November 15, 19x7 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
OLD SERJEANTS' INN, LONDON. W.C. 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15. 1917 
CONTENTS 
PAGE 
I 
3 
4 
8 
lo 
Cheers lor the Kaiser. By Louis Raemaekers 
The Allied War Council. (Leader) 
The Line of the Piave. By Hilaire Belloc 
Incomprehensible Russia. By C. E. Russell 
Discipline and Human Nature. By Sapper 
Venice. By Arthur Symons ii 
Sweden and the War. (Concluded.) By 1". Henrikssou I2 
After-the-War Work. By T. H. Penson 13 
Keats's Fame. By J. C. Squire 17 
Books of the Week 18 
The War in Palestine. (Photographs) 20 & 21 
Domestic Economy 22 
Kit and Equipment 25 
THE ALLIED WAR COUNCIL 
THE exact functions of the Allied War Council, and 
the precise causes which led to its creation are doubt- 
ful, but there can be no question that its success 
depends entirely on one factor — ^whether or not it 
enjoys the confidence of the soldiers in the field. The speech 
which the Prime Minister delivered in Paris has further 
clouded the issue instead of elucidating it. There are 
occasions when Mr. Lloyd George seems to follow the example 
of Mr. Gladstone, and to become " inebriated with the ex- 
uberance of his own verbosity." Certainly in his Paris 
oration rhetoric carried him off his feet more than once, 
notably in raising again his' old cry of " Too late." If the 
Italian disaster has been due to " too lateness," who can be 
more responsible for it than Mr. Lloyd George himself, 
seeing, as he told his audience, hie was " almost the only 
Minister in any land, on either side, who has been in the war 
from the beginning to this hour." And if he be right in claim- 
ing that this disaster was the natural corollary of lack of unity, 
why did he not effect this unity befojre, and not after, the 
disaster or failing to do so act as he now threatens to act 
and resign office. Mr. Lloyd George has spoken finely and 
inspiringly on the war, but he is too easily betrayed into his 
old political habit of uttering persuasive words and delivering 
picturesque sentences just for their immediate effect. The 
result is to weaken public confidence in his judgment, and to 
strengthen still further the strong suspicion which the nation 
has come to entertain for politicians of all sorts, but 
especially for politicians who use their place to interfere 
in military strategy and tactics. It is seldom that a 
rhetorician is a man of action or vice-versa ; certainly this war 
has furnished no instance of this rare combination ; and for 
a politician or a collection of politicians to dictate to the 
commanders in the field, and to the organisers at home, how 
they should conduct the technical side of naval and military 
operations is to invite worse disasters. 
Unity of action is most desirable, and if it is acconipJi^lied 
by this new Council, it will be warmly applauded. But where 
do the Council's Military Advisers come in, and what will be 
their duties ? 1 f only to advise the Council on the significance 
of military action, well and good, but directly they pass 
beyond this, they run the risk of interfering with the Com- 
manders in the field and the organisers at the seat of Govern- 
ment, wherefore it is most esssential that their functions be 
clearly defined. The public has been considerably pcrturlxd 
by certain paragraphs which have been allowed to Ik- published 
in tlie Press this week hinting that Sir Douglas Haig and Sir 
Wilham Robertson are becoming war-weary, and might Ix- 
glad to be relieved of their posts. Anyone who knows either 
of these distinguished soldiers is perfectly well aware that if 
there was a scintilla of truth in these innuendoes, tiic first 
intimation would have come from the ofiicers themselves and 
would not have been left to obscure political hacks. Who 
has inspired these paragraphs ? What is the true inwardness 
of them ? Why should they coKucide with the announce- 
ment of the creation of this new Council ? Our soldiers aru 
fighring amid terrible |mud in Flanders, are they also to be com- 
pelled to fight amid worse mud at home ? This would be 
disgraceful. Field Marshal Haig has the full confidence of 
his army and the steady progress which he has made during 
the last seventeen or eighteen months speaks for itself. But 
there has been nothing theatrical about it, nothing to inspire 
gigantic headlines or grandiloquent orations, but for sheer 
tenacity and dogged perseverance there is no finer achieve- 
ment in the long annals of the British Army. As the Field 
Marshal would be the first to admit, these victories are in no 
small measure due to thai organiser of victory. Sir William 
Robertson, Chief of the General Stait, who has brought to his 
work unrivalled abilities, absolute sincerity and a positive 
refusal to mix himself in political questions. His single- 
mindedness has won for him the complete trust of the nation ; 
they know they can rely on his word, and that he never 
makes deinands on the people which are not fully justified by 
conditions. He is a power in the land, and were he to find 
himself compelled to resign his present position from any 
untoward circumstance, the effect on the country would be 
disastrous. 
Hitherto wc have confined our remarks to the purely 
mihtary aspect of the Allied War Council. But there is 
another side — the political— where this Council may be able 
to effect great good. It is doubtful whether hitherto there 
has been a sufficiently well-informed appreciation of the 
internal difficulties each AUied Nation haii had to con- 
tend with. These difficulties have been rendered all the 
greater by the cunning propaganda of the enemy, which has 
not hitherto been adequately recognised. It has been taken 
for granted that once an army is in the firing line little 
attention need be paid to the adverse and subterranean in- 
fluences brought to bear for the purposq of weakening the 
resolution of the people. We see these influences at work in 
this country, and next to nothing done to counteract or 
check them. Were the members of the Allied Council to 
compare notes on this subject, there will, we are convinced, 
be discovered a remarkable similarity in the methods em- 
ployed. If more active steps are not taken to suppress this 
enemy propaganda without further delay, we shall have Mr. 
Lloyd George again declaming about " too late." Not only 
is Great Britain d.'termined to carry the war to a com- 
pletely victorious conclusion, but so are the Dominions. 
Nevertheless, not a living soul in the British Empire believes 
it can be done by the politicians outstepping their natural 
place and posing as strategists. This way lies calamity. 
There must be as loyal an alliance between the fighting men and 
the politicians as between the different nations. The strain 
of war increases and will continue to increase throughout the 
winter. 
The British nation has just received a new scale of voluntary 
rations, with which the majority will endeavour to comply. 
But what about the minority, more especially that not incon- 
siderable section of aliens, who are to be found in almost 
every big city of England ? What is to be done to keep watch 
over these and to see that while the Englishman tightens his 
belt the Galician does not loosen his, and, money being more 
])lentiful with him than ever before, is not expending it 
freely on food without a single thought of the result in the 
aggregate. The fact is that lack of unity is not confined to 
the military plans of the Allies, but extends to their internal 
policies. We in F^ngland are assumed to be living on the fat 
of the land, with blazing fires to keep the cold from our 
homes, while Italy starves and shivers. ' We must face realities, 
both at home and abroad, but realities are the very last thing 
the politician has the,slightest wish or desire to face, because if 
they be disagreeable, goodbye to his popularity. Such is his 
Ix'lief. However this new Allied Council is serving a gpod 
purpose in awakening tiie people to the truth that the war is 
far from being won. The victories on the Passchendaele Ridge 
luring us nearer to the end, but until the situation in Italy ig 
retrieved, and the invasion stayed or driven backward, the 
hour has not ai'rived to look for the first beams of the dawning 
day. And the winter is still before us. 
