Land & Water 
February 21, 1 9 1 8 
of the enemy's military power gives us as full an opportunity 
for deciding the fate of Eastern Europe as it does for deciding 
the fate of Western Europe. Victory gained by the ^Vllies 
will decide the fate of aU Europe, and, for that matter, of the 
whole world. It will open the Baltic and the Black bea. It 
will leave us masters with the power to dictate in what fashion 
the new Jjoundaries shall be arranged ; how the entnes to the 
Eastern markets shall be kept open, garrisoned and guaranteed. 
One reads sentences such as this : " Though the German 
armies were driven out of Northern France and Belgium, and 
even beaten back to the Rhine, the German domination over 
Eastern Europe would still be secure." 
Such a judgment— and it is typical of the whole of this 
school— is illuminative of the minds that framed it. They 
would seem never to have read military history' or to under- 
stand what is meant by victory and defeat. There is no 
question of " driving the German armies out of Northern 
France " or " out of Belgium " or " back to the Rhine "— 
or to the Elbe or to the Vistula for that matter. The task is 
to defeat those armlet ; to undo them. Wherever they are 
defeated, whether upon the line they now hold or upon other 
lines, their defeat and our victory will leave us with complete 
power. If that task be beyond our strength then civilisation 
has suffered defeat and there is the end of it. If by some 
negotiation (involving of course the evacuation of the occupied 
districts in the West) the enemy remains undefeated, civilised 
Europe has lost the war and Prussia has won it. 
Constitution of Ukraine 
Have any of those 'who would deny so simple and obvious a 
truth considered even the' large lines of this first German 
settlement in the East ? Have they read the Ukraine Treaty 
with a map before them ? If they have not done so let them 
get a good atlas showing the religions, the races, the languages, 
the economic opportunities of the district concerned and they 
will appreciate what I mean. Is the district which the so- 
called " Little Russians " really feel to be theirs consulted 
and rendered autonomous under the title of " The Ukraine " ? 
Not a bit of it. Nearly four million of them are left under 
the domination of Austria. Is there any safeguarding for 
the large Polish population . handed over as a make-weight ? 
There is none. Does the artificial frontier follow a religious 
division — that great factor of difference in those regions ? 
It doe^ nothing of the kind. It throws together Uniate and 
Latin-Catholic minorities, a large dispersed Jewish popula- 
tion, and Orthodox. Does it concern itself with historical 
tradition ? Still less. Historically the district of Cholm is 
Polish ; historically the town of Kieff was the origin of Russia. 
It is an artificial arrangement imposed by the conqueror upon 
the conquered, deliberately designed to foster rivalry, and to 
curb the one great national power which Prussia fears. 
The economic element is glaringly obvious. This new 
artificial satellite State has been compelled to sign an economic 
clause which brings in to the economic orbit of Germany, 
under a weak and necessarily subject government at Kieff, 
the navigable lower reaches of the great rivers, the great port 
of Odessa, the control of the Black Sea, much of the coal. and 
nearly all the granary of that Eastern world. 
We shall see the same story repeated in different terms 
when the next step is completed and an " independent " 
Lithuania appears. There it wiU be the Orthodox who will 
be subject to the Catholic, but the Catholic will be pitted 
against his fellow Catholic in what is homogeneously Polish 
to the West. There the Catholic of similar speech will be 
pitted against his Protestant fellow upon the Baltic Littoral. 
In Lithuania Germany will depend upon the poorer majority 
to protect her interest against the wealthier minority which is 
Polish in tradition. 
Everywhere this congeries of new States will be artificially 
designed, as the Ukraine has been already artificially designed, 
in the interests of Prussia. Everywhere will there be deliberate 
division for the purposes of rule. No principle of nationality, 
of religion, of historical feeling, will guide the German carving 
up of these "terntories. In one district nationality and not 
speech, m another speech and not nationality, in another 
religion to the neglect of both race and tongue, in another ■ 
historical arguments to the neglect of all the other three will 
be invoked, and everywhere one principle and one only will 
be the motive force, the natural principle of the conqueror • 
the principle that whatever serves Prussian interest must be 
used as a lever, though the racial or religious policy in one 
countryside be the flagrant contradiction of that imposed 
upon Its neighbour. Over such a combination, mechanically 
arranged to the advantage of the victor, will come like a tide 
the organised economic force of the Germanics, Pnissian in 
flTnT- '''I .tP"i*',f"^ *" "^"^^ o"'^ Empire will stand from 
Sl'Vth^atel' '"^ ^^ ^^^^^ °^ *'^ ^°^^^ '^ *^^ 
Is it to be believed that Prussia thus doubled or trebled 
in extent and potential power, able to boast in the East of 
complete master}', able to boast in the West of a successful 
defence and of having compelled those whom she had there 
challenged, invaded, insulted, ruined and subjected to every 
outrage, to leave her intact and strong, can be accepted by 
France and Britain for the future as a sort of easy neighbour ? 
Is it to be believed that after such a peace there would be a 
general disarmament, or that if such a thing were designed 
upon paper it could be maintained ? Men who can believe 
that can deny the testimony of their own senses. Indeed, so 
monstrous a proposition could not be made with regard to 
things tangible and near at hand. It is only made by those 
who think in terms of maps and printed matter, and who do 
not appreciate realities. Such a conclusion would at once 
command as an absolutely necessary task further armament 
and yet another attempt to save Europe. The whole of the 
West would be subject to continued preparation, and that 
without limit. It would mean permanent conscription, the 
permanent development of the greatest armed forces by air, 
by sea and by land which the humiliated older countries 
could compass. It would be but one of these disastrous 
breathing spaces (of which history has some record) between 
a first catastrophe and its successor. 
The thing ought not to require debate or argument. It 
does unfortunately require strong debate and a reiterated 
argument, because history has been ill-taught among us ; 
because a foolish tradition of invincibility has been the result 
of that false history, and because men's minds so naturally 
tend to live in the. past and so slowly awake to great changes, 
especially when they are at once huge in scale and rapid in 
development. 
There is this much of truth in the illusion that we can 
peacefully return to the old Europe the German peoples 
tolerated as neighbours : that if Western civilisation prove 
at last triumphant it will at least be the guardian of European 
traditions and will be able to restore the better part of those 
traditions and give them sanction. The three Western nations 
in alliance will remain strongly national and well organised. 
There does not apply to them the disintegration and chaos- 
of the Russian marches and of that mosaic of Eastern peoples 
upon whose differences the Germans now play. Europe, if 
Europe is victorious, will rebuild upon good lines, and in the 
structure that will be erected certain major elements will 
reappear which we know to be necessary to security and to 
content. We shall have nations really self-governing. We 
shall have a true disarmament, and we shall have eliminated 
from our midst the insolent moral anarchy which would 
sacrifice everything to the aggrandisement of one Power. 
But the idea that by a mere cessation of hostilities such things- 
could arise one might call madness were it not too foolish 
to call it a madness. It has none of the vigour of a madness. 
It is a mere ineptitude. 
What does the German master now see when he looks 
around him ? What does a man like Kuhlmann, his colleague 
and coadjutor Czernin, working in close co-operation with 
him, or what does a man like Ludendorff, the soldier, see ? 
He does not indeed see the mirage of immediate universal 
triumph which delights foolish and excitable men in his 
community. He does not flatter himself that the German 
races can for the moment hold in a military sense the littoral 
of the -North Sea, still less that they can command the Straits 
of Dover. He does not believe for a moment that by a mere 
dictation of terms he can compel Britain to abandon her 
coaling stations or France her industrial eastern border with 
its remaining mineral deposits. He. probably does not even 
believe that he can permanently support the Flemish peasantry 
against the French-speaking Walloons of Belgium and the 
governing elements of that country. He neither desires nor 
proposes further annexation of Italian-speaking land. He 
does not pretend to impose arduous economic terms,upon us 
as the result of his victory and our defeat. But he does see 
things at least in this light : 
All Central Europe — including the Western Russian plain — 
thoroughly established under Prussia ; far stronger than any- 
State or combination 9f States that can be opposed to it, and 
able through future development to attain all its ends. 
We have not sufficiently realised the effect upon the enemy's- 
mind of the main elements of the situation as it now stands. 
In the first place, he fights on foreign soil which he has 
occupied. Think how we should read the news in Paris 
especially, and even in London, if the names of the ruined 
villages and occupied towns were German names : if it were 
Cologne, not Lille, of which the population were compelled 
to salute as they passed French and British officers and from 
in front of which the fire of artillery destroyed not Soissons 
or Rheims, but Frankfurt and Mayence ; if we read of petty 
garrison details arranged for our troops in Treves ; if we 
were disappointed at hearing that a recent great advance 
