Feb 
ruary 28, 191 8 
Land & Water 
The Public Mood : By Hilaire Belloc 
As we have already had occasion to remark in these 
columns— it is the key to all useful writing 
. upon the war at this moment— the situation 
in Europe has passed from being mainly mili- 
tary to being mainly political. 
That situation may be reversed at any moment. Great 
operations upon the West resulting clearly in our favour, or 
m the enemy's, would certainly reverse it. On the other hand, 
a delay in the beginning of such operations or a lack of conclu- 
sion , in their character would prolong it. Meanwhile the 
balance so remains and will probably so remain for some little 
time : the political situation overshadows the military one. 
The political elements of civilian tenacity and of civilian 
conditions play a larger part in the present calculations of 
the war than the estimates of numbers and of reinforcement 
which were necessarily the chief elements in our judgment 
so long as the Russian State still existed, and so long as the 
enemy was therefore still in a state of siege. 
Under these circumstances the best service that can be 
rendered by the publicist is an estimate of the political 
elements present. Most of our publicists have recently taken 
refuge in one or two forms of activity : exhortation to 
tenacity on the one hand and exhortation to surrender upon 
the other. In spite of the laudable character of the first and 
the natural irritation of the public against the second, I cannot 
believe that either of these kinds of writing is much to the 
purpose. It may be of some value to keep up a constant 
stream of exhortation to tenacity, but the nation is in no 
great need of it. It may do some little harm for a few excep- 
tional individuals to preach the doctrine of brotherly 
surrender, and describe the love for the English which is felt 
by the mass of the Germans (if only we would approach them in 
a friendly spirit ! ) ; but the narm cannot be very great because 
the bulk of our people are in a state of mind in which this sort 
of thing goes off like water from a duck's back. They do not 
like the Germans one little bit, and they are not getting to like 
them any more as time goes by. Nor will they readily believe 
that the Germans like them. 
What does seem to be to the purpose is to draw up an esti- 
mate of the political position as accurately as one can, much in 
the same spirit and with the same intention as one drew up 
those estimates of numbers and losses which we published 
regularly for three years, and the exactitude of which events 
have since proved and continue to prove. 
There are two difficulties at the outset of making such 
an estimate, one of which was partly, though only partly, 
present in our former military calculations, and the other of 
which was entirely absent from those calculations. The first 
of these is the fact that one cannot speak of one's own side 
with the same liberty as one can speak of the enemy's. The 
second is that a political situation is not susceptible of measure- 
ment as are the component parts of an army, or distances and 
obstacles upon the map. 
I say that the first of these difficulties was present even in 
military calculation . But it is less felt there than in a political 
■ estimate. Though one might not speak of numbers upon 
one's own side when one was making a military calculation, 
yet educated opinion was fairly informed upon the subject, if 
only by the method of analogy. 
For 'instance, when we showed in these columns that the 
German military dead of all kinds were about one million and 
two-thirds (or a little more) at the moment, in the spring of 
last year, when the official German lists »nly allowed for under 
a million and the German statesmen were privately assuring 
the American Ambassador that they were less than one million 
and a half, the educated reader could guess that the losses of ' 
the other originally fully mobilised nations were much the 
same in dead, in proportion to their population, and that the 
losses of the nations which mobilised only partially and later, 
during the course of the war, were proportionate to "the average 
size of their armies since their entry into the war. 
But when wc are talking of a political situation we have no 
such advantages. Each reader must read for himself into 
what is said his own judgment of our "own side in those matters 
which cannot be publicly discussed. 
The second difficulty is equally formidable, and what is 
worse, weakens all judgment of this kind by making it in a 
great measure personal. 
When one has to explain what the losses of an army are 
in military dead, up to a certain date, one can put before one's 
readers proofs of the number and of the margin of error, which 
proofs he is as well or better able than oneself to appreciate. 
One can give statistics of the private and parochial lists, of 
the rolls of honour, etc. ; one can show the gaps in the official 
lists, their nature and so forth. But when it comes to making 
an estimate of a political situation, though there are certain 
calculable elements, the ultimate judgment is necessarily a 
personal one, and therefore weakened by the personal element 
of error. 
However, I will make the attempt. 
The best way of approaching the problem is to tjfbulate its 
various parts. 
There are three great factors in the political situation to-day 
1 he first alone is susceptible of some sort of calculation It 
IS the comparative situation in the power of the two parties 
to provide themselves with civilian and military necessities 
including recruitment of ^en. This element, when it is 
carefully gauged, shows a certain balance in our favour That 
IS the first great thmg to seize. It is nothing like the balance 
It was before the final and decisive success obtained by the 
eneniy upon his Eastern front as the political result of his 
mihtary operations. But a balance it is, and one which 
should, other things being equal, increase in our favour. 
Ihe second element is simplicity, unity and immutability 
of purpose. Here, for reasons I will estimate in a moment - 
the moral balance appears to be upon the enemy's side. 
Ihe last element, morally the most important, because it 
IS the one in which there can be most variation, may be grouped 
under the general title of " information," internal and external • 
the latter divided into neutral and belligerent. With the 
first element upon the whole in our favour, the second against 
us. It IS this third which may well decide the issue. 
I. 
The situation in regard to the power of finding food and 
other necessaries for all and of providing men and material 
immediately required for the armies shows some such balance 
sheet as the following : — • 
The enemy has these advantages to his credit :— 
(a) His communications are entirely by land, and are for 
the moment nowhere subject to attack. 
.,[?) ^^-^^•^'^^ shorter by far than the communications of the 
Allies. This point is insufficiently appreciated. If we take 
the average journey which material must take from the 
point of production to the point of consumption including 
material m civilian use as well as material in military use the 
distance which the Allies have to deal with is certainly ten 
times greater, probably more than fifteen times greater than 
the corresponding mileage of the enemy. 
For instance, Westphalia and Silesia must supply Bavaria 
and Hungary with coal, but we must supply not only ourselves 
and Northern France, but Southern France and Italy and our 
armies in the Levant as well. Wheat never has to travel 
more than a few miles in the Central Empires ; to feed our- 
selves the French and the Italians it has to travel thousands 
of miles. It IS the same all through the list of materials. 
(c) the enemy commands a very considerable population 
which he has enslaved. There is here a <lirect economic 
advantage to him which the Allies lack. 
{d) All his recruitment is on the spot. He is not trammelled 
by lengthy mantime communications to support his fronts 
to evacuate his wounded, to reinforce his units, etc. So far 
as the recruiting field practically open to him for iqi8 is 
concerned he will, if we eliminate the Eastern front, probably 
have till the latter half of that year a slight superiority but 
alter next autumn an increasing inferiority. 
.i.*^? }y^ °^^^^. ^^"^' ^^^^^ 's against him and in our favour 
the following list : — 
{a) Much of his material is limited in continuous production 
lar more than is the corresponding material of the Allies. He 
has a heavy advantage over theAlliesin Europe if you multiply 
the amount available by the inverse of the distance to be 
travelled, in coal and in iron, possibly in foodstuffs other than 
lats, and a very great advantage in certain chemical products ■ 
but he is at a disadvantage in most metals other than iron 
while for tropical and sub-tropical products (such as cotton! 
'" /m'^ ■' ^^^■'^ ^^^ '^ "°^ dependent upon existing stocks. 
(6) Ihe situation in men, though showing an apparent" 
slight preponderance in his favour for the next few months 
has these two elements to his disadvantage: (i) that his 
extreme exhaustion, which may be compared to that of the 
l-rench, cannot be relieved by rotation ; that of the Allies 
m a large measure can be so relievca. Even if it be true that 
the number of men that can be maintained at any one moment 
m Western Europe by the United States is strictly limited by 
the available tonnage, it is also true that the withdrawal of 
losses and their replacement by new blood can be continued 
almost indefinitely, and it is also true that this country has 
not approached to anything like the same degree of exhaustion 
