t 
LAND & WATER 
March 8, 1917 
that people allow a mood to interfere with the Teasonins 
faculty, and perhaps it is no wonder, seein,!,' that war 
produces the most violent moods of ail. 
The nrnjor truth underlying all others about the present 
situation of the war is that the enemy's front is ex- 
tended at a high tension. He is holding, first and last 
{excluding Asia) , not far short of 2,000 miles of front. 
and in spite of the advantages given him by marshes in one 
place, forests in another, mountains in a third, he has not 
the men to hold those fronts during the current year, 
supposing him to be subjected to anything like what has 
hitherto been the normal wastage of the summer lighting. 
'I'he Alliance against him has the men not only to hold 
him upon those fronts but to supply wastage. 
That, I repeat, is the fundamental fact upon which the 
whole position reposes. If anyone reads into that fact 
the certitude of victory it is not my fault nor the fault 
of anyone who has the function of stating military pro- 
bilems in militar\' terms. The senseless prophesy of cer- 
tain victory which has gone on on both sides in this 
campaign is the most immilitary thing conceivable. 
It is about as valuable to a judgment of war as shouting 
through a megaphone would be to a judgment of chess. 
The enemy knows that this truth with regard to num- 
bers is the cardinal truth dominating a.U others. He 
knows it just as well as we do, and he is making his 
plans accordingly. 
' I said last week, as I had said many times before, that 
there was an imknown quantity or margin in the shape 
of the unknown Polish recruitment ; since I wrote those 
words I have had excellent evidence that Polish 
recruitment has liitherto wholly failed. The enemy has 
here fallen between two stools or rather has been the 
victim of his own lack of judgment. He believed ,he 
would get a separate peace with Russia. On that 
hypothesis he plumped for creating a mutilated but auto- 
nomous Poland, which, still within the orbit of the Cen- 
tral Empires, wouj.d enjoy its own laws, money, language, 
religion and all the rest of it and be free to adopt any 
military policy it chose. If, after months of this attitude 
which has coloured the whole of his actions in Poland, 
lie suddenly turns round and subjects the Polish people to 
the most brutal of all tyrannies, alien conscription, he 
undoes all his past work. And what is more he does 
it too late to be of any real use to him and lie runs a risk 
of wasting a considerable measure of strength in the 
enforcement of such a new policy. He hoped, apparentlv, 
for a considerable measure of voluntar\' recruitment, 
I have had good evidence that voluntary recruitment in 
Poland has failed. 
The Central Empires and their Allies, then, are thrown 
back upon their own resources, and we know that those re- 
sources are insufficient to retain their strength through 
this year. 
The next essential truth which must be read in connec- 
tion with this is that the enemy has plumped for hazard- 
ing a considerable force at the laeginning of the fighting 
season. We know that he has concentrated it and 
we know that he is about to launch it. Conscious of his 
insutticiency of men compared with his opponents he 
had either to eke out to the latest possible date such 
drafts as he had in sight, or to adopt the opposite policy 
of using at once all that he could spare to get together. 
We know that he has chosen the latter policy. 
The third thing we have to remember, which it will 
be politically essential for us to remember when the final 
struggle begins, is that the Western Allies have it amply 
in their power to force one or more offensive movements 
where and when they choose. If the enemy launches his 
offensive first it will be because he has been allowed to 
do so. Not because he has taken his opponents by sur- 
prise. If that offensive continues for some little time 
without a counter-stroke being launched, it will not be 
because the counter-stroke cannot be launched. It will 
be because the delay is deliberately permitted by the 
Higher Command upon our side. This also is, or should be, 
self-evident. But witli such amazing comments upon 
war as those which the public has had to read for a long 
time past, and with such a flood of writing which does 
not even pretend to ba based upon military study, there 
is a real danger that the 'mere launching of an enemy 
offensive will be enough to produce a bad political effect 
upon opinion. That effect must be resisted by each of us 
with his whole power. There is no political instrument 
in this country for strengthening opinion or restricting 
the weakening or corruption of it by ignorant writers. 
• The remedy can only be found in each man's own self- 
respect and intelligence. H. Beli.oc 
The Submarine War 
By Arthur Pollen 
FOR the first time since I became the Naval 
Correspondent of Land & Water I have been 
absent from England for more than four days. 
It so happens tliiit the period has been crow ded 
to a degree qiute unprecedented, with incidents, decisions 
of poKcy, and public discrissionsi arising out of the naval 
war. Never indeed ha't'e the crude realities of the 
operations of sea force been so vividly or so extensively 
advertised. This advertisiement has not arisen primarily 
Out of any unexpected 01: sensational incidents at sea. 
It has again been shown to be quite possible for a single 
fast craft to run the gaunl'.let in the narrow seas and fire 
a few shells at an undefended watering place. The 
. darkness that was needed to make the expedition possible 
prevented the bombardment doing any military damage 
whatever, though once more the death of a civilian — and 
that a woman — affixes the mark of Cain to the sort of 
above sea war to which Germany is confined. There 
has been nothing abnormal in the development of the 
submarine campaign, thouf^h, oddly enough, the Dutch 
seem to have been as surjjrised as they were shocked 
by an attack on seven of ti^eir liners and cargo- vessels, 
to which a safe conduct had been given by the German 
Embassy at the Hague. .A.11 . of these have been wrecked 
or sunk ; but the folly of the Dutch in confiding in the 
good faith of Germany made the task surprisingly easy. 
Outside of this the only inci dent of note has been the 
sinking of the Laconia, which led to an American woman 
and her child dying — tortureii beyond bearing by ex- 
posure in an open boat. But t hen this kind of thing was 
to be expected also. The intcirest of the period then 
does not lie in the events, but in the explanations of 
and deductions from them, and in the political decisions 
which have ensued or must inevitably ensue. 
The British Government has issued a new Order in 
Council which should add something to the tightening of 
our strangle-hold on all sea sources of German supply, 
though even now it is to be observed that the penalties 
that can be enforced on ships that attempt to break 
blockade, are not made of universal application. What 
is of more moment to the people of these islands is the 
very ffank account which Sir Edward Carson gave of the 
dimensions and course of the submarine campaign as 
it affects this country, and the ominous programme of 
lessened imports that the Premier announced to Parlia- 
ment as having been made necessary by the severe and 
constant toll that our merchant tonnage sustains. And, 
jyst as the tardy recognition of the German attack upon 
our trade has; now put our Government on its guard, 
so too in Germany this success, though much less than 
was proclaimed as certain, has given ground to the very 
highest hopes, indeed there are indications that it 
may lead to an entire change of German strategy. 
Of equal ultimate importance, though of less pressing 
interest, is the repercussion of the sea war on the mind 
and government of the people of the United States of 
America. Those who have followed the discussion in 
these columns of the successive phases of President 
Wilson's attitude during the last six months, will see 
first in the breach of diplomatic relations, next in his 
request to Congress for authority to maintain an armed 
neutrality and, lastly, in his inaugural address delivered 
at the opening of his second term, the final — but inevitable 
— stages in America's progress from isolation to a frank 
