June 28, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
First, there are the novelties-. due to the scale upon which 
the struggle lias developed : As, for instance, siege hues of a 
thousand miles. ._ , 
Secondly, there are the novelties due to the unexpected 
excesses ct tiie (ieiiiians and their abandonment of our common 
morals : as, for instance, the absence of neutral territory 
dtlining a field of war and the added strain on medical sei vices. 
Thirdly, there are tlie novelties due to the unexpected 
effects cf new weapons and new inventions : as, for instance, 
and in particular, air-craft. 
As to the first of these : It behoves every student of war 
to think as clearly as he can and to distinguish between 
quantity and quality. It is a very, difficult task ; so difficult 
tliat all students of this war, I think, have been misled 
during its process by some confusion between the two. On 
the one hand, a very great expansion in scale may properly 
be treated as no more than the magnifying of conditions 
originally known. On the other hand, a great difference in 
scale inevitably produces, after a certain point, differences in 
cliaracter. The whole scheme of development in any depart- 
ment of activity presupposes that. Great differences in 
quantity begin at some stage to produce difference in quality. 
It is our business to see the process so that we do not 
mistake the one for the other, and to discern the moment at 
wJiicli, through the expansion in quantity, change in quality 
begins. For instance, upon the west and south — that is upon 
the front from the Adriatic to the North Sea, what the 
victories of the French, the British and the Italians have 
established is a war of positions. It is a siege — a pressure 
against lines to which the enemy was driven and within which 
he is confined. 
These siege lines all told are in round .numbers from 
800 to 900 miles long, but it is just as true that they are 
siege lines as it was true of the few miles of Torres Vedras a 
century ago, or of Alesia two tliousand years ago. 
There is upon the south and west, and has been, for more 
tjian two years in most places and for nearly two years in all, 
the continuous attempt on the part of the AUies to reduce 
these positions of the enemy, and spasmodic attempts of 
that enemy to break the containing force at some point (the 
first battle of Ypres, the second battle of Ypres, Verdun, the 
Trentino. etc.). There followed the fail;ire of these 
" sorties," a first shortening of the line, the abandonment of 
an advanced salient (the Noyon salient after the Somme this 
year). There is now proceeding a mere resistance to blows 
directed by the superior containing power. All this is the 
normal process of a siege. In this sense the change is only 
one of scale. Instead of dealing with a few thousand yards 
you are dealing with a million. Instead of a breach in a 
wall, or in a simple trace of earthworks, you are dealing with 
a breach in a complex trench system. Instead of impact by 
lire against a sector of some yards you are attempting a 
breach (when you do attempt it) upon a sector of many miles. 
Instead of the gradual battering of the defence and gradual 
wearing down of the defenders by shot at a few hundred yards, 
or by battering rams, you are effecting the same slow process 
by great isolated local actions, called the Aisne, Moron- 
villiers, \'imy Kidge, Messines. 
Now, the fact that tlie scale is so much larger has none the 
less differences of quality which were not foreseen. 
Differences of Quality 
Let me tabulate some of these differences of quality. 
1. The raY^idly rising proportion of heavy artillery which 
would be demanded was in no way foreseen. It must be 
noted, however, that the enemy (not because he foresaw 
a siege war, but because he wrongly thought that it would 
help him in a war of movement), was at first far better 
prepared with heavy artillery than the Allies. 
2. It has increased the necessity for the munitionment of 
lieavy guns in so enormoiis a fashion as utterly to disturb the 
calculated relations between civilian necessities and military 
necessities. Behind a modern army undertaking a siege of 
this sort, or defending the besieged positions, you have to have 
a nation largely — I had almost written mainly — occupied 
in provisioning and munitionment. As a matter of fact thase 
novel conditions early resulted in this : that the nation 
fully mobilised at the beginning had to depend for munition- 
ment more and more upon its less mobilised Ally or upon 
neutrals.'or occupied populations. 
3. The lengthy process, multiplied by its severity, has 
necessitated a re\ision in the process of reliefs. Taking units 
out of action, their reorganisation, and their replacement at 
a rate never before dreamed of. 
For instance, we compelled in five weeks — between April 
9th and May 17th (I have no later figures) 92 German divi- 
sions out of a total nominal 164 and an available possible 
148, upon the Western front to pass through the mill of the 
Artois and Champagne battles. Of these 92 we compelled 
the enemy to put in 27 twice over during that strain. 
Again, the other day, we had the striking instance of the 
Third Bavarian Division being sucked in, broken and thrown 
out all within 36 hours, on the Wytschaete Ridge. 
No doubt it would be more interesting to the student if he 
could compare this unpleasant situation of the enemy with 
the corresponding cost upon our side. That is not ain;Hter 
for discussion. It is sufficient to remember ' that in pro- 
portion to their numbers the strain on the Western Allies is 
constantly and increasingly less than it is on the enemy. 
This, by the way (if I were free to treat of it here) is the 
true key to the present position. The war will be won — • 
granted the necessary political tenacity and domestic 
cohesion — by the group which can wear down the other : 
compelling that other to refit its units faster and faster until 
the process leads to a breakdown. The thing is a mill. Each 
is making the other grind his mill faster and faster. 
Tbe procJ\iGtion of a siege upon so gigantic a scale Jias 
introduced a difference in quality. 
It has not only transformed the civilian population behind 
the army into a population of workers supplying the army. It 
has also altered the condition of surprise. 
Condition of Surprise 
Preparation against any sector of the front has to be made 
upon a scale which secures to your opponent the advantage 
of knowing where he Will be attacked. 
It is so far, apparently, impossible to prevent this. Latterly 
it has proved upon the gigantic scale of the artillery work 
required quite impossible. The only element of surprise 
you can, establish — and surprise is the essence of success- 
is the actual moment when your infantry will be launched. 
Here there appears another parallel to the old sieges, 
which the scale of the present one has transformed. It was 
a matter of judgment in the old days of battering your 
opponents' ditch and wall, when the moment had exactly 
arrived for launching the attack. To misjudge that moment 
was fatal. For you lost great quantities of men without 
result. To judge it was the verj' cause of success in the siege. 
That is equally true to-day. Luckily for the Allies there 
is this difference. You don't in the present fighting, para- 
doxical as it may seem, exhaust yourself as utterly through the 
misjudgment of this moment as was the case against the old 
smaller fortress. The proportion of effectiveness lost if the 
moment is misjudged is less in proportion to the whole than 
was the case in an old fashioned siege. On the other hand, 
it was very much easier in the old days to judge when the 
moment had comc.than it is to-day. 
You may read in the despatches of other centuries a phrase 
such as this " a breach having been effected I told so and so 
commanding so and so to attack." 
The essential words " a breach having been effected " 
cannot to-day be used. You don't see the defensive crumbling 
materially in front of you. Aircraft report results. But you 
have not that immediate vision which was possible to the 
men who took Badajos or the Malakoff. 
Yet another consequence of the enormous extension of 
siege lines is that your concentration of men as well as of 
material is slow. 
You have to re-group men for each particular effort, 
which, whether it be an effort to pierce or the mere blow of 
a battering ram will, after it is developed, necessitate a very 
long time for re-concentration elsewhere. All the problems 
of staff work have increased in complexity and in magnitude 
so much that something in their nature is changed as well 
as in their scale. 
Lastly you have in this connection what J may call the 
factor of absolute as compared with comparative exhaustion. 
In the old days, and with professional armies — even with 
conscript aimies which did not really train the whole popu- 
lation, you did the work ; if you failed through exhaustion, 
either on the defensive or on the offensive side, you said to 
yourself, "After all I might have orgartised the nation better, " 
or ■' after alL the Government ought to have supplied me 
with more men." To-day (it is another paradox) the prob- 
lem, though so immensely larger is actually simpler because 
you know that the maximum of effort is available. You take 
it that all the nation can do will be doine upon both sides and 
therefore ycu deal with known maxim.um figures, and granted 
poHtical tenacity and sincerity, with more calculable result. 
It is this element in the great war which (to those who ara 
accustomed to calculation fand use it without predjudice) 
determines its piobable conclusion. It is this which has caused 
the enemy repeatedly to sue for peace amd the Allies as repeat- 
edly to refuse his advances. H. Belloc. 
{To be continued). 
Mr. Belloc is in France this week, and has therefore been 
unable to contribute his usual summary and analysis of 
current military events. He ivill resume kis article next week. 
