January lo, 1918 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
5, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, W.C.2 
Telephone HOLBORN 2828, 
THURSDAY, JANUARY 10. 1918 
CONTENTS 
PAGE 
"My Avowed 'Ally." By Louis Raemaekers i 
Behind the French Lines. (Pliotograph) - 
What We Are Fighting For. (Leader) :; 
The Prime Minister's Speech. By Hilaire Belloc 4 
America's Sea Power. By Arthur Pollen '; 
The Bankruptcy of Russia. By H. M. Hyndman ^ 
Franco-Britisii Economic .Mlianci-. By J. Couduricr 
de Chassaigne 9 
Leaves from a German Note Book i" 
Shop Stewards. By Claude T). Farmer 12 
Christmas on a " Happy Ship." By Lewis R. Freeman i"; 
The Skipper. Bv Frar.cis Brett Young '• 14 
Shadows and the Rocks. Bv William T. Palmer ib 
Sir Arthur Helps. By J. C." Squire 17 
Books of the Week it< 
Only a Painter. (Illustrated.) Bv Charles Marriott i') 
In Northern Italy. (Ph tographs)' 21 
Scenes from Flanders. (Photographs) ^ ' 22 
Domestic Economy. 24 
Notes on Kit • . 25 
WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR 
A WEEK ago we pointed out that the status quo 
ante bdlum — the European position before the war 
— had ceased to exist. We gave detailed reasons 
■for this statement, which no one has attempted to 
dispute. The war has brought into existence an entirely n(?w 
position, political, economic, and international on the Con- 
tinent of Europe. The hand that does not go back upon the 
dial in these days, and we have to accept facts as they are. 
The most important fact is that a new Central State of Europe 
has been brought into existence under the domination of 
Prussia.a Central State which, if it is permitted to exist when 
the war is over, can have only one object in view — the destruc- 
tion of the British Empire. More than a year ago a striking 
article from the pen of Mr. Harold Cox was published in 
Land & Water, showing how railroad power was undermining 
s«a-power, because the former was more secure, more direct^ 
and more rapid. Let the State of Central Europe exist after 
the war, inevitably there will occur conflict within a few years, 
between Mid-Europe rail power and Britannic sea power. 
Delenda est Mitteleuropa. The future security of the British 
Empire is summarised in this phrase. 
The Prime Minister has now delivered a notable utterance 
on the aims for which the Allies are fighting. It has been 
welcomed in all the countries of the Entente and it has caused 
the German press to foam at the month. This speech is 
closely analysed by Mr. Belloc in the following pages ; he 
declares that " as a whole, it has put the main thesis of the 
Alliance justly, and what is very important, without too 
many particulars." Mr. Lloyd George no doubt took council 
with the leaders of the Allied nations before giving utterance 
to this detailed pronouncement, which may yet prove to be 
the foundation-stone of European peace for several genera- 
tions. It is, however, too soon to perceive its full effect. 
Germany, at the first, professetl to find in its sentences symp- 
toms of weakness, and declared that the submarine offensive 
and the '' fensive on the Western Front has only to be con- 
tinued a little time longer for Britain to cry out for terms. 
In this they once again mistake the character of the nation. 
There is no weakening among the peoples of the British Empire; 
they will continue fighting until freedom is assured , reparation 
obtained and punishment inflicted. At no period of the war 
h:is the nation been more imited in its resolution to obtain a 
complete victory over Prussian militarism than now. Its 
education has been slow, but it is at last realising the price 
that would eventually have to be paid if the House of Hohen- 
zoUcrn and their Pan-German supporters were left in command 
of Mid Europe. These Germans have no thought or sympathy 
for the men who fight their battles, except as the mere instru- 
ments of their will. A typical instance of this mental attitude 
is related in to-day's " Leaves from a German Note-Book," 
when at a recent meeting held in Frankfort, a Pan-German 
speaker. Count Bothmar, was urging the destruction of England 
and for the war to continue until it was accomplished, Was 
interrupted by a group of wounded soldiers, to one who pro- 
tested and who had lost an arm in the war, he replied " You 
simpleton ; be quiet ; you do not understand anything about 
it." According to the Pan-German doctrine, all Germans are 
simpletons, who do not hold to the Pan-German belief in 
world power. 
Thisworld power, Germany now realises, cannever be attained 
if the Allies war-aims are carried to their logical conclusion. 
The Cologne Gazette has put the position in the clearest light : 
" If the war aims of the British Prime Minister should he 
fulfilled," it writes, " Germany would be driven back into the 
position of 1914, without Alsace-Lorraine and the German 
Colonies, but loaded with an immense war indemnity, with a 
dangerous Polish State on the frontier and, moreover, delivered 
to the discretion of the Allies for receiving goods." But it 
Avas Germany who sought the arbitrament of war in 1914, 
and by that arbitrament she will have to abide. 
In Mr. Belloc's article there is a remarkable passage about 
.\lsace-Lorraine. Though the facts may not be new, they are 
so lucidly stated tliat the condition of these two Provinces 
since they were torn from France a generation ago, assumes 
a new appearance. No attempt, however unsympathetic or 
even brutal it may have been, has been neglected by Germany 
to Germanise these provinces. Yet after forty-six years the 
spirit of the people is as intensely French as it was in 1871. 
Germany, even if she had deliberately tried, could not have ' 
gi\Tn more conclusive proof of her failure to rule peoples with 
ideas not in common with hers, yet this is the nation which 
endeavours directly or indirectly to impose its yoke, on 
Europe. With the fate of Alsace-Lorraine before them, even 
the Bolsheviks have shied from handing over to Prussia the 
rule of Russian Provinces 
We have maintained consistently in these columns that an 
independent Poland — independent in every sense — with 
Dantzig as its sea port, would be the surest possible guarantee 
of the future peace of Europe. .\s Mr. Belloc jxiints out to-day : 
" Pnissia reposes historically upon the attempted murder 
of Poland. An independent Poland, comprising all genuinely 
' Polish elements, would, were it brought into being, be the 
death-blow of Prussian ambition, of the whole Prussian theory 
of aggression." Unfortunately, European history is too 
little known in this country ; otherwise the Poland ciuestion 
would have been understood from the beginning of the war, 
whereas it is only in the later months that its full significance 
has emerged. Mr. Lloyd George did well to put the need of 
an independent Poland in the forefront of the^aims of the 
.\llies, but we shall have to be careful when the day arrives 
that this independence is assured by the boundaries assigned to 
the reconstituted Kingdom, boundaries which must at least 
include the port of Dantzig on the Baltic. Without this 
port, Poland's independience would be a farce. . 
The chief aim before the Allies at the present time is the 
defeat of the military forces of Prussia. Mr. Lloyd George 
has spoken of these times as being the most critical of the 
war. There is need for the strongest determination to bring 
the issue to a victorious end. Without victory the aims of 
theAllies must fall to the ground. We are passing once again 
through one of these periods of comparative calm which are 
more, trying to the moral than active stress, and the enemy 
wastes no opportunity to induce the belief that our aims 
may possibly be better obtained by negotiation.- Russia has. 
of course, been invaluable to German diplomats in this connec- 
tion, and the Bolsheviks have served their pirrpose in per- 
mitting a semblance of peace to be proposed. But signs arc 
not wanting that the Bolsheviks are nearing th_e end of their 
tether. America is silently but rapidly developing her power. 
There are, ;is we understand nowadays, difficulties in the 
way of making her full strength felt as quickly as possible, 
but these diffirulties are one by one being overcome. Of her 
firm and fixed determination to be one of the deciding factors 
of victory there is no question. 
