February 7, 19 18 
Land & Water 
7 
thing on which evidence is obtainable ; we are talking of a 
tendency or frame of mind. 
Would Prussia, acting as the master of this great com- 
bination, direct its supposed and increa-ing new economic 
power to our destructio.i or would she not ? 
In my opinion, an opinion based upor| the action of that 
State for 200 years, and especially upon her action during 
the present war, she would. There are those — they are 
numerous and many of them well informed and traveUed— 
who say shj would not. And the issue lies, not between 
the two hypotheses, one of wh.ch can be eliminated by trial 
and error, but between two judgments of what our present 
enemy is now and will later be. 
Those who think that this new and enormous economic 
power will not be directed against Britain in any hostile fashion, 
use two kinds of argument. They say first, that popular 
feelings — what are often called "democratic conditions"— 
will govern the future of this as of other States, and that under 
such conditions freedo.Ti of exchange will be thi rule, and at 
any rate a dehberately planned and prolonged economic war 
impossible, and they add that in normal times, when actual 
armed hostility is not to be reckoned with, no economic plan 
of preference tariff, and Government protected trusts can do 
more than diminish the economic advantage you enjoy when 
any competitor is himself increasing in wealth. 
Secondly, they say that a new Great State of this kind, 
though it existed on a different scale from the old, would 
necessarily come into play, not only as a competitor, but also 
as a consumer. 
There are a few who would add a third argument, to wit, 
that Prussia, has never had hostile intention, political or 
economic, and that our present mood towards her is irrational. 
But this last body, very numerous before the war, has been 
rendered by the events of the last four years almost negligible. 
Now of the two main arguments, the first is certainly 
sound : But then it is equivalent to a denial that the new 
Central State will come into being at all. If what are called 
(a little loosely) " democratic " conditions, real autonomy, real 
national expression, and the refusal of the mass of the people 
to be organised and disciplined from above comes into being 
in Central Europe — all that is equivalent to the break up of 
Prussia. Wliether it takes place through a defeat of the 
Prussian military machine or by an internal disintegration, 
in either case, what has been known as Prussia for the now 
two hundred years of its expansion, would cease to exist, 
and with it there would cease to exist the hostile plan and 
intent, the motive of conquest and domination directed always 
against the principal' rival of the moment, and to-day chiefly 
against oursel.es. 
But I may point out that tliis argument begs the question. 
When we talk of a new Central State, of its danger to us, we 
presuppose a peace by negotiation which leaves Prussia in 
existence ; we are showing why such a j eace would be fatal 
to us and all that we say of the Central State is said in that 
connection. With Prussia defeated by those whom she 
challenged from without, or by those whom she has oppressed 
from within, there is no matter for debate. The Central 
State now in process of erection will dissolve. We shall 
have in its place separate free nations with whom, of course, 
our commerce could be conducted on the normal lines of the 
past. 
The second argument that political hostility is never com- 
pletely, successful in the economic field, and that it only 
diminishci but cannot extinguish our share in the new 
wealth created, sesms to me based too much upon the past, 
and even so it djes not suTficicntly allow for the very last 
fruits of Prussian policy just before the war. It is true that' 
the great expansion of German wealth under Prussian direc- 
tion, which was the mark of the forty years before the war, ' 
though its international benefit to us was restricted by tariffs 
and trusts, political subsidy and the rest of it, could not pre- 
vent a corresponding increase upon our side which was itself ' 
very great, and was only diminished or intercepted, not ' 
destroyed, by the artificial arnngement of our rival. But 
those who argua thus forget, as it seems tome, first that they 
were deahng «ith only one still isolated Power and not with 
what the New State would be, the bulk of'Eurape. Next, that 
this power, though formidable, had not brought direct miUtary 
pressure to bear upon rivals as it now has and can ; had not 
comp lied them, as it could now if undefeated, to enter into 
favourable economic relations with it, or to suffer its economic 
domination. Lastly, they forget that in the final stages of 
the operation before the war, when the system was beginning 
to bear fruit, there had already appeared very disquieting 
things which boded ill for the future. Certain key industries 
have passed into the hands of a rival who might be an enemy ; 
certain essentials to trade and even to life had been permitted 
to pass to him also. 
In other words, we cannot argue as to the hostile economic 
power of a great Central European State in the future from 
the analogy of Germany between her first Protectionist move- 
ment in the early go's and some such date as 1904, when her 
intentions were beginning to be unmasked. We must argue 
from premises of far greater power upon her part, and we 
must bear in view the difference between the maturity of a 
plan and its period of incubatiort. Prussianised Germany 
had by its increase in wealth, it is true, also added to the 
wealth of others, but towards the end of the process, and 
before the war the hostile direction and intent of all this had 
begun to be felt. With a Prussianised Central Europe you 
would have a very great increase in scale of this hostility, an 
action more mature and an action supported by the incalcul- 
able effect of proved military superiority. 
This argument is virtually that the Prussian State would 
not be strong enough to control the commercial system ; 
that the separate needs or desire; of the merchant and the 
manufacturer would over-ride the central purpose of the State. 
It may be so. It may be that the vast territorial extent 
alone of this new State, its highly differing parts, its great 
accession of Slav blood, \*ould prove too much for the ex- 
pansion of Prussia and \vould re-act against and weaken 
what has hitherto been the continually increasing strength of 
the Central Directing force. One cannot tell. But the 
analogy of history is against such a supposition. Prussia 
has not only maintained her character as she expanded, 
but has intensified it. 
To take one test. The breaches of international law and 
the outrages against international morals, which are 
characteristic of Prussian war have been employed to far 
greater lengths in the last four years than they were carried 
in 1870-71, and in 1870-71 they were carried to greater lengths 
than Prussia Had ever carried them before that date. 
.^.s for the conception that Prussia herself will suffer some 
sort of conversion without either defeat or revolution seems 
to be hardly worth while to deal with. While the concep- 
tioa she was really not hostile to the West or to this country, 
but that wa have suffered an illusion upon the matter, may 
safely be left to the judgment of bur fellow citizens to-day. 
The Curve of Exaggeration 
MUCH the most important news of the week is contained in 
the statement of Sir Eric Geddes to representatives of the 
Associated Press of .^marica in the coarse of an interview 
and published in the British Press last Saturday. It 
contains concrete pieces of information which are of the 
highest value in guiding public opinion at this moment. And 
it gives us one of the very few opf ortunities for calculation 
(the only foundation of any sound military judgment) which 
we have had for some mo.iths past. 
Until the co.nplote dissolution of the Russian State and our 
equally complete assurance that it had ceased to be the 
principal factor in all, judg nent upon the war was the possible 
calculation ot men and inaterial. 
The war until that catastrophe was a siege, and a siege is 
always calculable by numbers, so long as the state of siege is 
maintained. In the essential element of sea communication 
there was no serious factor of disturbance in the calculation. 
The German authorities dicidjd to break with all European tra- 
dition and to institute ii.discriminate murd/r at sea much at ihe 
same time as that in which the break up of what was formerly 
jrme 
Russia began last year. The effect of this new policy upon the 
war — upo.i the calculable factots in the war, especially tonnage 
and maritime co nmunications, was not fully felt for some 
mo.iths. Especially was its effect upon the civilian conditions 
of this country at first insignificant — for it is of its nature 
cumulative, and its beginnings, though they indicated what its 
maturity would be, were of no immediately great effect. What 
the submarine o;fensi\re might mean was borne in upon general 
opinion last summer, pretty well colncidently with the proof 
throa|h the collapse of the Russian armies in the south that 
the dissolutroi of the Russian State under its present inter- 
national guidance, was final. There remained as an un-r 
known factor, the chances of some decisive movement upon 
o 12 sidi or the other in the West. Neither sidj obtained anv 
dicisio 1. The movement in Wanders failed in this ojject, so 
ultimitely did the tremendoas ene.niy blov in Friuli, large 
a; were the captures in min and gans and highlv oriticn! to 
Ui (far more critical than the work in Flanders to tli - enem.y) 
as W.U th2 waole 5>ratio 1. 
As a result the positioa upon which the prese.it year o )e:ied 
