May 3, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
evening anotlicr counter-attack was attempted against Gav- 
rellc, which broke down at once. And as Gavrelle village was 
thoroughly well held by the British the German communique 
for domestic consumption told its readers that : " Our position 
is now situated on the eastern boundary of the village." 
The whole story had already been announced as a great 
enemy victory, naturally, but the method of this announce- 
ment was puerile and characteristic of the extraordinary 
change, which has come over the German communiques in the 
last few weeks. Friday was a day of comparative quiet and 
at once the enemy communiques note " the breakdown with 
heavy losses of British attacks," the suggestion being that 
these attacks were made in force with the object of a decisive 
local result. ■' 
On Saturday another l)low was delivered astride the 
critical Scarpe valley. This blow happened to get hold of 
Arleux and all the hither side of that slight slope north of 
Plcruvaiu, which the British have called GreenkinrJ Ifill. 
But once more the interest of the business is not the in- 
significant territorial advance but the jnovocatiou of the 
counter-attack. All the Saturday afternoon these counter- 
attacks jjroceeded in great masses at intervals of two hours. 
Every,'one of them was stopped, checked and massacred by the 
opposing artillery with the excejrtion of an especially heavy 
bolt launched at Oppy, the ruins of which the British had 
entered and from which they were driven out. 
In the night between Saturday and Sunday the counter- 
attacks continued, and tliese were again broken by the British 
fire. And during Sunday afternoon British pressure south of 
Oppy captured about a mile of trenches and provoked yet 
again a new system of coimter-attacks, again defeated. 
It is probable that a fair account of these five days, dis- 
tinguishing all large counter-attacks in mass from minor 
efforts, would tabulate no Jess than a score of these, all of them 
immensely more expensive than the British attacks which 
prov^okcd them, and all save one (that at Oppy) failures. 
.At the risk of any amount of repetition it is essential to insist 
upon this character in the fighting. The enemy cannot live 
in his present insecure positions where the defences have l^een 
broken down save at this terrible expense in men involved 
in re-action against the pressure to whicli he is subjected. 
Monday, the last day of which we have notice at the 
.moment of writing, was again a lull, and once more the German 
communiques misrepresented the conclusion of these affairs 
liy the simple process of concentrating ujion Oppy alone. 
The German communique of the last day of April has a 
further characteristic piece of nonsense which would never 
have been printed some months ago. After putting the blinkers 
down on everything that happened along the line except at 
Oppy where the German counter attack had a local success, 
it gives a total of prisoners (adding rather less than 400 to the 
number already picked up during the first fluctuations of this 
long battle) and leaves the reader under the impression that 
the total number (rather less than a third of that which the 
British could count) was due to the slight <ierman advance 
in the ruins of Oppy alone. It is particularly to be hoped that 
every careful reader of the war news will note during the next 
few weeks the character of these German communiques. They 
are the more illuminating because they tell one more of the 
state of the enemy than any other documents at this moment, 
and they are, for those who read them aright, a sort of ironic 
commentary upon his excessive but unavoidable losses. 
Action exactly parallel to the British action concluded 
the week when the French on Monday seized another six 
miles of front line on the Moronvillers Hills. There was the 
same shattering effect of artillery fire, the same compulsion 
for the enemy to counter-attack with very heavy loss, 
the same inability of the counter-attack to make good. 
We must from now lienceforward watch the whole process 
with patience, expecting nothing startling, but appreciating 
the cumulative effect of this method which is securely based 
upon three forms of superiority the enemy cannot take from 
us : ' High superiority in artillery ; superiority in the air 
and, upon the whole, superiority in moral. H. Bklloc. 
We regret to announce that Mr. Pollen's article 
giving detailed arguments for making a change in the 
organisation and personnel of the Admiralty, in view 
of the situation, has been refused publication by the 
Censor. 
How to Treat a Great Man 
By Principal ly. P. Jacks 
IT is much easier to say what a great man is not, than to 
say what he is. All that can be said on the latter 
question has been said by Carlyle, and I must refer tlie, 
reader to his incomparable pages for further information. 
A great man is not a combination of the minds of 
lesser men. He is not the soul of a committee, nor even 
of a people. You don't get his portrait by making a com- 
posite photograph of all the little m.en in the world ; you don't 
get the measure of his mind by adding up the sum total of 
theirs. All which is only a roundabout way of saying that 
the great man represents nobody. This can be proved quite 
simply. For if a great man represents a crowd, then, on occasion 
the crowd ought to be able to represent him ; and that every-; 
body knows to be absurd. 
One of the hoUowest fictions that have gained currency 
in modern times is the notion that one man can " represent ' 
another man, which of course is preciseh' what no human 
individual could ever do for any other human individual 
since the world began. This fundamental trutli, which is 
apt to be obscured when " average " men are in question, 
stands out quite clearly when the great man, who is obviously 
unique, steps upon the scene. How can a great mind represent 
a lot of lesser minds than itself ? The thing is transparently 
nonsensical. As well talk of an Egyptian pyramid representing 
a suburb of jerry-built houses, f)r a rose representing a fieja 
of turnips. If the great man may l>e said to represent any- 
thing at all, he represents not what the little men are but 
precisely what they are not. He stands in his own rights. 
Whence it would seem to follow that when a multitude of 
lesser men elect one greater than themselves to do their busi- 
ness, what they ought to want is not that he should act as 
they themselves would act, but that he should act differently : 
i.e. more wisely. If what they want is a man who would act 
precisely as they would act in the given circumstances, then 
they should be especially careful not to elect a greater man than 
themselves — for it is quite certain that he, justi because he is 
greater, will act differently. They should ch<X)se one of their 
own number, and that, of course, is what they most fre- 
quently do. But let us suppose that in the day of crisis a 
wise democracy, knowing its own limitations (the chief part 
of wisdom), knowing that great emergencies are iDcyond the 
reach of warring factions, knowing that swords must now be 
i ■ 
