September 6, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
OLD SERJEANTS' INN, LONDON, W.C 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 1917 
CONTENTS- 
PACE 
Stars and Stripes. By Louis Racmackers i 
On the Italian Front. (Photographs) 2 
Get Rid of Distrust I (Leader) 3 
Italy's Great Record. By Lewis R. Freeman 4 
Tlie Western Front and Riga. By Edmimd Dane 7 
Leon Daudet : .\ Prophet in France. By J. Coudurier 
dc Cliassaigne '5 
A Journal from a Legation. By Hugh Gibson 11 
The " Nine MiUion " Effectives. By Hilairc Belloc 13 
Progressive \\'hist. By Alec Waugh I5 
Mr. Galsworthy Gives them Gyp. By J. C Squire 16 
A Vision of England. (Illustrated). By Charles Marriott 19 
Domestic Economy ^^ 
Kit and Equipment 25 
GET RID OF DISTRUST 
TirE Trades Union Congress, which is sitting this 
week at Blackpool, has an interest quite apart from 
its resolutions on international affairs or the views 
it has expressed on tlie Stockholm Conference. The 
country sees more and more clearly how the future of the Em- 
pire will Ibe based upon the prosperity of industry. The 
Sunday Times, which is wisely giving considerable prominence 
to the relationship between employers and employed, con- 
tained this week an article from the pen of Mr. Dudley 
Docker, C.B., the chairman of one of the largest business 
concerns in tlic Midlands, and a big employer of labour, who 
summed up the position in these words : 
The progress of the Empire lies in industry, which is in the 
Jiands of employers and employed. We must get on with 
our commerce or make way lor others. We do not intend 
to sink into a. second-class community, and must prepare our 
own future. The first essential is to get rid of suspicion and 
distrust. Let there be light ! 
The address delivered to the Trades Union Congress on 
Monday by its retiring President, Mr. John Hill, of the 
Boilermakers' Union, breathed in almost every passage this 
suspicion and distrust. He would not have the labouring 
man juit faith in anyone except himself, he showed distrust oi 
Government, of Parliament, of Capital, of Employers, and even 
of Labour itself when it accepts public office. Regarding the 
future, Mr. Hill spoke as follows : 
The best scheme of reconstruction will Ix- one of our own 
devising: a strong and intelligent trade unionism linked with 
our political arm — the Labour Party. If we can itispire the 
men and women in tjie workshops and in the constituencies 
to support these ideals we can .say to the officious lawyers and 
huckstering bureaucrats, " Keep thine own ship, friend ; we 
do not want thee here." 
So far as can be gathered from the abbreviated reports of 
this address, the speaker advocated a policy of splendid 
isolation ; the working-cla,sses of this country were to stand 
alone, their only alliance being the working-classes in 
other lands. We need not pause to-day to discuss the 
practicability of such a policy ; Mr. Hill realises it can only 
Ix; ]x>ssible if democracy wins a complete victory in the war. 
When the victory is gained, which will not be yet, it will be time 
enough to consider seriously the (juestion of internationalism ; 
meantime, our thoughts can be more profitably occupied in 
working out the best means of knitting together the nation 
more closely, and* by translating into civil life that splendid 
spirit of comradeship and cspril de corps which makes our 
civilian armies invincible on the battlefield. 
It is well first of all to try and visualise for what the average 
working man is risking his life in this war. For freedom and 
htimanitv certainly, but how are these abstract qualities 
resf)lved into the concrete and expressed in his own life? If 
he comes from a bi^ city, at the worst humanity is repre- 
sented bv a single rcom in a squalid, tenement house for 
himself, his wife and his children, and freedom by the right 
to get drunk every Saturday night, provided he carries his 
liquor quietly. At the best, he may rent a house or a part of 
a house ; there may be enough money coming in, provided there 
arc not too many children, for an occasional cinema or cheap 
excursion, beyond the necessities of decent living ; his 
children will be educated until they arc fourteen, when cirr 
cumstanccs will more or less compel them to begin wage 
earning, and in the evening of his days there is the ixmsion. 
Outside his work, it is not a full life ; it never can be for the 
great masses of any country ; therefore it becomes a yiost 
urgent duty to see that in the work itself, ample opportunity 
is provided for development of personality and expression of 
self , which after all constitute the true joy of human existence, 
no matter to what state of life a man belongs. 
The housing question is one on which Mr. Dudley Docket 
lays special stress. " A slight acquaintance with tlie housing 
conditions prevailing in most parts of the country," he 
writes, " must inevitably lead any impartial person to the 
conclusion that the working classes are justified in their 
demands for better accommodation for their wives and 
families, and a larger share in the comforts of life. Good 
houses arc not luxuries, but necessities.". It is a pity this 
truism was not realised fifty years and more ago. It seemed 
as if during the nineteenth century wc had lost the art of 
house-building, of home-making. Even whfere inoney was 
no object, comfort and convenience were neglected. We know 
the horrors of the .slums, but the sleeping-quarters, outside the 
guest rooms, inmanyof the most palatial Victorian residences 
of this city were only one or two degrees better. All classes 
are paying heavily for this neglect of their fathers, but there 
is a new spirit abroad to-day, witness Mr. Charles Marriott's 
" A. Vision of England," in this issue. The working-classes 
may be the first to benefit in that it is easier and cheaper to 
destroy hovels and build up homes than to' sweep Grosvenor 
Square out of existence and impart to its monotonous resi- 
dences a separate and comfortable individuality. 
The present development of allotment gardens will mak*; an 
enonnous difference to city life in the future, taking as it 
were the people back to the country. But besides the better- 
ment of homes, there must be a new and pleasanter atmos- 
phere in factory and mill. " The question of wages and 
output go hand in hand, and are interdependent. There 
is no magic line fixing the amount of money to be paid to a 
workman. A man is entitled to all he can carfi. Some 
manufacturers lose sight of the fact that the material point 
is the cost of the article produced and not the amount paid 
to the man." Here Mr. Docker reveals the worst sore in the 
many maladies of labour. If ambition be a virtue, then it 
certainly is when the ambition is to make the home happy 
and to give the children better chances than the parents 
had, and this restriction of output strikes at the very root 
of this noble incentive, which is perhaps one of the most 
common stimulants in Anglo-Saxon blood. No nation has 
fought more steadily and consistently through the centuries 
for the good of the children. This question is now becoming 
an Imperial one. Writes Mr. Docker : 
This restriction of output has been almost peculiar to dreat 
Britain, and is the greatest danger to be faced by the luupire 
in attempting to regain commercial supremacy after the war. 
If this war is to be. paid for and the nation saved from an 
incubus of del)t there must b(^ greater production, and the 
.■short-sighted trader must learn that increased trade means 
higher wages. 
Hand in hand with restriction of output goes restriction of 
currency. Any attempt on the part of cosmopolitan finance 
to return to pre-war standards of value would be bitterly 
opposed by employers and employed alike. It would impart 
new life and vigour to that distrust of Capital which, as 
we see now, is the evil thing that has to be destroyed if the 
future of industry is to be prosperity. The best promise 
for success lies in the fact 'that a new alliance is gradually 
growing into being between master and man, fostered 
by leading men on both sides, who realise that community 
of effort is as necessary for success in peace as it is for victory 
in war. Every individual who helps to strengthen this 
industrial alliance and to create a better understanding 
deserves well of his country. It is a campaign in which all may 
take part without regard to political views or wcial status. 
