8 
Land & Water 
February 7, 1918 
might be thus summarised : 
ii) In the East the enemy had obtained a decision. The 
itary machine of the Rivssian Empire, partly through the 
enemy's own victories, partly through the betrayal of the 
Allied cause by international agents, had been put out of 
action. 
(2) On the West neither party had succeeded, though 
both had in different fields come near to arriving at a decision. 
{3). The exhaustion of both parties in Europe had proceeded 
to an extreme degree. The original conscript belligerent 
Powers, France, Austria-Hungary and the German Empire 
had suffered definitive losses, that is, had lost men per- 
manently by death j capture, wounds, etc., which had reduced 
them nearly to exhaustion, but with this difference that the 
Central Empires had been relieved of pressure upon the East 
and could thereby reinforce themselves upon the West against 
Italy and France during 1918 by perhaps a sixth or a fifth of 
the forces hitherto retailed for Western work — counting 
value as well as numbers. 
(4) The Powers not originally conscript or not originally 
belligerent were also heavily hit though not in the same degree. 
Great Britain had lost a proportion of her population very 
much less than any of the Powers just mentioned, but on the 
other" hand she was largely maintaining the supply of the 
whole Alliance, she was maintainirg almost entirely its 
maritime conmunications and her forces were widely dis- 
persed, including as they necessarily did Asiatic as well as 
European activities. Italy had just received a blow of the 
most severe kind compelling immediate reinforcement from the 
French and from the British. 
{5) The American effort was beginning to davelop, but oily 
. beginning. It would be of great strength before the end of 
igi8, but the initial period of organisation and training had 
barely come to an end, while there remained the uncertain 
factor of transport over so great a distance of sea. 
Essential Communications 
Under such circumstances the pivot of the moment was the 
situation of the submarine offensive. That offensive, if it 
could do what the enemy claimed for it, would win the war in 
three converging fashions. It would more and more paralvse 
the maritime communications of the West which, with 
England as the main base of supply, were the essential com- 
munications. They were also the essential communications 
from the fact that the Allies were working on outer lines 
from the ^Egean to the North Sea, which outer Unes were 
mainly maritime in their communication. 
Next the submarine offensive hampered the civilian supply, 
and therefore threatened the civUian moral of all the Western 
Powers, but especially of Great Britain. Lastly the sub- 
marine offensive was expected by the enemy almost lo neutral- 
ise the American effort, which could only be exercised over 
three thousand miles of open water. 
Of these three converging effects of the submarine offensive 
upon which the enemy had banked, the second was the 
chief. The real issue has been for some months past, and will 
remain for some months to come, whether the»enemy can so 
hamper civilian life in this country as to affect the political 
discipline of the British and produce a demand for surrender. 
That such a policy, however severe the strain would be in 
the long run fatal to this country, has been the constant 
thesis of these columns. But what we had to consider in 
practice was not only the power of organisation and ^iscipiline 
which our society might show, but the real measure of what 
the enemy could do to undermine that discipline by his 
interference with supply, and especially with food. 
Now Sir Eric Geddes tells us in this pronouncement which 
he has published to the world three very important and 
definite truths, or at any rate judgments, made by a man who 
is alone in possession of all the facts. 
The first of these is that the submarines are being sunk as 
fast as Germany can build them. He puts it in one phrase, 
" The submarine is held." 
The second is that we are at the present moment building 
merchant ships at a higher rate even than was the record of 
1913, and that before the end of the present year we shall 
double the rate of to-day. 
The tfird fact which he has divulged I find of particular 
interest because it is exactly parallel to what I have myself 
noticed in regard to the German figures of their losses by land 
in the many careful and exact estimates which I published 
in this papar o/er a period of more than two years. 
Sir Eric Ge des tells us that he keeps a curve representing 
what he calls " the factor of exaggeration " in the German 
official statements of U-boat results, and that this factor is 
increasing in our favour. 
There are four main curves. The curve of construction of 
liye shipping ; the curve of construction of merchant shipping ; 
the curve of sinking of German submarines, and the curve 
representing the " factor of exaggeration " just mentioned. 
The first curve is flattening, the other three are steepening, 
and therefore all four movements are in our favour. 
What Sir Eric Geddes calls " the factor of German exaggera- 
tion " is the diflerence Letween the real lonnage sunk, which 
we exactly know, and the German published estimates. It 
is clear that there will always be a certain margin of exaggera- 
tion due to the fact that the enemy cpn only tell the precise 
tonnage of a ship when he knows all about the particular 
vessel which he is sinking — in most cases he can only estimate 
her size at a guess and knows neither her name nor her register. 
The commander of the submarine will, of course, give the best 
figures which a reasonable guess will allow, and therefore the 
German official figures will al.' ays be somewhat larger than the 
truth even when there is no deliberate intention to falsify. , 
But, as was pointed out in these columns when the statistics 
of German Army losses were being analysed m.onth after 
month from the summer of 1915 to the summer of 1917, 
there is a deliberate German policy of exaggeration which 
begins to work whenever things go less well than the authorities 
had promised their public. It is a natural development and 
coincides with what one would expect. In the case of the 
armies it probably took the form of getting as many " doubt- 
fuls " as possible in this — ^men of whom it was not absolutely 
certain whether they were prisoners or dead or only tem- 
porarily missing, of leaving them unmentioned as long as 
possible and mor^ and more unmentioned for good and all. 
Later it took the form of not mentioning those who broke down 
or died away from the armies ; later it took the form of de- 
liberate suppression alto^e her. The worse things got the bigger 
became the margin between the truth and the official pronounce- 
ment. 
Of course we had not precise figures of the truth to 
guide us, hke the figures of tonnage lost by submarine activity. 
But we had numerous sources of information, the one checking 
the other (with many of which such as municipal statistics 
and hospital statistics, and " rolls of honour " the enemy 
kindly provided us) which gave us our re ults within a com- 
para:tively small margin of error ; and we know positively 
that what Sir Eric Geedes has called in the case of the sea 
" the curve of German exaggeration " increased in the case 
of the land exactly as it seems to have done in the case of the 
submarines. 
An interesting and conclusive example was quoted in these 
columns not quite a year ago. At one and the same moment 
independent examination concluded the total number of Ger- 
man military dead to be al out one million and three-quarters : 
the German authorities informed the American Ambassador 
that it was hardly a million and a half, and the German official 
fists were still pubhshing just under a million. 
I take this statement upon the " curve of exaggeration " 
to be the most important of all the important statements made 
in Sir Eric Geddes's publication of last Saturday. 
H. Belloc 
In the course of the deliberations at Bre^t-Litovsk, Baron von 
Kuhlmann asked for an explanation regarding the relations be- 
tween the Caucasus and the Petrograd Government. M. Trotsky 
replied : "The Caucasus Army is under the command of superior 
officers who are absolutely devoted to the Council of People's 
Commissioners. This was confirmed some two weeks ago at the 
general congress of delegates on the Caucasian front." 
The Pravda of Petregrad contained recentlj' an order from 
Trotsky dismissing without pension «nd the right to re-enter 
Goveir.ment service the Russian diplomatic representatives in 
Engand, Japan, the United States, Italy, China, Spain, France, 
Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, Portugal, and other States, as 
well as the Consular Agents and the Consuls-General in -the 
same countries, for having failed to respond to the invitation to 
work under the Soviet Government on the platform adopted by 
the second All-Russian Congress of the Soviets. 
The Kfflnische Volkszeitung, in an article on the rejection by 
Australia of ccmpulsory mOitary service, says that it comes at a 
very inopportune time for Great Britain, coinciding as it does 
with Russia's defection, and just when the Entente has need of 
new troops in the light of the forthcoming German offensive. 
Great Britain has nothing left but to make up the deficit out of 
her own resources. "This means a further withdrawal of men from 
industry, which will still further weaken Great Britain's position. 
This, however, it adds, will not be the only political result. The 
Australian decision must inevitably have a detrimental effect 
on the whole British Empire. From the first there was no great 
inclination to comply with British wishes regarding military 
service. It is not to be supposed that the other Dominions will 
take much trouble about questions of military service. This 
applies especially to. Canada. Here, indeed, the law has been 
adopted, but the minority is very strong, and has declared that 
it will not obey. There is no doubt that the Canadian minority, 
which is composed of the French-Canadians, will be confirmed 
in their intentions by the decision of the Commonwealth." 
