the Entente Powers though far more divided in 
structure, geographically separated, and only able to 
co-operate by agreemem" n ■norally more homogeneous 
than the enemy. 
It is a very iniportant p<inu, and it is a point upon which 
the eneniv himself has gone hopelessly wrong. 
Take the case of the British, forces. There was here 
an Empire of the most complex sort, the links between 
which were in many cases as loose as they could be. In 
the case of one very essential department, the Irish at 
home and abroad, there was notorious disaffection. But 
there has been no compulsion, no enlistment of unwilling 
nationalities, no dragging of a train of political ynits 
each with some separate cause to serve. All the forces 
brought into the field by the British Crown in the 
tuuazingly great and spontaneous effort of the last two 
and a-liaif vears ha^o one purpose. No historian of the 
f\iturc will be able to distinguish between the determina- 
tion of the Irish regiments, of the Colonial contingents, 
of the British voluntary recruitment, and of the drafts 
raised by conscription." To take a complete test : No 
desertion can be conceived as proceeding from disaffection 
to the British Crown in these forces. 
In the case of France and of Italy, which are homoge- 
neous, the thing goes without saying. In the services of 
both these Pc'.nxts the enemy is opposed by all as by 
one man.. The East of Europe cannot show the same 
complete unity. The Balkans are mixed. The Marches 
of Russia are "mixed. Pole was compelled to fight against 
Pole. Clerman speaking men from Courland and from 
the Kingdom of Poland also fought German speaking 
men vinder the Crowns of the HohenzoUerns and the 
Hapsburgs. But even here the mass of the political 
action was imited. 
Now it is a difiiculty of the enemy's which will not be 
recognised j)ublicly jserhaps until the last stages of his 
defeat, that he is In' no such case. The enemy Alliance, 
though it enjoys a single chrection and, being besieged 
and standing interior to the Entente Powers is the more 
thrust together mechanically and made one, continues to 
consist in four quite distinct and national groups, one 
of which is not fully homogeneous, and these four groups 
carry with them alien, indifferent or hostile populations. 
You have the Germans who are distinctly divided into 
Northern and Southern (including the (ierman-speaking 
subjects of the Hapsburgs) ; you have the Magyars ; 
jou have the Bulgarians and you have the Turks. 
It is true that of these four groups the Germans are 
much the strongest not only in organisation but in num- 
bers. But the remaining" three are essential to the 
combination and are »'ach working for quite separate 
ends. The Magyar quarrel is with Russia and with 
Russia alone. To be safe from Russian pressure and as a 
svmbol of this to preser\e an immoral mastery over 
smaller Sla\- grotips is the reason that the >Iagyars arc 
in this war. They were not ordered into it. They could 
not be ordered into it. So far as political oijinion 
counts in war that opinion waxes and wanes with the 
innnediate danger to Hungary proper. The Bulgarians 
are necessary as the hnk with Turkey. But the Bul- 
garjians will fight for nothing except their local am- 
bitions in the Balkans. The Turks are necessary in order 
to blockade Russia upon the Dardanelles, but the Turks, 
even under the tryanny of the Committee, can only 
be sparingly used outside their limited European bound- 
aries, and in the West not at all. Of the total Turkish 
force raised about one-sixteenth ha\ e been obtained with 
difficulty to apjiear upon the Danube or the Struma. 
The Turkish Power, even the degraded and cosmopolitan 
Committee, is lighting to maintain a remnant of its old 
position in Europe, not to save the Alliance against us. 
In a word, there is a far greater unity of mechanical 
apparatus upon the enemy's side, but far legs spiritual 
unity than upon ours. Had Prussia been other than 
Prussia this would not have been the case. The moral 
unity and therefore the moral strength of the Entente 
Powers springs from the sheer impossibility of tolerating 
Prussia in Europe. Each of them, for all his difference in 
religion or race or national tradition, feels that he must 
live by Europe, and Prussia is radically anti-European. 
If Prussia remain strong, what we have known as Europe 
will go to pieces. 
The subject and disaffected recniitment in the enemy's 
ranks must not be exaggerated as to number. Those, for 
instance, in the German Emjiirc who, though compelled 
to fight for it are permanently its enemies, do not number 
altogether as much as 7 per cent, of its forces. Those in 
a sii^iilar situation under the. Hapsburg Crown hardly 
number 20 per cent. 
A much larger projjortion, of course, are neither German, 
speaking nor Magyar, but it is to be doubted whether 
even as much as one-eighth are actively opposed to the 
Government of the Dual Monarchy. Bulgarian recruit- 
ment comprises a few districts which are disaffected. 
They count little in the whole. The hotch-potch of 
Turkish recruitment is composed, to at least 50 per cent., 
of men quite indifferent to the present quarrel or actively 
opposed to Turkish rule, but that recruitment is but a 
small factor in the whole enemy mass against us. 
The real weight of this point is not the size of the 
enemy's disaffected recruiting fields. It is rather the 
fact that they exist at all. In the Western armies the 
problem does not exist. You have not got to ask whether 
5, 7, 12 or 20 per cent, of the French, Italian or British 
armies desire the victory of the enemy, for there is not a 
man among them all who desires it." The number who 
desire our victory, though enrolled I'pon our opponents 
side, is small, but it exists, and that is a profound differ- 
ence between us. If we were asked to estimate the mili- 
tary value of such disaffection, the honest answer would 
be that during the progress of a campaign up to its last 
phase its military value is almost negligible. So long as 
you have the cadres and the educated class to act as 
oflicers any con.script of the European races affords good 
material. But in the last stages of a losing war , this lack 
of complete moral unity always has its effect. Witness the 
campaign of Napoleon in 1813, and the hesitation of the 
Allies to use the Belgian contingents in 1815. It must 
not be exaggerated. Even so late as the present moment 
it is almost negligible. But the moment a very heavy 
strain comes this factor begijis to tell. In the same way 
of the two men running a race, the one with some old 
trouble and negligible under ordinary exercise, can afford 
to forget it during all the first part of the struggle. To- 
wards the end it tij)s the balance against him. 
III. — The Mood of the Belligerents 
The third political clement in the present situation of 
expectancy before the frnaj shock is the element of 
Propaganda. In another asjwct-it is the element of 
Mood. We have to contrast the mental atmosphero 
mainly produced by Propaganda, but also produced by 
national temperament and by the way in which the 
\arious governments have affected their own people, 
by the restriction or the communication of new^; ; and 
wc must consider in that field the neutrals al.so. 
In this field there are two great outstanding facts 
\\liich we must recognise at once and always keep in 
mind if wc are to judge affairs rightly. 
The first fact is that the enemy Pmvrrs. and in par- 
