September 20, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
The orthodox Slavs, especially those of the wealthier classes 
who had come into contact with and had nourished an old 
antagonism against the Gennans, were at the other. The 
Poles considered only their chances of freedom in the result 
from the misgovcrnment both of their German and Russian 
oppressors who had destroyed their independence. 
The Baltic towns were largely German in tradition and 
government. The Finns stood apart. 
In a word the Alliance was disparate not only in its national 
traditions but in the te.xturc of opinion with regard to the 
war. 
In the West this state of affairs very rapidly changed. 
Immediately upon the outbreak of war the Germans com- 
mitted what was then in the eyes of all European tradition 
and morality a sacrilege. They violated neutral territory. 
There immediately followed unheard of and abominable 
massacres of civilians, and the public proclamation by the 
Germans that this vast expansion of methods already intro- 
duced by them in 1S70 was to be regarded as their normal method 
of war. 
Western Solidarity 
That d isunion of tone, of which I have spoken, changed at 
once in the West to a complete solidarity of opinion. With 
the exception of a handful' of individuals, some of whom were 
manifestly mad and one or two clearly the agents of the Cen- 
tral Powers, the whole mass of the British and French popula- 
tions became determined not only upon the complete military 
defeat of their enemy, but upon his thorough chastisement, 
■iisarmament and reduction to impotence. Public men pro- 
claimed this end as the necessary and, as it \^ere, the obvious 
objective of what we call to-day the Western Alliance. It 
was a thing no more to be discussed than the necessity of 
putting out a fire or of arresting a murderer. It was per- 
ceived as clearly as we perceive it to-day in the light of history, 
but of course with less detachment and under the spur of fierce 
patriotic passions, which we do not share, that the life of 
Europe itself was at stake. 
The great victory of the Marne. the classic example of 
strategy in the warfare of the old world, was won at the begin- 
aing of this process. The Central Powers, reduced to the 
defensive on the West, had clearly lost their chance of con- 
quest, and their doom to complete and decisive military defeat 
was taken to be only a question of time. The virtue required 
for its achievement was nothing more than the virtue of 
perseverance. 
This conception was, as we now know, perfectly sound, 
both in strategy and in politics. 
The time required for the process of victory was not known. 
But that it was limited and that the process itself was in- 
evitable was clear. 
The enormous latent resources of Great Britain were 
developed with astonishing activity. Within a year Italy 
had joined the Western Alliance ; and if the hopes of rapid 
• termination were somewhat exaggerated, the main truth that 
time was the necessary factor working for the West against the 
Central Powers was clearer than ever. 
For two years, and. indeed, for nearly three (a period that 
seems to us astonishingly short, but which bore a different 
aspect to those undergoing the strain) the mood I have des- 
cribed remained unchanged. The blows delivered were con- 
tinuous and increasing both in vigour and effect, and the pro- 
cess of slow victory uninterrupted. 
Upon the East it was otherwise. The Eastern front was not 
industrialised, and some historians of authority maintain 
that the political as well as the material factors at work there 
made for the success of the Central Powers. At any rate upon 
the East that success appeared. Lack of munitionment com- 
pelled the extensive but well-conducted retreat of the Russian 
armies. The German and Austrian forces occupied the whole 
of Poland. Bulgaria joined them and the Balkans fell into 
their power. They supported their Turkish ally meanwhile 
with a considerable measure of success. 
But the fate of the war manifestly depended not upon any 
event in this ill developed eastern region but in the fate of 
armies in the heart of European civilisation, where the defen- 
sive line of the Central Powers was held anxiously and with 
increasing difficidty from the Adriatic to the North Sea. 
It was in the fourth year of the war that there took place 
that development in opinion which has been so little understood 
by historians, and which is yet the key to all that followed. 
I would insist upon it particularly, for I believe that the 
comprehension of its causes makes clear what has hitherto 
been inexplicable and blind in the history of our race. 
A small minority at first, but an appreciable one, formed 
nf very different elements, began to regard the whole struggle 
in a novel and what is to us at first sight, an incomprehensible 
fashion. This minority took as its postulate, consciously or 
'Jnconscjously held, the impossibility of a decision. Not a 
few men whose names have long been forgotten, but who were 
famous at that moment with a curiously ephemeral fame of 
popular leaders, men who had for three full years seen the pro- 
blem clearly and defined it with accuracy, changed their 
tone, discussed the nature of an approaching peace by 
negotiation, argued the necessity of arriving at it, and took for 
granted in all they said — most of them sincerely — the exist- 
ence at the conclusion of the war, not of a humbled and de- 
feated opponent, but of an opponent still strong, still their 
equal — yet innocuous ! What was really extraordinary under 
the circumstances (but the folly of judgment upon the future is 
the most frequently repeated of historical plienomena) they 
seemed to regard such an arrangement as final and satis- 
factory. 
Let me put briefly before the reader the causes of so singular 
a conversion. For though it had taken place only in the minds 
of a few it struck root and spread. 
There was, in the first place, the interest of finance. A 
short war, followed by the compulsion of the defeated party 
to repair economic damage would indeed have rujned one group 
of European financiers but would, if anything, have enriched 
the other. Such a war would, again, have left the lenders 
to the victorious party secure of their repayment and in- 
terest without any very prolonged prospect of crushing 
taxation. A secure peace once established the production 
of wealth would have caught up the debt involved by the 
destruction of so much during the fighting, and it is even pro- 
bable that a great expansion of economic energy would have 
followed — as it followed upon the Napoleonic wars a hundred 
years before. 
But after the three years of war it was dear that the power 
to repay voluntary advances made by the wealthier classes was 
reaching its term, and that nothing but prolonged and very 
heavy taxation of accumulated wealth would be necessary to 
achieve the end. 
Now the financial interests of that moment in Western 
Europe were largely cosmopolitan and largely indifferent to 
national feeling — still more indifferent to the European 
traditions which had inspired the defence against, and after the 
defence the approaching victory over, the Central Powers. 
That was the first and main cause of this new spirit — a 
most powerful one. Though the individuals concerned were 
few they enjoyed a great command over the Press and over 
certain sections of the politicans, and that their action was 
secret was an immensely strong aisset in their favour. 
Policy of Silence 
Next there must be noted as a cause the necessary silence 
adopted by all the commanders with regard to the progress of 
operations. The perfected system of espionage in a degree 
quite unknown in earlier wars, the essential value of surprise, 
the very ease with which news could be rapidly communicated 
compared with the conditions existing before the scientific 
discoveries of the 19th century, made this policy of silence 
necessary. But it undoubtedly had, with all its obvious 
advantages, one great defect, which was to destroy, or to 
delay those vivid impressions upon which the military spirit 
of a people is supported under the strain of a great conflict. 
Next we must allow as a cause that permanent division 
between technical and instructed military opinion and the 
vague miscolculations and ignorance of the civilian popula- 
tion upon military affairs. To the soldiers of the higher 
commands nothing was clearer than the rate of attrition and 
the fact that attrition would decide the campaign. To the 
civilians this truth was never clear, and we must perhaps 
blame in some degree the Governments concerned for failing 
to emphasise it and to publish frequently the statistics which 
would have made it familiar even to the popular eye. It was 
natural, indeed, that the Central Powers, in their increasing 
anxiety as the end approached, should have concealed such 
figures and should have tampered with their official lists, but 
there was not such necessity for the Western Alliance. The 
fault was one of mere routine and negligence. It was easier 
not to undertake the work necessary for such a propaganda 
and it was not undertaken. 
Lastly we have that universal factor in history, the human 
conception that the future will resemble the past. Its result 
is to us to-day the most astonishing of the many astonishing 
H Journal from a Xeoation 
in next week's "Land & Water" 
will contain Mr. Hugh Gibson's narrative of 
The Last Hours of Edith Cavell 
