March 8, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
OLD SERJEANTS' INN. LONDON, W.C. 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 1917 
CONTENTS 
PAGE 
I 
3 
4 
8 
10 
12 
13 
15 
17 
i8 
20 
24 
Holland's Position. By Louis Kaemaekers 
America's Hour. (Leader) 
The Bapaume Ridge. By Hilaire Belloc 
The Submarine \\'ar. By Arthur Pollen 
On thie Tigris. By J. A. Higgs-Walker 
Will Switzerland be Invaded. By Colonel Feyler 
Italy's Industrial Effort. By Lewis R. Freeman 
The Batman. By Onturion 
Books to Read. By Lucian Oldershaw 
The British Empire and U. J.C. Club 
The Golden Triangle. By Maurice Leblanc 
The West' End 
Kit and Equipment 
AMERICA'S HOUR 
THE inaugural address which Mr. Woodrow Wilson 
delivered on assuming office for a second term 
will rank in history among the greatest utter- 
ances whicli have been spoken by a President 
of the United States. And the reason can best be stated 
in the speaker's owff words : " We are provincials no 
longer. The tragical events of thirty months of vital 
turmoil through which we have just passed have made 
us citizens of the world. There can be no turning 
back. . . . We are being forced into a new unity 
amidst fires that now blaze through the world. In their 
ardent heat we shall, in God's providence, let us hope, 
be purged of faction and di\'ision, purified of errant 
humours of party and private interest, and stand forth 
in the days to come with new dignity of national pride 
and spirit," 
These solemn words point to the fact that it is the 
President's personal conviction that America " is being 
drawn irresistibly into the cuiTent and influence " of 
the great war. Mr. Wilson's attitude recalls that famous 
story of the whirlpool told by his imaginative fellow- 
countryman, Edgar Allan Poe. No human being could 
have fought harder or more sincerely to withstand the 
compelling force of the troubled waters, but a stronger 
power has been in conflict with him. He has not fore- 
gone his principles. We who live so much nearer the 
centre of the turmoil, and who have been compelled to 
realize that the sacrifice of so much in life w'e \'alue most 
higlily, has been essential that the noblest ideals of human 
conduct shall prevail, may have considered that at 
times Mr. Wilson's advice savoured of pusillanimity, yet 
•to-day we realize that when the decision has been fairly 
and squarely placed before him, he has not shirked the 
issue. " We shall walk with light all about us" were 
the concluding words of the address, " if we be but true 
to ourselves — to ourselves as we have wished to be known 
in the counsels of the world, in the thought of all those 
who love libert}', justice, and right exalted." 
Here speaks the tongue that Shakespeare spake ; these 
are the faith and morals which Milton held. Armed 
neutrality may endure for a season, but unless the enemy 
be false to himself, and suddenly alters not only his 
methods, but his whole mode and manner of thought 
and action, it can only be a little time before th6 United 
States are officially joined to the Allies, and the Gov^ern- 
ment of that great country follows in the path which 
has alread}' been trodden courageously by so many of 
its private citizens, and takes a x^art in upholding " fair 
deahng, justice and freedom to live and be at ease against 
organised wrong." 
" We are a composite and cosmopolitan people ; wc 
are of the hrood of all the nations that are at war ; the 
currents of oiu- thoughts as well as the currents of our 
trade run quick at all seasons back and forth between us 
and them." In reviewing the past it is only reasonable 
we should hold in mind this aspect of the President's 
difiiculties. It is very hard for the people of the United 
Kingdom to comprehend the sentiments of peoples from 
whom unanimity of opinion on the larger national issues 
is absent. This weakness of imagination, for such it is, 
is at the root of the Irish trouble, and when an attempt 
is made to weigh in the scales of righteousness the con- 
duct of other peoples, we are apt to err greatly. This 
is not the, time to sit in judgment on the nations. We 
cannot expect every neutral to be stirred with that splendid 
indignation against cruelty, injustice and oppression 
which have made the cartoons of Louis Raemaekers 
world famous, and have caused them to be an important 
factor in reveahng the true character and aims of the 
enemy against whom civilization is in arms. These truths 
had by some to be learnt slowly ; in previous wars they 
liave at times only been mastered after years of a false 
peace, and then too late. On this occasion the chief protag- 
onists see clearly what they are fighting for. Mr. H. G. Wells 
puts this point well in War and the Future : "I perceive 
that on our side and in its broad outlines, this war is 
nothing more than a gigantic and heroic effort in sanitary 
engineering ; an effort to remove German militarism 
from the life and regions it has invaded and to bank it in 
and discredit and enfeeble it so that never more will it 
repeat its present preposterous and horrible efforts." 
America's hour has struck ; the moment to decide 
has come ; her destiny declares itself. " The thing I 
shall count \ipon and the thing without which neither 
counsel nor action avail," said Mr. Wilson, in the first 
hour of his new Presidency, " is the vmity of America — 
an America united in feeling, in purpose, in its vision of 
duty and its opportunity of service."- On the very 
threshold of his great purpose he has been temporarily 
thwarted by a handful of intriguers, but the very 
smallness of their numbers is eloquent of the mass of 
public opinion that lies behind him. If the United 
States is forced to take up arms, not to protect her 
neutrality but to defend the rights of humanity — action 
which we regard as inevitable — she will present a united 
front which will again give the lie to the blundering 
predictions of Germany, the outcome of that amazing 
ignorance of human nature, which make sone seriously 
question whether the Teuton' is not several generations 
nearer the parent ape than the rest of mankind. He 
seems never to be able to escape from the obsession of the 
brute-beast that man is entirely controlled by his ele- 
mental needs and passions. He has certainly been the 
means — the horrible means — of proving again to the 
world that the higher attributes of man are the uncon- 
querable and eternal things of life. And it seemed un- 
thinkable to marty that when these things were in jeo- 
pardy America was not arrayed in their defence. " My 
country is the world; my countrj'men are mankind," 
is once again the watchword of America. Her Presi- 
dent has shown himself strong when adhering to opinions 
which did not commend themselves to many of those of 
his fellow-countrymen with whom his mind was otherwise 
most in harmony, and now that he has moved forward 
to a more popular position, we may take it that his 
strength wnll be equal under future anxieties and per- 
plexities. "We realize," he said, " that the greatest 
things that remain to be done must be done with the 
whole world for a stage and in co-operation with the wide 
imiversal forces of mankinds, and we are making our 
spirits ready for these things." 
