June 7, 1917 
LXND & WATER 
13 
support of the Gennan people as a whole, is broken up and 
forbidden to re-arise. 
My readers will see that I am here arguing for a very drastic 
policy, and 1 know what can be said against it, both in the 
moral sphere and in practical argument. 1 will conclude by 
reviewing what I believe to be the gist of both those arguments 
In the moral spliere I shall be told that complete victory of 
this kind and full retribution is wrong, because it gives pain 
to other men. That is tlie first principle from which all plead- 
ing in favour of the Germans and of a shameful peace derives. 
Now, in morals this is bad. It is bad morals to say that the 
giving of pain to an evil man in order to destroy the evil, both 
in himself and as a menace to others, is in itself an evil thing. 
-The whole of human society is ccmducted and must be con- 
ducted upon tlie very opposite of that principle. 
But these pages do not lend themselves to ethical aigament. 
I do not propose to pursue it. I would propound something 
which comes much nearer home to most people than intel- 
lectual vagaries which always spare the wicked when they are 
stiong, and always forget the oppressed and the weak. 1 will 
])ropose to those who would spare Germany that they are 
themselves personally, and all those they love, in imminent 
danger. 
In this matter England is at stake, and if you once 
clearly perceive that there are but two alternatives for her 
future, true victory, or irremediable decline, you cannot 
< scape the conclusion. Short of some insane fanaticism which 
jM-eftrs even the decline of England to full victory over the 
(■ermans, even the objector, must— reluctantly, perhaps, 
because he is unused to vigorous action — demand the full 
results of victory. Nothing less is worth having. So much, 
1 say, for the moral argument. 
Now the practical reply with which I also have to deal is 
this : " It is talking very big to lay down the law. as to what 
sliould be done when the armies have achieved victory. 
Wait first until victory is achieved and discover its degree 
before any programme is attempted. Moreover, a complete 
subjugation sucii as you suggest is impossible, etc., etc." 
To this I reply that I am concerned not with the possibility 
of victory, but with its nature and with its alternative — which 
is defeat. 
If you are convinced that a complete victory is unattain- 
able "(and I am convinced of the e.\act opposite — believing 
that tlie issue a'Ttually may be near at hand, and in any 
case only depends upon tenacity), then, whether you 
like it or not, you are admitting defeat. England 
simply cannot live so long as there remains, autono- 
mous, capable of action, full of the memories of a successful 
resistance, an organised and armed community which has 
l.)roken, and will break again, those conventions of public law — 
])articulaily in maritime warfare — upon which the life of this 
countrv depends. Say that victory in the complete sense is 
impossible, if you will — but then have the intellectual candour 
to admit the immediate consequence, which is the abyss of 
failure. . For if victory is not complete in this supreme 
crisis of the world, there is no victory at all, but sheer defeat. 
The things that Germany has done, that the whole German 
nation has enthusiastically done, in this war will either be 
made impossible in the future through the memory of terrible 
ininishment, or else they will not. Either the will and the 
Very soul of this evil will be broken up or they will remain. 
If they remain all that we have known in the past as England 
cannot remain side by side with them. The artery of English 
life, which is the sea, will be cut. Security, which is the root 
of English character, will be lost and — perhaps most profound 
of all in its effect — the years to come will be Hved out under 
an increasing sense of failure and humiliation. 
There arose in Europe a novel thing which said : "I propose 
to live my own life in spite of Europe. I will break treaties, 
I will annex and despoil — I will consume all that feeds me, 
even if my increase is the death of others." At its fullest 
development it challenged what it had long threatened. It 
was opposed by a league representing older and better tilings. 
In this league the two principals were the ancient western 
civilisations of I'rance and England. 
We know what followed. The violation of Belgium, the 
sudden invasion of France, arson, rape, murder, the de- 
gradation of the very name of soldier, the defilement of 
altars and of homes and even of the tombs by the filth of 
these men. Then came the miracle of the Marne — and thence- 
after a war of siege behind the lines of which the evil thing 
besieged has committed one abomination .after another, so 
that each in. its crude enormity makes us forget the last. 
Now either this evil place and spirit so besieged will be 
carried and the war won, or it will hold out. If it holds out— 
that is if peace is permitted it as to an unreduced fortress, 
then those who set out to restore; public law and to avenge 
Iiurope are defeated. No verbiage can disguise that truth, 
and very bitter reality \vould undeceive in the W.sue the most 
perverted or the most blind of those who read this war as 
though it were one of the old wars and could be closed by com- 
])romise. It cannot be so closed. The enemy thing 
unbroken is incompatible with us. Either it lives and we 
die, or we live and it dies. There is no third event. 
THE SITUATION IN THE WEST 
Much the most remarkable thing that has happened this 
week in connection with the Western situation, is the declara- 
tion made by the (ierman Emperor last Friday, that the Anglo- 
I'lench offensive was at an end, and the simultaneous declara- 
tions by the Emperor Charles that the Italian effort had broken 
down against the resistance of his troops, and by the vassal 
ruler of Bavaria that the Allies were now finally exhausted. 
Compared with declarations of this kind, the comparati\ely 
small operations which have taken place during the week (up 
to the moment of writing) in France and Italy are negligible. 
It is not credible that such statements should lia\'e been made 
out of mere wantonness or perversity. They are on the face 
of them false and even silly, but it is in the highest degree 
improbable that their falsity was devoid of calculation, or that 
their obvious fatuity was devoid of calculation either. 
The enemy knows perfectly well, indeed it is in the very 
nature of the situation, that the oft'ensive power of the Allies 
in Italy and in France continues to be what it was and that he 
may expect at any moment that resumption of extreme 
pressure which is the normal termination of each period of 
preparation after each blow. Why, then, was such a group 
of statements issued at sucli a time ? 
The obvious answers to this question are first : The declara- 
tions were made at a moment when the Stockholm Conference 
was the great subject in everybody's mind. The period of 
preparation through which we have just passed, unaccom- 
panied by any movement upon the map, was just of the sort 
calculated to depress all uninstructed opinion on our side 
and to ripen any false mood for peace. -Anything that .would 
strengthen such a mood, however wild it might look when 
soberly examined, was worth while. 
The second consideration, equally obvious, was the neces- 
sity of supporting opinion at home. The exact degree of 
civilian exhaustion, economic and moral, in the enemy coun- 
tries is a matter of doubt. But that that exhaustion is very 
severe, and that it has entered an exceedingly critical period 
which will last at least until the harvest, is common know- 
ledge. 
We further possess an exact numerical test of military ex- 
haustion in the case of the German Empire. Class 1918, which 
in France is under training, but still far from being used in the 
fighting line, has, in the case of the German Empire, been put 
into the fighting line long ago. There is none of it left in the 
depots, unless we call depots those drafts immediately behind 
the fighting line, and in the zone of the armies from which gaps 
are locally replaced. Class 1919, which has not yet been 
touched in France, is already for the greater part to be found 
in the German depots under training. Seven-tenths of it was 
called up last month. The remaining three-tenths are under 
warning to present themselves later in the summer. The 
situation created for the ' German armies by the Western 
offensive has made these extreme measures necessary. Tne 
equivalent of no less than 119 divisions were drawn into the 
whirlpool or mill of the defence in Artois and in Champagne 
before the first six weeks of the fighting were over. The 
.figures for the last fortnight are not available. But in those 
six weeks no less than 92 divisions were identified, 27 of 
which after being withdrawn in a broken condition and 
reorganised, appeared for the second time ; in other words, 
six weeks of the 191 7 offensive accounted for nearly as many 
divisions as did the whole of the Battle of the Somme. The 
Battle of the Somme — that is, the offensive of 1916 — 
accounted, if we add to the divisions identified the second 
appearance of a certain number and even the third appearance 
of a small number, to the equivalent of 133 divisions. In less 
than a quarter of the same time the oflensive of 1917 has 
accounted for 119— almost exactly 90 per cent. It is a pro- 
digious rate of loss and upon a scale quite unprecedented 
hitherto even in this war. 
If the divisions of the German army at the present moment 
were of the same average strength as they were in I9i(), and if 
the line of battle were as restricted, these figures would mean 
that the rate of wastage this year was more than three times 
as great as the rate of wastage last year, but that would be a 
very grave exaggeration for two reasons. The line of battle 
is much more extended than it was on the Somme, and. we 
know that the German divisions are now on the average 
much weaker. They are perhaps, taking them all round, 
not very much more than three-quarters of what they were 
last year. The French, in particular, have frequently dis- 
covered in front of them units of which the battalions were not 
more than 750 bayonets strong, of whicli only boo could count 
as combatants, and the divisions are now normally of only nine 
battalions instead of 12. The extension of the lineof battle 
