Land & Water 
March 7, 
1918 
do not know, for instance, when the dearth of such an essen- 
tial at. cotton (which ought to have been strictly contraband 
from the first day <if the war) will not appear with the same 
severity as the dearth of rubber. 
This second element, then, the element of exhaustion, is 
the counter-balancing one which is compelling the enemy so 
an.viously to seek some wa\' out to a negotiated peace before 
he loses the fruits of his recent great successes. 
It is too often forgotten that military science proceeds by 
calculation. The Higher Conunand of every army in the 
field to-day thinks mainly in terms of curves and figures. It 
has no choice but to do .so, for to do so is the essence of its 
trade, and to be right about those curves and figures is the 
test of its efficiency'. A soldier can no more think in tlie 
rhetorical or sensational vagueness of the popular journal 
and politician than a merchant can think in terms of fine 
houses and lu.xurious displav. The commander can no more 
escape from the calculation of losses and effectives, of material 
and production, of transport, of hospital returns, of climatic 
statistics concerning weather and soil, of degrees of accuracy 
in artillery fire and its results, of radius of action in aircraft 
and missile weapons, than the merchant can escape from the 
calculation of prices, costings, and quotations. 
The Militarist State 
Now. the German organisation is an organisation of soldiers, 
not very military in spirit, for it is neither chivalric nor 
adventurous, but still entirely of soldiers. Prussia is an 
army with a State attached and subordinate to it, whereas 
the Allies are States using armies subordinate to civilians. 
Tlie mere essentials, therefore, of the militarv art are the 
ver\' core of the enemy's action. What the German com- 
manders think is what directs all German policy, and what 
the (rerman soldiers want is the thing that is done by the 
German civilians, Chancellor and all. 
Well, the German soldier has made his calculations, and in 
his mind all the talk about the continuation of the war being 
"useless," the German Army being " "invincible, " the 
"shining sword," and the rest "of it are balderdash. They 
are used by courtiers and by public speakers in the hope of 
impressing the enemy. But the motive force behind them, 
the reason they are used for impressing the Allies, and per- 
suading them to a negotiated peace, is a mass of exact cal- 
culations which the commanders make and follow. The 
people behind the German policy of peace are watching the 
curves. They know better than we do (though we know 
pretty iu-.curately) exactly what the submarine loss is. They 
know what crews they can get and at what rate to replace 
losses. They have a curve for that and a curve for the real 
damage to tonnage ; a curve for the margin of error in this 
<seemg that the submarine officer does not know what he is 
hitting unless he first summons it, or unless it is a hospital 
ship with distinctive marks). They keep most accurate 
curves of their dead ; of their recruitment ; of their losses of 
every kind ; of their hospital returns. They have innumer- 
able other curves of production and consumption in civilian 
necessities ; in the output of munitions ; in the condition 
wastage, and numbers of railway wagons ; in the dwindlin-' 
supply of lubricants^and all the rest of it. It is the lesson 
taught by these curves which produces in their various 
forms, from the grotesque— like the request that we should 
give up our coaling stations—to the merely futile— like quot- 
ations from St. Augustine— these perpetual appeals for peace 
llie elements favourable to Prussia are fortuitous and 
incalculable. Ihere may be a civilian breakdown in some 
one other country of the Alliance, such as that which has 
taken place under alien and cosmopolitan direction in the 
capital of what was once Russia. There mav be ciuarrels 
among the Allies. There mav be discovered anunexpectcdh- 
weak sector such as that the collapse of which led to the 
enormous victory of Caporetto la.st October. It is such 
accidents as these which have on three separate occasions 
res <,red, when it seemed l.opeless. the Prussian position 
tint no soldier gambles upon continued luck. All soldiers 
calculate. And the calculation of the future is against 
Frussia. That IS why Prussia continues and will continue 
to seek the earliest possible peace. Subject to the necessity 
she IS under of holding all she can of what she has already 
not ' r ^A .* . "™=^"r« potentially a .strong military 
pow.T-and whatever scheme of disarmament were proposed 
n Io'T'k/- T'f ""'"f>' f'"«'^-'- ^h'^' ^vill potentially remain, 
unless she is beaten in this war • " 
Thn'''CJ''^.".r''f •'■ f"" ■' ""^"'■" because ii ,', a necessity. 
Those who talk of a democratic Prussia are using a coiV 
radict.on in terms. Tho.se who conceive of Prussia in the 
future as one of many happy States all in agreement and form- 
ing a sort of common civilisation, have perhaps not even 
seen a map of the German Empire. Prussia is not a State ; 
save for a certain nucleus of governing families, half Slavonic, 
half German, it is not a race. It is a system. When one 
talks of "Rhenish Prussia," for instance, that is a term 
which, if Prussia were a State or a race, would be about as 
meaningless as the phrase "Scotch Connaught " or "Irish 
.Vberdeenshire." Prussia, if it were possible to regard it as 
a State or a race, would mean a bare thinly populated dis- 
trict mainly Slavonic in blood lying on the extreme north- 
ea.st of the German speech, antipathetic to most Germans ; 
never yet fully civilised, and run by a class of large land- 
owners, whose dependents arc little better than serfs. But 
the Rhine Provinces are hundreds of miles away from that 
territory. They are the most civilised part of Northern 
Germany ; they still retain a tincture of the Roman tradi- 
tion ; they have proved very amenable in the past to 
Western influence ; they enjoy great economic freedom, and, 
though they are now badly spoilt by industrialism, they 
repose upon a basis of free peasants. The idea of such a 
place being "Prussian" in any racial or national sense is 
nonsense. Yet the term "Rhenish Prussia," once we read 
the word "Prussia" aright, is not nonsense at all, but has a 
very real meaning. It has a very real meaning when we 
read it to mean what it does mean— which is this : — 
" T/ie administration by a military system of those Western 
Marches of the Germanies from which aggressive action can 
be taken against France, the two Netherlands, and Britain." 
We are not out to destroy Prussian militarism or any 
other "ism." We are out to destroy Prussia. This action 
is not the destruction of a nation, but of a creed. It is a 
creed the whole vitality of which depends upon victory. 
It is a creed which would collapse at once upon defeat, and 
which, unless it is destroyed, will itself destroy the high 
civilisation of Europe in all its provinces, but in particular 
our own. 
Enemy Inferiority 
This element of exhaustion, which is the root cause of 
Germany's anxiety for peace, is accentuated by her rulers' 
perception of the necessary growth of superiority (for the 
third time, and probably for the last time) upon the side of 
civilisation, and the corresponding decline upon the side of 
its enemies.,. The Great War has seen three cusps or waves 
of the sort. First came the unprovoked, unexpected, trea- 
cherous, and exceedingly rapid attack which took us all 
unawares. It was checked and broken at the Marne ; held 
in front of Ypres and on the Yser ; and in the succeeding 
six months, as Europe began to take breath and recover 
itself, the superiority of Europe against the barbarian became 
apparent. The rate of munitionment, the improvisation of 
armies from Britain, the astonishing development of work in 
the air ; the production of heavy artillery upon a quite 
unheard-of scale ; in all these new things, civilisation 
— which is always potentially superior to barbarism— drew 
rapidly up in the race and began to get ahead of the enemy. 
Let me give an example : — 
In Augu.st, 1914, the clumsy but very large howitzer 
which the Austrians had produced and the Germans adopted 
for siege work, and the calibre of which was between i6 and 
17 inches, was first employed. It reduced, with other lesser 
but very large siege pieces, the ring fortresses upon which 
French theory reposed. The Germans, who alone were 
thoroughly preparing for war and were planning it, had 
worked out the effect of such hve-^when it could be regulated 
by the new and hitherto impossible method of obsefvation from 
the air. But for observation from the air, the ring fortress 
would have stood indefinitely against any assault. There- 
fore It was that the Central Empires began the designing of 
this piece about the time of Agadir in 191 1, and had it 
ready at the moment which Prussia had decided upon to be 
the moment for her successful surprise, immediately after the 
harvest of igr4_three years ahead. Three years was the 
tme taken to develop the new machinery and its accessories, 
and the training of its crews. The same period applies to 
the enlarging of the Kiel Canal and to many other tests of 
their preparation. 
Now, these very great engines were somewhat in the 
nature of a surprise— at least, their effect was. Their mere 
existence was, of course, familiar. But there were no con- 
spicuously difficult problems to be solved. The howitzer 
fires at a high angle; the absorption of recoil is propor- 
tionately easier. It pretends to no great mobility, sin^e its 
function IS to reduce siege works. But if you had told any 
German in 1914 that he had to produce, and that the Allies 
-would shortly produce a land gun of the same calibre, pos- 
