December 20, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
5. CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. VV.C.2 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20. 1917 
CONTENTS 
The Sorrows of Satan. Bv Louis Raemaekor 
Tonnage is \'iftory. (Leader) 
The Brenta-l'iave Hattk. F.\- Hilaire Belloc 
y\ Caillau.v. Bv J. Coudurier do Chassaigno 
Li avcs fronn a German Note Book. 
The Whitley Councils. By Jason 
l-'inance of the War. By Harold Cox 
The Pen-wiper. By Etienne 
The Somme in Retrospect. By J. C. Squire 
Youth at Four Score Years. By Francis Stopfora 
Books of the Week 
Shipbuilding in America. (Photograph). 
Tlie Palestine Campaign. (Photographs. 
Dome'^tic Economy 
Notes on Kit 
PAGE 
I 
■y 
4 
8 
lO 
II 
13 
14 
15 
i6 
i8 
19 
20 
Z2 
2.5 
" TONNAGE IS VICTORY " 
THE First Lord of the Admiralty, in his speech to 
the House of Commons last week, declared that 
" we must have ships and more ships and still more 
ships." The Prime Minister, speaking at Gray's 
Inn four and twenty hours later, caught up the same warning 
and echoed it in the plurase : " Victory is now a question of 
tonnage and tonnage is victory." These two clear state- 
ments are welcome. Circumstances have tended to obscure 
the peril of loss of shipping, and though there have been 
members of the House of Commons, notably Mr. George Lam- 
bert, a former Civil Lord, who have consistently endeavoured 
to obtain the actual truth of our losses, their endeavours have 
not met with success, mainly because the Government continue 
to hold the opinion that exact figures would tend to hearten 
the eneniy rather than to encourage tlie people of these islands 
to practise a more rigid economy. It is, of course, a matter 
of opinion whether silence is the best policy where such grave 
issues are at stake ; but, in any case, nothing could be plainer 
than Sir Eric Geddes' own words : " the submarine menace 
is held but not yet mastered." This point of view gains new- 
emphasis when convoys between our Northern ports and 
Scandinavia are sunk by enemy cruisers. There is no margin 
of shipping to spare, and it is the manifest duty of every 
citizen to take thought for himself how by limiting his own 
requirements he can help to save tonnage. 
The Prime Minister has recently made two statements 
which arc likely to produce a false impression. The first 
was to the effect that the construction of merchant shipping 
for 1917, combined with the tonnage which the country 
was able to purchase, would reach a minimum of 1,800,000 
tons. It has been frequently stated, and the statement has 
never been denied, that we cannot hope to build as much 
as one million tons of shipping this year. Taking this in 
connection with the heavy toll on British shipping which 
is indicated bv the weekly figures, together with Sir Eric 
Geddes' statement that the enemy has not yet reached his 
maximum output of submarines, the position is undeniably 
serious. Tlje second misleading statement of Mr. Lloyd 
George, from which, by the way, the First Lord was verj' 
anxious to dissociate himself, was to the effect " I have no 
fear of submarines." We venture to think that such an 
attitude towards the submarine situation, if universally 
adopted, could only lead to disaster. The most appropriate 
comment on the subject is the criticism made by Sir Eric 
Geddes : " Our shipbuilding is not yet replacing our losses, 
but amongst all the factors which go to the solution of this 
problem, I deprecate the drawing of deductions from the 
experience Q,f any one week or moritli, be it good or l)ad. 
It is the general curve in each of the factors which we must 
watch, and upon which we ihust base our policy and our 
opinion as to ultimate results." 
What steps arc being taken to cope with our losses ? It is 
admitted that the only effective way of retrieving the position 
is by an increase of output, since we .have not so far dis- 
covered any adequate means of disposing of the submarine. 
One of the means which has been adopted is the construction 
of national shipyards. Mr. George Lambert, speaking in the 
House of Commons, gave grave reasons for doubting the 
wisdom of embarking on this new policy at this juncture. A 
very able review of the policy appears in an article entitled 
The National Shipyards in the current number of the 
Spfclalor. If it is true : (a) that the private shipyards are at 
present nothing like fully employed owing to their lack of 
labour and materials ; that only single shifts are being worked 
in tiu' private yards and that some slipwavs are empty, and 
(b) that the National yards will not be able to launch a single 
ship until the end of H)i8'; while some experts even consider 
that none of these ships can be finished before 1919, it must 
surely be madness to make such a drastic change in our ship- 
building programme at this serious moment of the war. Has 
the Prime Minister been wisely counselled ? It has been 
freely stated that the Advisory Committee on Shipbuilding, 
which includes among its members some of the most important 
shipbuilders in the country, disapprove of the policy. The 
scheme was initiated by General Collard, apparently in haste, 
we hope we. shall not have to repent at leisure. This is a 
subject which ought not to be closed, and if we have made a 
mistake there is still time to retrieve it. We have had enough 
of hastily-considered enterprises in this war. 
We do not wish to deprecate in any sense the enormous 
effort that is being made in the construction of British ship. . 
ping, more especially when due regard is paid to the heavy 
demands on the man power of the country, and the immense 
and increasing output of munitions of war. But what we are 
concerned with is the need for plain statements and the 
iteration of actual facts. Sir Eric Geddes has displayed a 
frankness in this respect which was lacking in his predecessors, 
and he deserves the compHment of imitation by other members 
of the Government. Nothing could be more dangerops, or 
more suicidal, than optimistic and unreliable utterances on 
this important question. The Prime Minister has been an 
offender in this respect. When he announced that five 
eneniy submarines had been destroyed in one day, he created 
an entirely erroneous impression — an impression which must 
have been obvious, had he paused to weigh his words. Since 
he evoked the ready cheers of the House of Commons with 
this statement, its members have listened to the quiet an- 
nouncement of the Admiralty that the enemy is building 
submarines faster than we can sink them. We are now fully 
aware the rate of destruction of the world's mercantile 
tonnage is much greater than the rate of construction. These 
truths are no doubt unpleasant, but there is no occasion 
for alarm, provided the civil population exerts itself to restrict 
the need for tonnage. We have to increase to the very 
uttermost the home production of vital necessities. 
The necessity for building tonnage, and tonnage on a 
great scale is fully appreciated in AnK'rica. On another 
page we give an illustration of an American standard steel 
ship on the slips, for which we are indebted to the World's 
Work of New York. This leading magazine, in the course 
. of an important article on the output of American shipping, 
asks: "Can the United States build 5,000,000 tons of 
merchant shipping a year ? . . . Unless we liave an 
enormous merchant fleet, the products of our factories and our 
farms, to say nothing of our training camps, must remain in 
our own country where they will render little service in 
bringing the war to an end." It has been estimated that it 
will require three million tons of shipping to bring an army 
of 500, 000 men from America to France and keep it supplied : 
or six million tons to bring over one million men, which, of 
course, does not take into account the risks in transit. To 
reahsc what these gigantic ligurcs mean, it is only necessary 
to compare them witli tlie total tonnage of the world befon^ 
the war. We do not doubt the capacity and resources of the 
United States, but we cannot ignore the immensity of the 
task. It is .1 long way from the passing of estimates to the 
completion of ships ; from the creation of an arnij' to its 
presence in the fighting lin-- 
