LAND & WATER 
October ii, 1917 
truops was tf. compel the evacuation of the ruins of P"Wt'i- 
liock Chateau which the British had taken upon Fhursday 
and the creation o( a httle dent or re-entrant along the 
course of the Keutelheck. But beyond this there fi^^s been 
no modification of the line which has been every\vhere held and 
consolidated. The emmy issued a curious vague and short 
despatch after the action, one phrase in wluch should be retained. 
He said that the British Ixad not reached their objectives 
which were " doubtless " distant. Stuff of that kind can 
hardly deceive the simplest newspaper readers witliin hib 
own country and it is quite valueless for any other purpose. 
The character of the new tactics is now perfectly plam to 
cN-ervone -repeated blows with limited objectives ; and the 
two steps of Thursday's advance were exactly like those 01 
the week before and the week before that, save that the success 
was secured at a greater expense to the enemy. As an ex- 
ample of what is meant by thest^ limited objectives, a very good 
case is what liappened north of the Broodseynde Cross Roads. 
The Australians here went along the Passchendaele Koad 
as far as Nieuwmolen and beyond that point nearly to the rail- 
way and then came back of their own accord ito the objective 
assigned to them, which was only one thousand yards north 
of the Cross Koads. 
The total number of prisoners taken in the action was close 
on four and a half thousand. 
THE BATTLE OF RAMADIE 
The further details received in London, describing Sir 
Stanley Maude's very complete success on the Euphrates, 
confirm and ex pand what was said here last week. Mr. Candler 
has sent a despatch dated on September 29th which describes 
how an advance camp was formed commanding the bridge- 
head on the western side of the Euphraties opposite Feludja. 
Two columns left this camp in the ni^t of the 27th and 
attacked the Mnshaid Ridge a little before daybreak, while at 
the same time the watercourse from Habbaniyah Lake to the 
liver at Ramadie was crossed by an advanced body. The 
cavalry made an eight hour march round westward and at four 
o'clock on the Friday were on a line of hills at X on Map IL, 
5 miles west of Ramadie running perpendicular to the river. 
By this move the Turkish troops in Ramadie were completely 
cut ofi from their communications ; their only chance was to 
try and break through, in which attempt they failed, the 
worst of their attacks taking plare apparently in the night up 
to the dawn of Saturday against the cavalry holding the 
heights to the west. It was apparently in the course of tlie 
morning that the. Turkish troops, thus enclosed everywhere 
between the British and the river, surrendered to the number 
of 3,310 men and 145 ofiicers with 13 guns and much other 
material. An interesting point in the account is the mention 
not only of railway material but "several miles of Tine." 
This suggests the completion of a railway up to Ramadie 
down the Euphrates valley of which the public has as yet 
lieard nothing. But doubtless we shall have further informa- 
tion upon this point in the near future. 
The Conditions of Victory_I 
I PROPOSE in this and following articles to discuss the 
policy which consists in proposing hyixjthetical terms of 
peace, to show that this policy is necessarily favourable 
to the enemy and may be disastrous to ourselves. I 
])ropose further to show how it could be and should be re- 
Ijlaced rather by an analysis of the conditions, not of peace, 
but of victory. For though the end of war is peace and 
certain conditions of peace are the sole political motive of any 
war, vet to parley before a decision in the field has been 
arrived at has always been, and must necessarily be, the 
ix>licy of the party which is approaching defeat, and the 
refusal to parley is equally the mark of the party which is 
confident of victory. 
First let us consider the character of the campaign which 
has been started lor the discussion, not of the conditions of 
A ictory, but of terms of peace : 
The German and Austrian Governments and those who 
sympathise with them in various degrees at home and abroad 
began, after the loss of their defensive power following the 
defeats of Verdun and the Trpntino, to start a discussion upon 
the terms of peace. The German Press was given the hint ; 
1 he Polish Jew Wittowski, who is the agent of the German 
(Government in these matters and, through his brother, one 
of their principal links with international finance, was given 
the task of writing it up under his pseudonym Maximillian 
Harden ; the agents of the Central Powers and their dupes 
in every belligerent capital started the discussion of the terms 
of peace as a sort of newspaper topic, planted it carefully, 
watered it assiduously and watched it grow. 
If you want to study the phenomenon in detafl you cannot 
do better than note what happened in the American Press, 
especially in that section of it which the French would call 
" The Intellectuals," and which the Americans themselves 
with characteristic humour calls " The Highbrows." Long 
before the United States entered the war those who viTite"for 
these papers were in full blast upon " The Terms of Peace." 
1 have already cited one of the most prominent of them called 
The New Republic, which also boasted the useful aid of men 
of the same kidney writing in this country. The tip that had 
lx;en passed round was to blame the German Government for 
this or for that, even to* say that such and such a policy or 
such and such an excess merited tlie interference of the United 
States, but at the same time introducing three novel considera- 
tions in favour of the enemy, the familiarising of the public 
with lohich was the real motive of the whole manceuvrc. 
Here arc the three novel suggestions which were to do the 
work of the enemy, and which it was the business of his 
friends to turn into familiar commonplaces by pcrix;tual 
repetition. 
(i) The suggestion or rather the affirmation that the 
German people were innocent of the war and its crimes, and 
suffered from the oppression of wicked rulers whom alone we 
were concerned to defeat. 
(2) That the German armies were so strong, their rate of 
loss so slow, and the genius of their leaders so great that to 
defeat them in the field was impossible ; or, at any rate, not 
possible without the ruin of Europe as a consequence ; — yet 
(oddly enough!) that their inferiority was sufficiently marked 
to make it worth while for them to negotiate. 
(3) That the words " Victory " or " Defeat " were the terms 
of loose thinkers being (what indeed they are) general terms, and 
that the practical and statesmanlike thing to do was to discuss 
in great detail with concrete instances exactly what political 
points were aimed at by the Allies. Such discussion these 
writers would undertake and, as we shall see later, invariably 
to the disadvantage of the Allies and to the advantage of their 
German friends. 
No one who has watched the phenomenon as it has grown 
up during the last eighteen months can doubt either its 
origin or its nature. As is always the case with such move- 
ments, the great mass of those who support this one are dup)es, 
but most of them are dupes whose minds were well prepared 
for acting the deplorable and sometimes treasonable . part 
which they have been called upon to play. But behind the 
dupes and conducting the whole affair, there is a much smaller 
number of men who are the agents. In other words, things 
of this kind are not subconscious movements of opinion ; they 
are organised policies to which modern conditions with their 
instantaneous communications and their rapid diffusion of 
suggestion through the Press particularly lend themselves. 
As this last pomt is at once vital and will appear to many 
doubtful, I would like to dwell upon it for a moment and 
establish it. For many novel discussions — I should say b y fai 
