iJecember 13, 1917 
LANU & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
5, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, \V.C.2 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1917 
CONTENTS 
I'AGK 
Tlie Bolsheviks' Liberty Dance. By Louis Raemaekcrs i 
The Spirit of Victon,'. (Leader) 3 
The Battle of Cambrai. Bv Hflaire. Belloc . 4 
M.-Malvj' and His Judges. By J. CoudurierdeChassaignc S 
Merchantmen Engineers. By William McFee i» 
The Old Guard. By Centurion n 
Zeeland Waters. By A British Prisoner of War i.i 
Thomas Hardy's Verse. By J. C. Squire 17 
Books of the Week i^ 
The War in Palestine. (Photographs) IQ 
The Battle of Cambrai. (Photograplis) 20 & 21 
Domestic Economv 22 
Kit and Equipment 25 
•i^ ^ ^ '. — .-_ — . — : ,^ 
THE SPH^IT OF VICTORY 
SIGXS are not wanting — there is no necessity to go 
into particulars — that this winter will witness the most 
critical stage of the Great War. So has it been well 
named, for it is a great war — the greatest of all wars, 
for it is not only armies arrayed against armies, but nations 
against nations, and it will be fought to a finish both through 
the courage and skill of the fighting men and through the 
resolution and stern determination of the people. On another 
page of this issue there appears an admirable article by a 
distinguished French journalist, M. Coudurier de Chassaigne, 
President of the Foreign Press Association in London, which 
explains the present spirit of the people of F"rance, their 
dauntlessness to continue the stniggle until definite victory 
is attained, and their determination not to be "baulked of 
the end half-won by an instant dole " of peace, negotiated In- 
faint-hearted politicians or by cosmopolitan financiers. 
It is always urged by autocracy, that democracy being 
many-headed and many -stomached, does not possess the 
nerve and self-abiTegation to carr>' through a long struggle 
to a finish. If that be true, it would be the death-sentence of 
democracy. The liberty of the individual on which the 
Briton prides himself would become a fantastic fraud, and 
it could only be a matter of years or at most of a generation 
or two before the old fetters of the Pharoahs and the Baby- 
lonian Kings, now represented by the modem irons of the 
Hohenzollcm, were again forged about the limbs of the free 
peoples of Europe. But is it true ? We do not believe so 
for an instant. Freedom has not been won in England 
easily ; men, generation after generation, have suffered and 
died for a principle, often when the cause seemed hopeless, 
but it won through at last. 
Nineteen hundred years and more ago a pitiful cry rang 
out over the roofs of Jeru.salem, that sacred city of the East, 
which only this week has been won back after a thousand 
years to the higher civilisation, to the nobler humanity that 
Ijad its birth there in that very hour. It sounded in men's 
ears as a cry of despair : " My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ! " As we know to-day it was wrenched by pain 
and torment from the lips of One who sacrificed everj'thing 
for the purpose He had lived on earth to fulfil and by that 
sacrifice had lifted man to a higher level than he had ever 
approached before. The occupation of Jerusalem seems to vis 
a splendid omen, one "which it would be foolish to ignore. 
Much as wp object io pro forma joy-bells, we do believe it has 
been right to sing Te Deums for the capture of Jerusalem, for 
that city is the true mother-city of Christian civilisation 
and of judaic faith ; and let it "also be rememliered it was 
esteemed a sacred city by the Arabs, who were animated by a 
far higher culture— Ihc English language bears" testimony to 
this— than the Turks have ever been, for the Turks among 
Mahommcdan peoples represent, in their bnital and inhuman 
qualities, the Germans among Christians. 
But to return to Eufopc and the facts ot the moment. 
We have to face a difficult position both in the firing-line and 
at home, which needs not merely courage but good sense and 
a co-operative spirit among all ranks of the nation. President 
Wil.son, in his Address to Congress, rightly defined the enemy 
" as the German power, a thing without conscience or honour or 
capacity for covenanted peace which must be crushed and if 
it be not utterly brought to an end, at least shut out from 
the friendly intercourse of the nations." Dr. Jacks, in the 
Cliristmas number of L.-vnd & W.^tfr, demonstrates, on the 
authority of the German philosopher Kant, that Germany 
re]!)resents bad will and the Allies good will among the nations. 
And he proceeds 1 " One would think that good will ou^hL 
to parley, ought to try the effect of reasoning with its anta- 
gonist before proceeding to extreme measures. But this is 
utterly impossible from the nature of the case. For the bad 
will has no reason to reason with. It is sheer unreason, naked 
and unashamed, so that if you employed reason to bring it 
round to your point of view, it would not understand one word 
you were saying." The case against Germany, against her 
rulers with vvliom her people seem well content, has never 
been better phrased ; it is that which makes the verj' idea of 
negotiations a symptom of weakness. We have only to watch 
carefully the present German dealings with the Bolsheviks 
to realise how futile and foolish it is at the present time to 
employ reason towards Germany. 
No living man has beheld this truth more clearly or has 
given a more distinct and lucid expression to it than Mr. 
Asquith, a statesman whom we are convinced will be more 
honoured by posterity than by the present generation 
whose vision is blinded or distorted by the mists and miasms 
of party politics. Over three years ago at the Guildhall, in 
his famous speech in which he declared we shall never sheath 
the sword until Belgium is free and the military domination 
of Prussia wholly and finally destroyed, he said, " sooner 
than be a silent witness, which means in effect a willing accom- 
plice, of this tragic triumph of force over law and of brutality 
over freedom, I would see this country blotted out of the 
pages of history." A few months later he declared that 
we should " fight to the end — to the last farthing of our 
nione\-, to the last ounce of our strength, to the last drop of 
our blood." Again a year'later and again at the Guildhall, 
referring to peace, he spoke of " peace, but on one condition 
only — that the war with its waste and sacrifices, its untold 
sufferings, its glorious and undying examples of courage 
and unselfishness, shall not have been in. vain." The same 
resolution, the same note of victory rang through his speech 
at Leeds last night. " A clean peace ! That is what the 
people of this country" and all the Allied peoples desire. And 
that it may be attained — nothing more hut nothing less — 
they are unflinching in their resolve and in their willingness 
to go on making the necessary efforts and sacrifices." These 
sacrifices to-day leave untouched not a single household in 
the land, and it is for this reason that we have for several 
weeks urged compulsory rations, to put an end to unevenness 
of distribution, to stop the painful queues in jXMjr districts 
and to create in one respect, at all events, a unity of sacrifice. 
More than once on Tuesday evening Mr. Asquith referred 
to Mr. Wilson's Address to Congress, and always with approval. 
He pointed out that Germany has a right to her own form of 
(lovemment, and as we have on several previous occasions 
obser\'ed, there is no evidence forthcoming so far that the 
present military despotism is coi^trary to the will and desire 
of the German peoples. They still behevc that the Kaiser 
and his advisers can give them victory, and they continue to 
aocept, on the whole in good part, the heavy sacrifices they 
are called on to make. Here let us quote Mr. Asquith: 
What we of the' rest of the world arc concerned with is not a 
people but a s>^Steni— a .system whicli has used as its instru- 
iiK'iit first in Prussia, then in the rest of Germany, " that 
two-handed engine " — the military .and the bureavicratic 
machines carefully and cunningly interlocked. It is that 
system which has enthroned Force as the sovereign authority : 
which has held itself at liberty, in the pursuit of its supiiosed 
dntcrests, to falsify, to deride, or to supersede (according to 
the exigencies of "the hour) the most solemn pacts, which 
claims m elfect a more than I'ontifical power of self-absolution 
from the engagements and restraints which .safcguaril the 
rights of the peoples of the world. This mu.st come to an end. 
