February 28, 191 8 
Land & Water 
is when there is only a short drop ; though you liappen to 
know that this short drop would be fatal to him from the con- 
dition of his heart. 
Still, with all this disadvantage, we fall far behind the 
standard we should have set for ourselves in the matter of 
information. 
Of course the kind of information one means is not at aU 
that which is looked for by men whose only object is to 
sell newspapers. So far from wanting more picturesque 
description 'of war we could do withoijt: it altogether politically, 
and the public, I think, would be exceedingly grateful to get 
a rest from it. So far from demanding other details which 
the enemy particularly wants to hear we should, as a matter 
of mere commonsense, demand the immediate punishment of 
those who reveal anything of the kind. 
But the other type of information : information upon the 
State of Europe, upon the past development of Prussia, upon 
the crimes of the enemj', his mood whenever it is ailing or 
weak, his real divisions — that kind of information we cannot 
have too much of — and hitherto we have had very little. 
It is no good telling people what is false or even what is 
exaggerated. They find you out because the facts do not 
correspond to what you have said. There is also this Nemesis 
attached to sUch a method, that after you are found out you 
are afraid of repeating the same kind of thing, even when it 
is true. But there is the greatest possible use in spreading 
broadcast throughout the populace what men of special 
experience have long known, and what are the commonplaces 
for those who discuss the ultimate fate of Europe. 
For instance, there is the position of Poland which has 
been insisted upon over and over again in these columns, which 
Mr. Hyndman, on the whole the best informed of our public 
men upon European matters, insisted upwn at last week's 
meeting, and which every historian and every diplomatist 
takes for granted. 
You cannot expect the man in the street to understand that 
the fate of Poland is the test and the keystone. He may 
very well have never heard of the place. He may connect it 
vaguely with Jewish tailors in the East End. At' the best it 
will be nothing to him but a name in a geography book. 
Again, how are you to expect the average man, even if he 
be of high education, to understand the meaning of the iron 
fields which the Germans annexed by force from the French 
in the course of the nineteenth century ? There was not one 
man in a hundred among the best educated in the country 
who knew anything about this question before the war ; 
there is not one in twenty in the same class who can give you 
even the roughest outline of it to-day. Yet so far as material 
factors are concerned it is overwhelmingly the most important. 
Compel the Germans to disgorge this prey and you have cut 
off the right hand of the German Army. Leave it in German 
hands and you are deliberately presenting your enemy with 
a weapon with which he will kill you in the near future. There 
is no space in which to set down the list even of the most 
elementary points — the command of the narrow entries to 
the inland seas, the neutrality of the North Sea coast, etc. 
What we can determine in conclusion is method. 
There is obviously neither time nor opportunity for teaching 
history'. There is not even time or opportunity for teaching 
the perfectly simple outstanding lesson of all history, that 
military defeat has a spiritual consequence and that the 
victor imposes his soul upon the vanquished in the great 
decisive duels of the world. 
But for the main facts and their interpretation we have 
the Press and some sort of public control over special articles 
in it. The Press receives from time to time suggestions or com- 
mands often negative but sometimes positive in character. 
They are useful. What is there to prevent a staff of competent 
men (one wonders a little who would appoint such a staff in 
these times !) from sending out similar suggestions .upon the 
political conditions of the war. Why should not articles be 
communicated explaining what the Italian claims are ; the 
position of Lorraine and its iron mines, Poland, the entrance 
to the Baltic and all the rest of it. So far the effort has been 
voluntary, subject to the chaos of competition and of editorial 
judgment. Information of the sort I mean has only reached a 
very few. The mass of readers it has not reached at all — and 
that is why you may have before you know it a certain convic- 
tion that the war is after all only a match like a sort of prize 
fight or game of football which you " win " or " lose " or 
" draw " and then go about your business as you were before. 
Whereas it is in reality something more solemn and fundamental 
than a man's own trial for his life in a court of criminal justice. 
H. Belloc. 
The Russian Fleet : By Arthur Pollen 
THE political and military results of the Russian 
surrender to Germany, and now of the German 
advance towards Petrograd, may have a profound 
influence upon the naval war. The fall of Riga in 
September, followed a month later by the naval 
occupation of that Gulf, were the preliminary steps which 
secured the necessary line of communication before an advance 
on the whole front from Dvinsk northward. Without the 
transport facilities that an unbroken chain of sea supply 
could give from the German Baltic ports to a series of advanced 
bases on the east coast of the Gulf, the difficulties in the way 
of the march on Petrograd would have been very great indeed, 
whereas with such a line of communications the thing was 
made comparatively simple. Before this is in print it is 
therefore highly probable that Reval will have fallen and 
possible that Kronstadt will have surrendered. Both are 
inevitable events, whether they happen soon or late, and with 
the.se surrenders the Russian Fleet — if intact — must fall into 
German hands. For it cannot take refuge in Helsingfors, 
which seems to be virtually under German control already, 
and there seems therefore to be no third possibility. How 
will this affect the situation in the North Sea ? 
We have first to ask what are the constituent ships of the 
Russian Fleet at the present moment. The first Dreadnoughts 
of the Russian 1910 programme, Poltava, Sevastopol, Petro- 
pavlovsk and Gangoot were all completed, fully commissioned 
and in a high state of war efficiency before the end of 1914. 
These four ships were laid down, two in July, one in August 
and one in October, 1911. They had been completed there- 
fore in approximately three years. At the bnd of 1912 and 
the beginning of 1913 the four battle cruisers Borodino, Ismail, 
Kinhurn and Navarin were laid down, I think, on the same 
ways that the four battleships had previously occupied. 
They were due for completion by the end of the summer of 
1916, but I am unaware of any reliable information that any 
of the four was commissioned before the Revolution of a year 
ago. But none of the four can be very far from completion, 
and if the Germans seize Petrograd they will get the Galemy 
and Baltic works, and all the Imperial arsenals, and will 
therefore have no difficulty in finishing their equipment for 
sea, assuming that no irreparable damage has in the meantime 
been done to them. Besides these capital ships there are two 
modern light craisers of between 4,000 and 5,000 tons and 
with a speed of over 27 knots, Mooraviev Amursky and Nevel- 
skoy, that should have been completed soon after war began, 
and there were four others displacing about 2,000 tons more 
each, the Svietlana, Grieg, Bootakof and Spiridof, which, like 
the battle cruisers, were due in 1915 and 1916, and are 
presumably either ready for commission or nearly ready. 
Hardly less important are the destroyers of the 1912 pro- 
gramme, 36 in number, all of which I believe were at sea 
early in the war. The foregoing, then, Dreadnoughts, battle 
cruisers, light cruisers and destroyers, are the completed or 
nearly completed modem vessels which constitute the main 
assets of Russian naval force. Of the older craft the two pre- 
Dreadnoughts Imperator Pavel and Andrei Pervosvanni are 
not without value, and two of the older class of protected 
cruisers, the Admiral Makaroff and the Bayan still survive. 
The armoured cruiser Rurik is, in modem conditions, of very 
little use. 
If the Germans can immediately reinforce the High Seas 
Fleet with the four Dreadnoughts, our enemy has at a stroke 
increased his main battle strength by at least 20 per cent, 
in numbers and by considerably more than 25 per cent, in 
gun-power. The four three-gunned turrets of our late ally's 
battleships are placed along the centre line, so that the whole 
12 guns can be used as a broadside over an arc of about 130 
degrees. Of Germany's possible 24 battleships, 13 have a 
broadside fire of only eight guns ; the four Koenigs have ten, 
and if the Worth class are finished, it is supposed that they will 
have eight only, but all of larger calibre. An addition of 48 
guns in the line of battle, then, would be nearly equal in fire 
effect to the addition of six ships of the Kaiser class. This is 
manifestly a very formidable reinforcement. 
If the four battle cruisers become available, the addition to 
the German main scoating force is necessarily more important 
still. Sofaras we know from pre-war information, the German 
strength in battle cruisers available during the war were the 
seven built for the German Navy and Salamis building for 
Greece. Of these Goeben is at Constantinople, Z.!(/zov and Salamis 
(re-named Pommern) were lost at Jutland, and there have been 
persistent rumours that Von der Tann was sunk sometime 
before Jutland. That would leave the German Fleet in pos- 
session of Derfflinger and the third ship of her class, supposed to 
