December 20, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
as a military despotism, it would obviously be (from the 
merely military point of view) of advantage — always sup- 
])osing that such despotism was efficient on the military side. 
Kut one lias only to state such a theoretical conception to 
-how its absurdity. The whole point of the Alliance is that 
it is a congeries of free and different peoples fighting the 
mechanical force of Prussia. You would, by attempting to 
!,'ive one man supreme command over such diverse national 
elements, wantonly create, and that in an indefinitely high 
degree, friction which is the great enemy of efficiency in any 
machine. As a matter of fact, you always have a more ex- 
cellent co-ordination and understanding between tiie various 
staffs than has ever been attained in any previous Alliance, 
and to tamper with a state of affairs already excellent would 
be to niin the only practical working method available." 
Unity of aim between the Allies is attained at once if we 
define it as the Premiers both of France and of England 
ha\-e defined it within the last fortnight ; they have defined 
it as Victory. 
The moment you propose to discuss in detail what you will 
do after victorj^ you are wantonly borrowing trouble. Upon 
the form, the extent and the date of victory a hundred details 
of future reconstruction will depend. The very hopes or 
demands of each partner to the Alliance overlap the corre- 
sponding hopes or demands of others. There will have to 
be judgment of the most delicate kind, patient dealings and 
comprehension. There will have, too, to be time, leisure 
and a ma.ss of expert work added as ingredients to any final 
settlement. None of these can be added in the crisis of the 
struggle ; and meanwhile short of victory — that is, short of 
the putting out of action of the Prussian military machine — 
all discussion of a settlement is undignified and futile. Those 
who say that the Prussian military machine cannot be put out 
of action, that is, those who accept defeat and consequently 
(iropose surrender, do not seem to perceive that tlie settle- 
ment following such action would be a settlement confirming 
>very evil principle against which civilised Europe put up 
* this just defensive war. 
I f there be anj'one who imagines that an undefeated Prussia 
\v-ill rclea.se the Danes or the Poles, will permit the Magyar- 
Gorman combination to release Serbs or Roumanians, or the 
Southern Slavs of Croatia ; will give up the gieat road to the 
East ; will restore the freedom of the Black Sea or of the 
Baltic, and will consent to undo its vile work of enforced 
exile and artificial,colonisation in the districts it victoriously 
annexed a generation ago, he is Uving in a totally unreal 
world. He is living in a world equally unreal if he imagines 
that the precedents created by Prussia and by Prussia alone 
in the present war — the bombardment of open towns from 
air, sea and land, the enslavement of occupied territories, 
indiscriminate murder at sea, and the contemptuous neglect 
of solemn treaties — will not remain precedents in full use for 
the future if their authors emerge from this war unpunished. 
And if he does not see that such methods are the doom of 
thin industrial island in particular ; that this country much 
more than any other is vulnerable to such methods, and that 
to her above all they are mortal, he is beyond argument. 
Unity of aim means the clear declaration for each and all 
the Allies that their aim is victory ; and victory- is no vague 
and rhetorical word. It has here a precise' meaning which 
we will repeat. It means the putting out of action of the 
Prussian military machine. 
The failure to achieve this is the opposite of victory and is 
defeat. To accept defeat before it has been inflicted, with 
every force still intact, with vast armies still in process of re- 
cruitment, and with .>^uch. powerful aid arriving in the near 
future, to accept defeat under such circumstances gratuitously, 
to bestow it as a sort of gift upon an enemy who has not yet 
been able to impose it, would be a thing unprecedented in 
the history of even those little dynastic struggles which 
seemed so important in the immediate past of Europe : in a 
struggle of this kind it would be self-destruction deliberately 
acccpt<?d. 
I f , after the sharp reaction of the last few weeks, there be any 
who still propose such a policy, it can only be because they 
do not appreciate what the Alliance is. One party to the 
Alliance cannot say to its fellows : " I find myself unable to 
bear a strain which you have borne. I do not propose to run 
the risks of suffering what you have suffered. I liave attained 
my objects — I am now indifferent to yours," without ruining 
itself as well as the body of which it is a member. Only an 
extreme isolation of the mind, or an extreme ignorance of the 
past, or both combined, can explain such an attitude. And 
to this argument one may add what should surely by this 
time be patent to all, that, of the various members of the 
.\lliancc none will be more permanently the object of tenacious 
future attack, political and e.onomic, and, if nccessarv", mili- 
tary, upon the part of an imdefeatcd Prussia, tliaii Great' 
Britain and the British Empire. There may be accommodation 
elsewhere — but here certainlv there will be no accommodation. 
It is a little shameful even to have to argue such things, even 
to have to rebut such pretensions, but as they have been pat 
forward they nmst be met, though that as briefly as possible. 
There remains the third aspect of unity, less obvious, I 
think, and yet equally essential — -unity at home ; the civil 
discipline which is more essential than ever to the conduct 
of the war. 
The period immediately in front of us will demand this 
action after a fashion to which the country and the Press is 
unaccustomed. From the sham battles of professional party 
politics (now dead and gone, but still leaving their habits 
behind them), to the really, serious divisions of opinion — such 
as those upon Ireland — there is so long a tradition of discussion,' 
and of action stronger than discussion, that it is difficult for 
such a society as this to arrest "the momentum of it at short 
notice. 
Quite apart from the sort of debate and argument which 
gets things done — and that is a very small proportion of the 
whole — there is a long rooted public manner of taking sides 
upon almost any question, for little more than the pleasure 
of the debate. It has always filled and still largely fills the 
Press and the conversation of men. Now in a moment of 
acute crisis, in a moment which is really vital in the full sense 
of tliat word, even discussion of this sort is an error. Opinion 
is inflamed under the great strain of the time, and what might 
be in peace criticism at the most, or at the least mere verbiage, 
may suddenly become a grave irritant. 
Scapegoats 
But there is something much graver than the fixed habit 
of opposing discussion and criticism of men and measures. 
It is the tendency in the last phase of an exceedingly difficult 
struggle to blame and upset the individuals who happen to be 
nominally responsible for the public conduct of affairs. The 
making of scapegoats is the easiest of all tasks, as it is the most 
demagogic, and in a period of doubtful war full of minor 
reverses, it is the most fatal. The truth is that it matters 
exceedingly little in the conduct of a campaign, and especially 
in its last stages, who the civilians may be that are given 
the advertisement (and emoluments) of nominal power. 
The temper of the workshops, the efficiency and elasticity 
of the Civil Service, most of all the moral and material state 
of the armies and navies — these are the things that determine 
the issue. What particular pohtician may have to answer 
questions in Parliament for this or that department makes 
exceedingly little .difference save, indeed, upon the negative 
side. A mart may be so vain and foolish as to interfere with 
his nominal subordinates in their own trade — of which he can. 
by definition, know nothing— and by that interference rriay 
do great harm. But the idea that he can do positive good, 
or that by putting one politician up in the place of another any 
appreciable acceleration of effort can be obtained, is the merest 
moonshine. 
On the other hand, to disturb the existing combination of 
poUticians,to ask for a re-shufflingof what are only counters, and 
to reinforce those personal recriminations, personal ambitions 
and personal hatreds, of which the political world is full, and 
on the play, indeed, of which it normally depends, is to pro- 
voke a fatal division of energy. For heaven's sake let us leave 
all that alone until the victory is won. None of the citizens 
in any of the Parliamentary countries are at all proud of their 
Parliamentarians. We are not peculiar in this. It is true 
of all the modern nations which have now tested these cormpt 
little oligarchies and found them wanting. But war, and 
esi>ecially such a war as this, and more espacially the heaviest 
moment of such a war, is not the time for a theoretical dis- 
cussion of institutions, or a practical change in them. Let us 
remember that the reconstruction that ipust come at the end 
of hostilities will breed the gravest, the most profound, and 
therefore, perhaps, the most violent dissensions we have 
known. When that moment arrives, the personal preten- 
sions, which we all despise, will be consumed in the heat 
of great popular emotions, and under the glare of complete 
pubhcity — for if there is one thing mere certain than another 
it is that the old hypocrisy which prete hded greatness, in almost 
any public figure, and which protected the politicians from 
hearing the truth about themselves — \Fill be utterly impossible 
when the real passions which will fill, the years, succeeding 
are at work. The rearrangcmtnt of S(Ociety will give to every 
critic and to every enthusiast as much opportunity as he could 
desire — probably far more than he \»'ill like ; and whether 
that arrangement shall be a renewal of the national life or a 
disaster depends entirely upon whethier we succeed or fail on 
th" field of battle. The social temper after the war will 
depend entirely for its character upon, whctherwe have enjoyed 
victory or suffered defeat. L(>t us, lihen, by a stritrt disciphne 
during these last months of the wax, do the only thing that 
civilians can do for victory .which is to be silent acd to obev. 
H. Belloc 
