LAND & WATER 
October ii, 191 7 
troops was to compel the evacuation of the ruins of Polder- 
hoek Chateau which the British liad taken upon Thursday 
and tlie creation of a little dent or re-entrant along the 
course of the Reutelbcck. But beyond this there has been 
no modification of the liae which has been everywhere held and 
cxjnsolidated. The enemy issued a curious, vague and short 
despatch after the action, one phrase in which s.hould be retauied. 
He said' that the British had not reached their objectives 
which were " doubtless " distant. Stuff of that kmd can 
hardly deceive the simplest newspaper readers withm his 
own country and it is quite valueless for any other purpose. 
The character of the new tactics is now perfectly plain to 
everyone— repi>ated blows with limited objectives ; and the 
two "steps of Thursday's advance were exactly like those of 
the week beforeand the week before that, save that the success 
was secured at a greater expense to tho enemy. As an ex- 
ample of what is .meant by these limited objectives, a very good 
case is what happened north of the Broodseynde Cross Roads. 
The Australians iiere went along the Passchendaele Road 
as far as Nieuwmolen and beyond that point nearly to the rail- 
way, and then came back of their own accord to the objective 
assigned to them, which was only one thousand yards north 
of the Cross Roads. 
The total number of prisoners taken in the action was close 
on four and a half thousand. 
THE BATTLE OF RAMADIE 
The further details received in London, describing Sir 
Stanley Maude's very complete success on the Euphrates, 
confirm and expand what was said here last week. Mr. Candler 
has f ent a despatch dated on September 29th which describes 
how an advance camp was formed commanding the bridge- 
head on the western side of the Euphrates opposite Feludja. 
Two columns left this camp in the night of the 27th and 
attacked the Mushaid Ridge a little before daybreak, while at 
the same time the watercoiu-se from Habbaniyah Lake to the 
river at Ramadie was crossed by an advanced body. The 
cavalry made an eight hour march round westward and at four 
o'clock on the Friday were on a line of hills at X on Map II., 
5 miles west of Ramadie running pirpendicular to the river. 
By this move the Turkish troops in Ramadie were completely 
cut oij from their communications ; their only chance was to 
try and break through, in which attempt they failed, the 
worst of their attacks taking place apparently in the night u]j 
to the dawn of Saturday against the cavalry holding the; 
heights to the west. It was apparently in the course of the 
morning that the Turkish troops, thus enclosed everywhere 
between. the British and the river, surrendered to the number 
'SaiM.vay ■ 
Teiexjrafh 
of 3,310 men and 145 officers with 13 guns and much other 
material. An interesting point in the account is the mention 
not only of railway material but " several miles of line." 
This suggests the completion of a railway up to Ramadie 
down the Euphrates valley of which the public has as yet 
heard nothing. But doubtless we shall have further informa- 
tion iipon this point in the near future. 
The Conditions of Victory_I 
I PROPOSE in this and following articles to discuss the 
policy which consists in proposing hypothetical terms of 
peace, to show that this policy is necessarily favourable 
to the enemy and may be disastrous to ourselves. I 
propose further to show how it could be and should be re- 
placed rather by an analysis of the conditions, not of peace, 
but of victory. For though the end of war is peace and 
certain conditions of jieace are the sole political motive of any 
war, yet to parley before a decision in the field has been 
arrived at has always been, and must necessarily be, the 
jx)licy of the party which is approaching defeat, and the 
refusal to parley is ec^ually the mark of the party which is 
confident of victory. 
First let us consider the character of ihe capipaign which 
lias been started for the discussion, not of the conditions of 
\ictory, but of terms of peace : 
The German and Austrian Governments and those who 
sympathise with them in various degrees at home and abroad 
began, after the loss <if their defensive power following the 
defeats of Verdun and the Trentino, to start a discussion upon 
the terms of peace. The Cierman Press was given the hint ; 
tlie Polish Jew Wittowski, who is the agent of the German 
(iovernment in these matters and, through his brother, one 
of their principal links with international finance, was given 
the task of writing it up under his pseudonym Maximillian 
Harden ; the agents of the Central Powers and their dupes 
in every belligerent capital started the discussion of the terms 
of peace *as a sort of newspaper topic, planted it carefully, 
watered it assiduously and watched it grow. 
If you want to study the phenomenon in detail you cannot 
do better than note what happened in the American Press, 
especially in that section of it which the French would call 
" The Intellectuals," and which the Americans themselves 
with characteristic humour calls " The Highbrows." Long 
before the United States entered the war those who write for 
these papers were in full blast upon " The Terms of Peace." 
I have already cited one of the most prominent of them called 
The New Republic, which also boasted the useful aid of men 
of the same kidney writing in this country. The tip that had 
been passed roimd was to blame the German Government for 
this or for that, even to sav that such and such a policy or 
such and such an excess merited the interference of the United 
States, but at the same tinie introducing three novel considera- 
tions in favour of the enemy, the familiarising of the public 
with which was the real motive of the whole manoeuvre. 
Here are the three novel suggestions which were to do the 
work of the .enemy, and which it was the business of his 
friends to turn into familiar commonplaces by perpetual 
repetition. 
(i) The suggestion or rather the affirmation , that the 
German people were innocent of the war and its crimes, and 
suffered from the oppression of wicked rulers whom alone we 
were concerned to defeat. 
(2) That the German armies were so strong, their rate of 
loss so slow, and the genius of their leaders so great that to 
defeat them in the field was impossible ; or, at any rate, not 
possible without the ruin of Europe as a consequence ; — yet 
(oddly enough !) that their inferiority was sufficiently marked 
to make it worth while for them to negotiate. 
(3) That the words " Victory " or " Defeat " were the terms 
of loose thinkers being (what indeed they are) general terms, and 
that the practical and statesmanlike thing to do was to discuss 
in great detail with concrete instances exactly what political 
points were aimed at by the Allies. Such discussion these 
writers would undertake and, as we shall see later, invariably 
to the disadvantage of the Allies and to the advantage of their 
Crerman friends. 
No one who has watched the phenomenon as it has- grown 
up during the last eighteen months can doubt either its 
origin or its nature. As is always the case with such move- 
ments, the great mass of those who support this one are dupes, 
but most of them are dupes whose minds were well prepared 
for acting th^ deplorable and sometimes treasonable part 
which they have been called upon to play. But behind the 
dupes and conducting the whole affair, there is a much smaller 
number of men who are the agents. In other words, things 
of this kind are not subconscious movements of opinion ; they 
are organised policies to which modern conditions with their 
instantaneous communications and their rapid diffusion of 
suggestion through the Press pai'ticularly lend themselves. 
As this last point is at once vital and will appear to many 
doubtful, I would like to dwell upon it for a moment and 
establish it. For many novel discussions — I should say b y fai 
