January 3, 191S 
LAND & WATER 
'3 
LAND & WATER 
5, CHANXERY LANE, LONDON, W.C.2 
Telephone H OLBORN 2828. 
THURSDAY, JANUARY 3. 1918 
CONTENTS 
rAGi: 
The Wages of Sin. Bv Louis Raeniaekers t 
Winter in the North Sea (Photograph) 2 
No Status puo. (Leader) 3 
A Pohtical Survey. By Hilairc Belloc 4 
National Shipyards. Bv George Lambert, ^LP. >' 
'Uv First Se^ 'Lord. By Arthur Pollen 7 
\\r Must Help Russia. 'By H. M. Hyndman 
] raves from a (ierman Note Book i^^ 
With a Field Ambulance. By Green Patch i^ 
German Rule and Nati\e Races. By Bishop Frodsham i.; 
Price of Citizenship. By Dr. Charles Mercier 14 
The Memory of Beauty. By Algernon Blackwood 15 
An i:ssavist. By J. C. Squire ^7 
Books of the Week ^^ 
Reliefs at Dawn. By C. R. W. Nevinson 19 
i he ItaUan Front. "(Photographs) 20 
Domestic Economy ^^ 
Notes on Kit 27 
NO " STATUS QUO " 
Wi-: liave yet another— the last in a long scries — 
of the enemy's efforts to obtain that peace for 
which he is" clearly increasingly anxious. The 
series began with a number of informal soundings 
duiiiig the smnmer of iQib, continued with the famous 
declaration of the following December, ran through a score 
of more or less official pronouncements leading up to the 
sounding of the Briti.sh Govenmicnt last September, and con- 
cludes, so far, with the German Emperor's speech of the other 
day, the discussions at Brcst-Livotsk and the formal statement ' 
of the enemy's principles of jxjacc. 
In war the great object of all intellectual effort is to dis- 
cover the plan of the enemy, which applies just as much to 
his ^x)litical as to his miUtary movements. To seize that 
\)hn at the moment it is enough to examine the merely ob- 
vious ciTor contained in the enemy's declarations. That 
error — a calculated one — is the falsehood that Europe can 
return, by a negotiated peace, to her old self again. The 
enemy's claim is that he will revert to the state of affairs 
before the war ; what old-fashioned diplomats call the stalus 
quo ante bellum. All that the enemy does, all that he suggests, 
officially at least, is moulded upon that model. 
\ Wc can discover the enemy's motives, then, and so imdcr- 
standing his plan by seizing the outstanding fact that a 
iK niand, almost universal on his side and on our side, from the 
(Miiuusly devised minorities which for various reasons agree 
with <7(rmany, is for a peace to be obtained immediately, 
and \\\»'\\ the basis of neither party claiming any overt ad- 
vantage that is for the slafiis quo. The phrase invented 
by the Berlin tinanciers to describe this state of affairs was " no 
annexations mid no indemnities." The phrase reported to 
\)C used by a member of exactly the same world, who happens 
to be resident in tliis country, was " since neither party can 
beat the other, let bi;th make peace." The old conventional 
l)hrase, as we have said, is 'Revert to the stalus quo." 
Now the first thing to be grasped by any one who pretends 
to clear thinking is this : that such a claim, the phrases 
supporting it, and the idea it evokes, are utterly unreal. The 
tnlk turns round a thing wliich has ceased to be — it is not 
there any longer at all. It is no longer in existence. The 
status quo, the Europe which we knew before the war, has gone. 
We may, with victory, restore all its better qualities, and add 
h) them ; we may restore that European spirit and respect 
for nationality and for treaties and for the chivalry of war, 
wliich it is the very thesis of Prussia to deny. We may yet' 
sjive the soul of Europe. But we cannot reconstruct a body 
that has passed and changed. To i^)eak unnaturally, as 
though we could do so, as tliouKh that old body were still 
tiierc, is to talk nonsense. That is the great outstanding 
fact on which everything turns. 
It is as though a man having stolen aXpicture and burnt it 
were to begin negotiations for its restoration. He could 
compensate and make reparation. He could be punished. 
The art which created the picture might be painfuBy restored, 
but the picture itself is gone. Before the war it was taken 
forgrantcxl (foolishly no doubt, but still taken for granted), 
that a neutral European State was inviolale to European 
belligerents ; that no Power would, without even excuse or 
discussion, tear up a fundamental international treaty. It 
was part of the world in which we Uved that certain things 
were never done in war by Europeans to Europeans. Civilians 
were never murdered or enslaved. An open town making no 
resistance was not subject to destruction. At sea no one 
for a moment questioned the immunity, even of the belligerent 
sailor unarmed — let alone of the neutral. The custom of 
capture and prize courts seemed to be in the very nature of 
European things. We Europeans reposed— up to 1914— 
upon a certain comity of nations. One exceedingly impor- 
tant factor ill it — to many the most important factor — was 
the Russian Empire, the natural protector of the Slav States, 
and the chief opponent of the remaining but weakening 
. Mahommedan Power which still held the gates of its commerce. 
Two great States in Central Europe were known as the separate 
and sometimes opposed German and Austro-Hungarian 
Empires. It was recognised that they both disdained the 
national claims of certain subject provinces, but time had 
rendered their attitude familiar and tolerated. There re- 
mained the small nations Scandinavian, Nctherland and Balkan 
and in the West the greater nations, Spain and Italy, with 
the two strongest and most homogeneous national groups, 
the British and French. These two last had for centuries 
been rivals, but their rivalry had recently been appeased. 
What now remains of all that system ? The British 
^and French States, indetKl, stand as they stood. They pre- 
serve their traditions. Their national conscience is unimpaired. 
Their national strength has, if anything, increased. The new 
kingdom of Italy also maintains itself. But the old system 
as a whole has gone for ever. There now does actually exist, 
and would obviously continue to exist after a false peace 
without victory, a vast highly organised new State planted 
in the centre of Europe, which, whether it called itself "dis- 
armed " or no, would be a Power capable of armament at 
any moment. This State (we must think of it now as one 
State, which virtually it already is, and will be if it remains 
undefeated) has effected two things— the memory, the 
example, the precedents and the spirit of w-liich would 
equally remain. 
It has destroyed what was once the Russian Empire, 
broken up its armies, w-iped out and brought to nothingness 
the old fact and conception of a dominatmg great Slav Power 
ruled from Petrograd. This new Central European 
State now dominates .\sia in the Near East and North, it 
has put Constantinople under its tutelage, it has occupied 
or drawn into its orbit all the nearer Slav lands and the Balkan 
States except Greece, it has overrun one province of Italy, a 
belt of Northern France, and virtually the whole of Belgium. 
'^ It has impressed itself strongly upon the smaller Scandinavian 
nations — especially Sweden — and to a large extent upon the 
as yet unoccupied Netherlands, that is, upon Holland. Accept 
the nonsensical idea of the status 9H0— which is not there — 
accept this idea of " returning to 1914 " and what ^ou get in 
reality is a Britain, a France, and an Italy remaining peri- 
lously menaced in the West of Europe, and all the. rest of 
ICurope, including the great road to the East, 'a territory 
rided for the most part directly, all of it indu-ectly, by the 
Pussian Power. That great Central State so established has 
further developed, beyond any previous conception, its old 
tradition of neglecting European morals in war, of ftnding its 
ad\antagc in sudden aggression, in a contempt for treaties 
and in the most extreme forms of terror and of force. 
We liave to recognise the;' plain physical fact that there is no 
such thing now left as the status quo. There is no such thing 
as going back to it, for it was killed long ago, and any one who 
proposes to do so is either incapable of perceiving the stark 
realities of this world or— as is certainly the case with the 
enemy's diplomats — is deliberately usin« a falsehood 
