LAND & WATER 
May 
17. 1917 
a. Polaod at thi' same tiiiic completely lite and establishing 
by its Western culture and traditions, its military terajxT and 
its mere extent of territory, a coimterpoisc to the ruined 
Ciermanio influence over Central Europe. 
The most timid compromiser cannot flatter himself that 
there is now any third course. Either there will be a f^rcat 
Poland curbing the Germans, or there will l>e a mutilated 
Poland under Oerman tutelage. Either there will be a Poland 
making German aggression weaker, or a Poland making Ger- 
many vastly stronger — the wt)rd Germany meaning hen) 
that mass oi tradition and speech which, under the headship 
of Prussia has challenged ICuropc and done all these things 
which are now of perpetual and shameful record. 
Well, it should be clear that time is here predominant. 
l\iland to-day is actually occupied. It has been occupied 
lor the better part of two years. It has been more and njore 
organised under Prussian direction and towards the Prussian 
idea with every month that has passed. Thv continuance 
of the blows upon the IVtst 'which are eating up the enemy's 
nicn is a necessary, condition of giving to Poland to-day the 
continued prospect of full freedom, the consequent lailL to attain 
it and the faith that it can be attained. But what effect would 
follow in this particular from a calculated delay ? A 
cr^'stallised accepted Polish policy strengthened by habit 
and working and wholly German. 
(z) Now consider another aspect of the matter. It is 
sometimes called financial, but the word is only a mask for 
what is really economic and deals, not with symbolic counters, 
but with things : steel, wheat, oils and ships. 
The process of economic exhaustion has struck the whole 
world. It has struck the Central Empires more heavily 
than the Western AUies, but it has struck every one. Such 
a strain may Ik; endured as a necessity. To play with its 
prolongation as a {)ohcy is quite another nmtter. There 
will be a tem])orary relief to tlie strain throughout tiic enemy's 
tenit(jry in foodstuffs (tliough not in fatty matters nor — 
still less— in labour jjowcr) as the summer turns into autunm. 
If, before that jx-riod the maxinmm of miUtary strain has been 
iiiiposed upon llic suffering enemy, that relief will not mean 
what it would mean should it come after a relaxation of effort 
even tliough that relaxation were ephemeral and calculated. 
It is one tiling to obtain momentary physical relief on the 
top of a rest and recruitment — quite another to obtain it 
while you are breaking under another and continued strain. 
(j) Next consider the position from the point of view of 
munitionment. It is the one factor which the pubUc at 
home tinds hardest to realise. Indeed, if one may say so, 
it would setni that the tJiree great tests of superiority 
jjossessed by the Western Allies over the Central Empires 
twid to be put by civilian opjnion in an order inverse of the 
true one. 
People consider first movement, next numbers of men 
and last of all munitionment. But the superiority of the 
Allies at this monx-nt, and increasingly for months to come, 
is of the very opposite type. Munitionment is the capital 
point. The enemy has been passed and the pace is increasing. 
The entrj' of America into the war has here made what was 
already certain doubly certain. The reserves of man power 
(due to the fact that Great Britain developed the war later 
than the conscript countries) comes next last of all, and 
far and away the least important, comes local movement 
during the process of grinding down. To use this superiority 
of munitionment while we have it and while it is growing, to 
compel tlirough it a corresponding dilemma upon the enemy's 
side between the leaving of men in factories and the taking of 
them lor diafts, to press the existing advantage for its full 
worth, is at once an obvious jxjlicy and an essential one. 
(4) And what of the held of recruitment ? 
Here is another consideration pointing to exactly the 
same conclusion. It is futile to argue at this time of day 
uixjii the details of the matter ; the large lines of it are known to 
the whole world. 
The Central Powers are exhausted because they entered 
tlie war as fully conscript powers ; the Western Allies are 
similarly exhausted in the case of but one of the three Powers 
concerned. Use such an opportunity while it exists and it 
l>roduces its ma.ximum effect. Delay and you bring into ])lny 
the ■' annual income in men " which the much larger human 
resources of the Central Powers and their occupied territory 
have available if the delay is indefinitely prolonged. 
(3) There is yet another consideration. The dependent 
and quasi-dependent nationalities now acting as the vassals 
of Prussia — already doubtful — can be made to suffer increas- 
ing strain so long as the blows of 1917 are delivered with full 
effect. It is the more difficult — so long as the pressure con- 
tinues — to feed them and more difficult to munition them, 
and the defection of any one would be the lieginning of the 
i-nd for our enemies. But let there be delay and observe 
wliat happens, ^'^e harvests, even though not sufficient. 
%re reaped at a moment when the moral strain on them has 
ijeen deliberately lelaxid. Tiieir munitionment at onc«> lakes 
a leap upwards, and the factor of time, already alluded to, 
works adversely to us in the case of Bulgaria, Turkey and 
even Hungary on the moral side. A reprieve from the strain 
works for a consohdation in their habit of subservience. 
(()J What of the submarines. 
Their effort is not the province of these articles. But it sliould 
be almost self-evident that so far as it may affect the military 
situation, our ignorance of what development the sub- 
marine menace may take in the future makes directly for a 
jxilicy of continuous an<l effective action upon intensive 
lines. 
Added to these various arguments let me close with one 
which is to my mmd quite conclusive. I mean the necessitv 
of preserving the initiative now that it is obtained. 
Importance of Retaining the Initiative 
The Great Offensive of 1917, now but little more than 
jiionth in progress, having reached, say, a fifth of its ma.xi 
mum extension in time, has already clearly and defiuitel) 
given the Western Allies the initiative. 
But this word with its technical sound must be translated 
if we are to understand the enormous importance of its con- 
tinuance. 
The initiative is to battle what the grip is to wrestling. 
You cannot enjoy, once you have obtained this superiority, 
the continuance of it and at the .same time a relaxation of 
your effort. Such a relaxation is inviting the initiative 
to i)ass to your enemy. 
This truth is so elementary that in the narrow field of a 
particular battle on the old scale — a tactical effort covering 
a few miles and decided in a few hours — it is self-evident. It 
ought to be equally self-evident upon any scale of warfare. 
It is perfectly true that the initiative is often recovered 
by a retreat ; as in wrestling by a skilful " breaking away " ; 
but only when it has already been lost by the party so acting, 
and when the party so acts because he has discovered his 
inferiority. That is precisely what l.udendorff did last March. 
He retired the German line over a narrow belt — but all he could 
manage — in the hope that the pursuit would be so far checked 
as to give him time to recover the initiative over the PYencli 
and British. We all know now how and why he failed. 
The Staff work and the engineers of the pursuit were too 
much for him. 
A force that has lost the initiative may, I say, attempt 
to recover it in this fashion. The retreat after Guise to the 
Marne was nothing else. But for a force already superior, 
increasingly superior and fully possessed of the initiative to 
abandon it upon some vague theory of postponement, is a 
thing unknown and, I think one may fairly say, inconceivable 
in military history. 
At the present moment the enemy is enormously out-gunned 
and out-munitioned. In the capital point of observation he 
is completely mastered both as to fixed points and as to work 
in the air. The single point in which he can say that he is 
not thus overborne is, for the moment, in the point of numbers, 
and that is of itself the strongest possible proof that he is 
bending under the pressure applied to him. For, as we must 
never be tired of repeating, this extremely rapid throwing in 
and using up of reserves which had been intended for action 
elsewhere, is the price he pays and is condemned to j)ay, for 
having lost his observation, liis old superiority in munition- 
ment, and his direction of the battle. 
There is, perhaps, only one strong -force at- work inimical 
to the full and enthusiastic support of the Allied Cximmands 
who have rightly determined to press the enemy this year to 
the extreme, and to decide his fate within the shortest hmits 
of time. This force is the effect jjroduccd upon the civilian 
mind by long acquaintance with the terrible conditions of 
modern war, and the almost inevitable visualising of these 
conditions in our own and not in the enemy's lines. 
Such a point of view is, of course, wholly false and mis- 
leading. At the worst the strain is equal. At the best— 
and that is the case to-day — the comparison is heavily against 
the enemy. 
'I'here is a bitter irony in the refh'ction that when a terribly 
outnumbered British force was receiving five shells to tme 
that it could return, opinion at lionic had not yet been 
visuaUsed, for there had not yet been time to effect this— the 
awful business. Now, though it is the British who are de- 
Uvering five shells to the enemy's one, so much time has 
passed, so many men have returned with the experience, 
that opinion is ahve to what modern artillery means — 
but principally as to its effect upon our lines. We should be 
at least as much alive, if we wish to judge the war rightly, to 
what modern artillery means to-day for the enemy : it is he 
who is now l>eing subjected to our iiow final mastery in that 
arm. 
And another way to look at it is this : 
