LAND & WATER 
April 5, 1917 
to compel obsen-ance, it does not exist. As between 
independent nations the only safeguard against abnormal 
and unnatural outrage in war is common opinion. 
Now tlie conclusion imposed by this analysis is that 
opinion must be directed to coil^plete victory against 
Prussia and to the rendering impotent of the power which 
ints in this fashion. 
Every attitude towards this war which continues to 
regard it as what past wars have been — normal struggles 
between States which will, after the struggle, resume 
normal relations— is built upon a false foundation. It is 
built upon the false foundation we find in a hundred 
other lesser ca.ses. the illusion that past conditions have 
survived some tremendous cataclysm. We can only 
prevent the degradation of war as at present accom- 
plished b\- Prussia from becoming jiennanent, by destroy- 
ing the centre which boasts its power and desire to con- 
tinue and increase these novelties, and which is in actual 
process of continuing and expanding them. 
The longer the war lasts the clearer this truth becomes. 
Those who sa\' the thing cannot be done arc welcome to 
their opinion. But they must at the same time accept 
the logical consequence of that opinion. These logical 
consequences are the establishment in Europe of fully 
belligerent conditions as a permanency ; the inability of 
Europe to re-establish peace as the normal and war as 
the abnormal state. For this country in particular 
such a conclusion — the making of a peace upon terms 
with the defeated Power, a peace which leaves it in 
bc-ing as an independent State— would mean the end of 
its ]}eculiar position and power, if in particular the 
breakdown of all conventions in maritime warfare be 
admitted and the conhscation of private property as 
well ; if the precedent is allowed to stand, then" the 
foundation of this country and Empire, which is mer- 
cantile and maritime, is withdrawn. Not only the 
present enemy, but any potential enemy in the future 
has, upon these precedents, the power to strike mortal 
blows against a highly populated industrial island 
State, controlling distant dependencies and allied with 
distant dominions. It cafi act against such a State 
in a fashion quite separate from the corresponding power 
which can be exercised against a Continental State. 
Theri> is no escaping this conclusion any more than 
there is escape from a mathematical proof. The Issue 
is quite clear. The business must be carried to its very 
end with the full consciousness of that end and the' 
determination to reach it, or, in the alternative, all the 
way in w>hich we have lived, all that by which we have 
lived, and in particular the sheltered conditions which 
permit certain academic eccentricities Hke " pacifism " 
to flourish, will be gone for good and all. 
The Battle for St. Quentin 
BEFORE the enemy was compelled to his recent 
retii-ement, the line which he held through 
France formed a gigantic salient the character, 
the peril, and conse^iuence of which have been 
familiar to us for more than two years. It was a line 
which went from north to south, from the North Sea to 
the Noyon curve (Roye-Lassigny-Soissons), and then 
went from east to w^est throtigh the Argonne to the 
jNIeuse near \'erdun. 
Until his opponents had grown to his own stature in 
number and munitionment, such a trace gave the enemy 
the advantages we recapitulated Bkst week : It meant the 
occupation of enemy soil ; the use of a great industrial 
area, and the shutting oft' from the French of most of their 
coal and nearlv all theii- iron. Hut from the moment his 
opponents had grown to his own stature in men and fire 
power, the trace began to invo.he a great strategic peril, 
because if a breach is effected on either side of a salient— 
.especially at some way from its apex — the whole salient 
goes, and there is an immense rupture produced in the 
lines, which spells disaster. 
As the Allies not only reached but passed the enemy's 
capacity in men and fire power upon the west, this peril 
increased. The Battle of the Somme rendered it acute : 
the continuation of that great action by perpetual local 
pressure during the winter rendered it. at last, menacing 
in the highest degree ; and after the occupation of Hill 
127 above Miraumont, the danger was so overwhelming 
LiUe 
1 
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Mezier£5 
Verdun 
that a retirement was imposed as a necessity upon the 
Germans. 
Repeating here in Sketch I. the elements of this trace 
with which we are ;),ll so familiar, we see at once that the 
only thorough solution of the incre£isin^ difliculty in 
which the enemy found himself was a reiirement to the 
base of the great salient, that is, to a line covering 
Lille and Maubeugc, striking the Meuse near Mezieres, 
and so up that river to Verdun. 
But a vast retirement of this sort under the pressure of 
a superior and active enemy would inevitably mean 
tremendous losses in men and material knd might well 
mean final disaster into the bargain ; for after such losses 
it might well prove impossible to take up the new line 
securely. 
The Qnemy was therefore compelled, against his will, 
to a doubtful and unsatisfactor\^ compromise. He pro- 
posed to himself the reduction "of the verj' point of the 
salient only ; a local straightening of his line, which 
would still leave the salient as a whole in being, though 
with a new apex, no longer rounded and in the neighbour- 
hood of Noyon at A, but much sharper and in the neigh- 
bourhood of Laon at B. Meanwhile the difliculty the 
British would have in bringing up guns and supplies over 
the ruined belt of the Somme battlefield and the difficulty 
the French also would have in advancing over a narrow- 
district about one day's march in breadth in which he pro- 
posed to destroy utterly every kind of water supply, 
shelter, etc., would, he thought, give him time to con- 
solidate himself upon the new line and hold it strongly 
imtil he could begin some principal attack elsewhere and 
so divert the energies of his foes. 
Such was the plan. To strike a fairly straight line 
from Arras, largely covering Cambrai, just covering St. 
Quentin, its vital central point (using the hill forest of 
St. .Gobain as a sort of bastion, further to help the re- 
tention of St. Quentin), and striking the old line above 
the Aisne east of Soissons and south of Laon. 
The formation of this new line involved the abandoning 
of a narrow crescent of country less than thirty miles at 
its broadest, tapering to nothing at either end and 
averaging some six or seven. He would pivot, as he 
formed it, round the district about ten miles in front of 
the town of Laon, and he clearly proposed to hold it 
strongly and for a considerable time while he prepared 
an offensive elsewhere.. But his power to hold it depended 
on the check he had imposed upon the pursuit, and on 
his having time to strengthen it so thoroughly that by "the 
time the Allied shock against it should be felt, it should 
hold at its two vital points : St. Quentin and the pivot. 
St. Quentin in the centre and the pivot on the south. 
This power to hold this new line for. at an}' rate, a 
time long enough to permit of a reconstruction of his 
