April ig, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
OLD SERJEANTS' INN, LONDON, W.C. 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 1917 
CONTENTS 
Proud to Fight. By Louis Raemaekers 
Mr. Wilson's Appeal (Leader) 
The Two Offensives. By Hilaire Belloc 
Trust the American People, By Arthur Pollen 
Preparation and the French Command. By Charles 
Dawbarn 
In the Salient. By An Officer 
Life and Letters. By J. C. Squire 
Poets and the War. By E. B. Osborne 
Domestic Economy 
Kit and Equipment 
PAGE 
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3 
4 
II, 
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MR. WILSON'S APPEAL 
W.\R is no more the sport of kings, it has become 
the private business of the people. And by the 
irony of life it is the kings themselves, the 
autocrats, who have brought about the change. 
They have contemned human nature, and human nature, de- 
spised and afflicted, reasserts itself gloriously, as it ever has 
done. The Kaiser regards the women of his dominions merely 
as the potential mothers of soldiers, and the men as cannon- 
fodder in life and nitro-glycerine in death. The manner of the 
disposal of the bodies of German soldiers who have given their 
lives for their Kaiser, would be too horrible to contemplate 
were it not a perfectly natural corollary of ' ' fright fulness. ' ' It 
is well to keep clearly in view that to the German mind there 
is nothing outrageous in the degradation and defilement of 
the human body. One hundred and forty years ago, the greatest 
Enghshman of his generation, Chatham, referred in the House 
of Lords to the pitiful little German princes who sell and send 
their subjects to the shamblfes. He was denouncing the 
methods of warfare employed against our then American 
colonists, and attributed them to German soldiery. " Your 
own army is infected witli the contagion of theSe iUiberal 
allies. The spirit of plunder and rapine is gone forth among 
them." Little does the character of a nation alter as long 
as it preserves its traditions, and no traditions have been 
more sedulously fostered than those of Prussia under the 
Hohenzollerns ; moreover they have been extended to Ger- 
many which is now altogether Prussian in thought and senti- 
ment. But it is good to hear the words of Chatham, spoken 
in the Palace of Westminster in 1777, echoed from the 
White House of Washington in 1917. 
For the appeal which President Wilson has made to his 
fellow-countrymen is conceived in the spirit of the Great 
Commoner, who held it to be the first duty of every citizen 
to light for liberty when liberty is in danger, holding that he 
who voluntarily allows himself to be made a slave becomes a 
fit instrument to make slaves of others. We in this country 
have realized slowly that this war is in truth the private busi- 
ness of each one of us, we each and all have to contribute a 
personal quota if we would fulfil our duty to our fellow- 
men. Though this truth has been stated in many ways, 
never has the work which this war for liberty and right lias 
niposed upon a nation been more comprehensively yet 
iccinctly defined than in Mr. Wilson's pronouncement : 
We must supply aljunclant food not only for ourselves and 
our Allies and our seamen, but also lor a large part of the 
nations with whom we have now made common cause in 
whose support and by whose sides we shall be fighting. 
We must supply ships by hundreds out of our shipyards to 
carry to the other side of the sea, submarines or no submarines, 
what will every day be needed there, and .abundant materials 
out of our fields, mines, and factories with which not only to 
c othc and equip our own forces on land and sea, but also to 
clothe and support our people for whom the gallant fellows 
under arms can no longer work, to help clothe and equip the 
armies with which we are co-operating in Europe, and to 
keep the looms and manufactories there in raw material : 
coal to keep the fires going in ships at sea and the furnaces in 
hundreds of factories across the sea ; steel out of which to 
make arms and ammunition both here and there, rails for 
worn-out railways at the back of the fighting fronts, loco- 
motives and rolling stock to take the place of those even/ 
I lay going to pit'ces, iniiles ;i,iid horses and cattle for militarj 
service, everything with which the jjeople of Kiigland, France 
Italy, and Russia have usually supplieil themselves but canno' 
afford the men, materials, or machinery to make. 
In this passage we behold clearly what a vast and all-con 
suming enterj^rise modern war is. There is no departmen 
of human efficiency on which it docs not make enormous de 
raands. We have often heard surprise expressed at its world 
wide nature. The sound of its guns has gone forth into al 
lands, and every sea has been furrowed by its battleships 
But more amazing still is that no sphere of liuman knovYledge 
and science has escaped the influence of the commerce ol 
destruction. Discoveries, malevolent and beneficent, have 
been directly due to it, and years must elapse before man can 
fairiy strike the balance between the good and evil of the 
Great War. 
Meantime we can take Mr. Wilson's words to heart. " The 
supreme test of the nation has come and we must all speak, 
act and serve together." Are we in this country doing so to 
the best of our ability .' Exceptions there wiU and must be, 
but we do believe that the spirit of service burns with a brighter 
flame in England than ever it has done in the past. By 
God's grace it may be a candle that shall never be put out. 
And endeavour is strengthened and heartened by learning 
that the ideals for which we strive arc not the sole property 
of ourselves nationally or individually. Now at least we know 
that Anglo-Saxon civilisation with whatever defects and 
weaknesses it possesses, has never lost grip of that nobility 
of purpose which has fired the master minds of our race in 
the past and which animates at the present its leaders, sep- 
arated though they are by the seas and dwelling under 
different forms of government. "When to-morrow " Old 
Glory " — as the Americans proudly and fondly call their 
national flag — floats from every flag-staff in these islands, 
it will be saluted by the British people with gladness and 
pride, for they will recognise it as the symbol of the great 
democracy which henceforth marches shoulder to shoulder with 
the older nations of Europe in the fierce battle for the rights of 
mankind and the future security of the world. 
Mr. Wilson would lift war above every taint of squalor, 
he would not have the glory which heroism and self-sacrifice 
cast over its carnage and horror dimmed by one civil mean- 
ness : " There is not a single selfish settlement so iar as I 
can see," he states, " in the cause we are fighting for." And 
he exhorts his countrymen to devote themselves to service 
without regard to profit or material advantage and with an 
energy and intelligence that rise to the level of the enterprise 
itself. Noble words like these are the seed the sower in 
the parable went forth to sow. Not everywhere will they fall 
on good ground, but in the end they shall bring forth fruit 
an hundredfold. They will be an inspiration to many 
generous hearts throughout the world. No small part of 
the high value which this deliverance of Mr. Wilson possesses 
is due to the extremely practical nature of his advice. He 
defines the duty of every section and well nigh every in- 
dividual of the democracy. He preaches a gospel of industry 
and economy, and raises the lowliest tasks into shining 
virtues. War in his eyes still keeps its pomp and glory, 
but these qualities are no longer to be expressed in trappings 
and banners, but in better disciphne and livelier activity, 
mental and physical, of the whole body politic. For war 
is the private b'usiness of the people ; not one may neglect 
it without detriment to the cause ; victory is the fruit of 
undivided energy and most honest toil, consecrated to the 
service of God and man. And this consecration, as is fit, will 
take place to-morrow in the cathedral-church of the mother 
oily of the mother country. No jealousy to-day ripples 
the waters that flow between the two nations that once were 
one. We do not, we never shall, see eye to eye where the 
lesser and transient things of life are concerned, but whenever 
the eternal principles of freedom and right are in peril, we 
are well assured nothing henceforth will keep us apart, and ' 
in St. Paul's Cathedral to-morrow in the presence of our 
King and the representative of the President, a Divine blessing 
will be asked upon this new alliance of the Anglo-Saxon raca^ 
