March 14, 19 18 
Land & Water 
East and West: By Hilaire Belloc 
1 PROPOSE to examine in the latter part of what 
follows certain details of the great belt of territory 
which the Central Empires, under the guidance of 
Prussia, are carving out into separate, new, and in 
the main artificial States, which will (if we 
leave Prussia undefeated and enjoying a negotiated peace) 
be no more than subject portions of the great central empire 
which it is her aim to establish. 
Any discussion of this matter — general, like those which 
have appeared in these columns in the past, or particular, 
like that which I propose to make to-day — must be prefaced 
by a proviso that should be fairly obvious but is not suffi- 
ciently grasped by the public. This proviso is the truth 
that if the Prussian army is defeated or reduced to a position 
of inferiority preventing its continued resistance, nothing 
done in the East can stand. Nothing of the Prussian plans 
against Poland and for the erection of these new, largely 
artificial States will remain, but the fate of these provinces 
will be as much in the hafids of the victors as that of Western 
Europe. 
One often hears people suggesting that the weight of 
civilisation must triumph in the West, but that the Eastern 
position is lost for good. Such a statement is a contradiction 
in terms. A decisive victory in the West would leave the 
victorious armies in a position to dictate the future to all 
Europe. Exactly as the decisive victory gained by the 
Central Empires over Russia, political though it be in character, 
has left the victors for the moment in a position to dictate 
entirely at their will the future Russia in Europe and to 
carve out its frontier territories as they choose. 
There is, of course, in this connection a further statement 
current that a decision of this sort cannot be expected 
in the West. Many men speak as though the word " victory" 
were a vague rhetorical expression signifying no more than 
the capture of such and such portions of an enemy's force 
or the compelling of him to abandon such and such positions. 
A decisive victory is nothing of the kind. Upon the contrary, 
most of the great decisive victories have not been followed 
by retreats of any sort, and some of them have not even 
been followed by routs. The object of all military art is 
to put out of action the organised force of your opponent. 
But whether you do that by destroying the details of his 
force or destroying its organisation or even by compelling 
the civilian framework .upon which all armies depend to 
collapse under the strain of the pressur-e you put upon them, 
the result is the same. 
Now to say that a complete decision is impossible in the 
West because it has not yet arrived is to talk nonsense. 
It is to let the mind slip into a habit of repetition instead 
of using it for analysis. Every military struggle, from a 
pitched battle within narrow limits to this, the greatest of 
all groups of campaigns, is ultimately a trial of endurance. 
It may be that the moral po>v'er of endurance was greater 
on the defeated side than on the successful ,side, and that 
the result was only obtained by the superiority in weapons 
or in scientific management and movement, or in organisation. 
But in any case the victory is obtained by the power of the 
victor to impose a strain upon the vanquished which ulti- 
mately breaks him up. In this process the victor himself 
is nearly always subject to a strain nrarly equal to the strain 
he imposes upon his opponent, the difference between victory 
and defeat lying in the priority of surrender. He who first 
discovers he can no longer stand the strain is the defeated 
party. In the great duels of the world a decision is invariably 
arrived at at last, and it will be arrived at in this the greatest 
duel in which our ancient civilisation has yet been engaged. 
Either we leave the enemy upstanding, in which case the 
future is lost, or we obtain the decision, in which case the 
future is ours. 
I have often quoted the parallel of Waterloo because 
Waterloo is an excellently small model in time and space 
upon which this very large general principle can be studied. 
That battle covered, in its active part, not much more than 
two square miles of land ; it involved at first the action of less 
than 150,000 men, and even at its close of much less than 
200,000. It lasted, from the first shot to the French breakdown, 
less than nine hours. Yet all that is said of this great 
campaign lasting over years and covering thousands upon 
thousands of square miles, all the fundamental errors on 
the nature of that campaign could equally have been made, 
and some were made, in the course of that action. 
In^the first two hours of Waterloo— or, at any rate, before 
the end of the third hour^the failure of' Erlon withjf the 
first corps to break the British left centre, after the tremendous- 
cannonade it had received, might well have been used as) an 
argument that Napoleon's task was impossible of achieve- 
ment. Erlon's corps was the only fresh one. It had attacked 
upon more favourable conditions than were likely to come 
later, and it had failed. Even before its complete failure 
Napoleon had already perceived* inj the distant east the 
approach upon his flank of thosej German troops which later 
were to change the balance of numbers. The battle might 
seem lost to the French at tnat]; moment. At about two 
o'clock, if I remember rightly, this judgment could perfectly 
well have been passed by a good observer of the struggle, 
and there are some historians who have' gone so far as to ask 
why Napoleon did not break' off^ the battle. Yet in the mid- 
afternoon, in the midst of the great cavalry charges against 
the squares of the British) right centre (when the guns had to 
be left in the open, and werej ridden round and over by the 
Cuirassiers) there were' officers upon Napoleon's staff watching 
from the heights in the south) who said that the battle was 
already won — and so it would,> have[ been if the British line . 
had yielded, as it seemed to) be to one' seeing the mass of 
cavalry in its midst ; for in that case the German pressure 
on the right would have) come up too late. At the end of 
the afternoon' the thing was really what is called a deadlock. 
There was not much left of daylight, the French had twice 
swept the Germans out )ol Planchenoit. Yet the British 
line was intact. The^ lastj vigorous^ advance of the guard 
was at hand. ' 
iiote that for seven hours there' had been an increasing 
strain upon either side, increasing muiual exhaustion — ^^and 
no result. The result came at the very end, in the ninth 
hour, because in that hour one side — the French — suffered 
just up to and beyond the breaking point. The check of 
the guard and the appearance of a fresh Prussian body on 
the northeast were what turned) the scale. And after the 
breakifig point the side which] had' not broken, in spite of the 
very great strain it had also suffered, could do what it willed. 
It is equally true of this gigantic business to-day. The 
side which endures longest will be able to do what it likes 
with the other ; but with this difference in our favour, that 
the enemy is trying to breakf off the battle, and we as yet 
have not tried to do that. It is he who is already more 
anxious about^the)^ future than ourselves ; and that is a sign. 
Details of the New States 
Let us now turn to the details of those new provinces 
which Prussia and her allies are in process of carving out of 
what was once the Western belt of the Russian Empire. 
The general lines I have already dealt with at some length. 
We know that if Prussia succeeds in getting her negotiated 
peace in the West she will establish a great centra! empire of 
which these new nations between the Baltic' and the Black 
Sea will be virtually dependent, though perhaps federal 
States. We know that her main concern is to reduce the 
kingdom of Poland to the smallest limits, to refuse it access 
to the sea, and to create causes of friction between it and 
its neighbours. The reason for this policy is that Polaiid 
is the only State here which Prussia really dreads. It is the. 
only State with a strong tradition of Latin civilisation and . 
of Western ideas, the only one with a long historic past t)t> : 
consolidate it, and the only one with a true national con-., 
sciousness spread throughout its being. To the south there 
lies the Rumanian State, which is also highly national ; hut. 
this stands apart in language and culture from the Slav group. 
We have also explained in past articles the principle of 
dividing in order to rule ; the principle of creating as much 
local friction as possible underlies the whole of this German 
work in the East. In one place the greater landlords will be. 
relied upon to help German influence against the peasantry, 
in another the peasantry against the landlords, in another ^ 
Catholics against Protestants or Orthodox, in another Ortho- 
dox against both. In one district a minority race is left as a 
cause of friction, in another a minority language. 
Their Constitution 
Now let us look at the thing in detail. According to 
whether the Prussians propose separate States or annexation 
along the Baltic shore, there will be five at the least, or 
eight at the most, nf the';*' mw States. The eight would be. 
