March 28, 1 9 1 8 
Land & Water 
be developed — a necessarily tardy process — the weight of 
numbers, as a whole, was against the Powers which are 
defending European civilisation and the future of all its 
traditions. The position was rightly envisaged as a duel 
of this kind during tJie long, tense, but enervating lull of the 
winter ; the political discussions which arose in tliat interval 
did little more than mask a more profound feeling, which 
was universal in the West, . and which' was a mixture of 
expectancy, anxiet\^ and determination. The issue of that 
duel is now joined. The two steels have met. The first 
heavy lunge has been delivered. In the two fierce opening 
days of its energy it has been parried: but with difficulty 
and with no finality — as yet. A third day has passed, and 
part of a fourth, without as yet the appearance of the next 
move. It may be that the full suspense under wliich these 
lines also are written will continue by tlie time they are in 
the hands of the public. 
The Prussian System 
By so mucli as we had chiefly to consider during the time 
when the war was a calculable siege, numbers, dispositions, 
and. in general the purely military problem — a consideration 
at which fools only mocked — but fools are many — by so 
much the duty of the civilian at this moment is now the 
converse of a merely mihtary consideration and has become 
mainly a political one. It is the business of all neither to 
prophesy success, as has become the fatuous habit of those 
who suffer or enjoy temporary authority upon both sides, 
nor_even to listen to such baseless and useless pronounce- 
ments. It is rather our duty to reiterate to ourselves, to 
recover and re-emphasise after its partial oblitersjtion during 
the tedium of the lull now ]iassed, what is now beyond any 
dispute and beyond any possibility of argument, the issue 
involved. Not the least instructed of those who have 
imagined Prussia to be something like themselves can be 
in doubt any longer. No one, however ignorant of the 
European past, but feels his own country at l^ast, and there- 
fore his own being, to be at stake. Upon the grciat battle which 
has now but just opened the conclusion of the whole campaign 
must necessarily turn ; and our business is to envisage with 
the utnaost clarity during the terrible attention of the next 
few days or weeks the alternatives before us. If Prussia 
now fails, she has failed for ever. The vast congeries of 
mixed and various peoples whom she has drawn directly 
and indirectly into her detestable system, will dissolve. It 
has no natural foundation nor any natural bond. Even its 
suppoi5ed (ierman basis is largely a modern academic fiction. 
The rest is force, fraud, and mechanics. If it please God 
that this system shall be destroyed by the sword of the 
Allies, the world will be recovered. 
We need waste no mental strength upon the wholl3' ephemeral 
catch words which have cropped up in the course of the 
struggle ; it is not true that democracy is admitted to be the 
best form of human government ; still less is it true that 
niodern industrial society is democratic or that Parliaments 
are generally regarded as instruments of a happy and stable 
freedom. It is not true to say, and it is not felt by the 
millions who have suffered in this great cause, that par- 
ticular mechanical schemes of international arrangement are 
the object of the sacrifice. Men have neither volunteered nor 
died nor endured such abominable things for so long nor have 
women suffered the much worse things of the soul to which they 
have been subjected, for any of these academic phrases. What 
all have felt and what all still feel, what every man is feeling 
who is, as I am writing, engaged between the Scarpa and the 
Somme, is the necessity of preserving his countr)'. Patriotism 
is the flame of this war ; and it is because Prussia is the nega- 
tion of patrioti.sm that Prussia has made herself the enemy. 
The love of country in our old civilisation is equivalent to 
and is the expression of its general soul ; through it alone 
we are wliat we are ; and through it alone does the modern 
man receive the tremendous inheritance of Europe which is 
now at stake. • 
If in th(! great debate now actually joined before Arras, 
St. Quentin, and Laon — three ancient witnessesof such things 
— the enemy triumi)hs, what will go is our very souls. That 
is what we must grasp and retain throughout all that may 
be before us. Nothing whatsoever can compensate a man 
for the loss of his national pride which contains, informs, 
and creates his standing in this world. If we regard the pre- 
servation of that- object as supreme; if we count nothing 
whatsfx'ver in the balance against it, then no material victory 
can ultimately prevent the successful reaction of Europe 
against that which intends, and would produce, the death 
of Europe : That which has already broken with European 
morals and chivalry in war and has rendered detestable 
what, for all its horror, had hitherto been glorious in arms. 
If such a faith is held fast it can carr\' success not onlv 
through this immediate trial, but through whatever an 
untoward issue of that trial might impose upon us for the 
future. If it is not held with sufficient clarity, smglcness, 
and tenacity, even victory will yield but little fruit, and 
deleat would be final. tt n 
HiLAiRE Belloc. 
Postscript 
It has proved possible to delay printing for the addition of 
a few words upon the further results obtained by the enemy 
in the course of Sunday and during Monday, the 24th and 
25th of the month, and to estimate" upon the further cost at 
which these results' have*'been obtained. 
Briefly (to take the- last point first), another twenty 
divisions have been identified as throtvn into the struggle 
for its second phase, and the total number recognised by the 
defensive as having come in by Monday is no less than 
seventy-three. It is indeed probable that divisions are 
relieved, or their immediate task of assault taken^over, by 
fresh units, after a loss less severe than was the case when 
the enemy wa,s on the defensive last year. As we know, it 
was, under those circumstances, only after the loss of some- 
thing like 50 per cent, that a division was relieved. The 
present proportion cannot be on the average anything like 
so high, though certain units, oi course, have lost even more. 
But it is none the less significant that there .should already 
before the end of the fifth day have been drawn in and partly 
used up nearly double the enormous numbers massed for 
the first shock. 
It is an index of the pace at which the thing is being forced, 
the enemy's determination to succeed or fail "as rapidly as 
possible ; in other words, to gamble very high. It is also 
an index of the conditions upon which the Allies are banking 
for their counter- stroke w-hen the large reserves shall be 
used ; for it is now apparent that the defensive has been 
maintained with economy. 
So far as ground is concerned, the enemy reached and 
passed on Monday the line of the high road, Arras-Bapaume- 
Peronne, which on Saturday was everywhere covered by the 
British forces. He was some thousand yards beyond 
Bapaiune on Monday evening, he had occupied Peronne, 
and he had established one bridge-head at least beyond the 
marshy valley of the Somme ; though here he lost very 
heavily, and full use was made of that obstacle by the defen- 
sive to inflict loss on the attack. The number of prisoners 
claimed has swollen to 45,000, and of guns to over 600. 
The French have taken over the portion of the line on the 
south, reaching apparently to somewhat north of Nesle, that 
is, to the north-west of Ham, uncovering Guiscard and 
Chauny (none of these places are marked in the sketch map 
drawn for the results of Saturday, they fall into the area 
covered by the inset). The appearance of the French here 
upon the" right has nothing to do, of course, with the use of 
the great reserves, which is a local extension undertaken by 
units belonging to the general line. 
The defensive was still intact by the Monday, and its 
general line would seem to have been at that mpment one 
lying almost due north and south from the neighbourhood 
of Arras, involving, therefore, a further pivotting back upon 
the northern hinge of another twenty degrees. Monchy Hill, 
to the east of Arras, was in enemy hands, and so was the 
high ground of Henin and St. Leger. The line, still in move- 
ment, seems to have crossed the Arras-Bapaume road about 
half-way between the two towns ; it then bent somewhat 
westward round Bapaume, reached the Somme at a place 
corresponding to the original line from which the offensive 
started in ic)i6, and so ran southward over the devastated 
area ; still covering Noyon and the wooded heights to the 
north and east of it, where the French are still maintaining 
them.selves. 
It must be repeated in this postscript upori what basis all 
sane judgment upon the situation depends. Any ground or 
even losses of men and material by the defence (within a 
certain measure which has not been exceeded) are nothing 
to three factors, which only tiie event can determine for us, 
and which are the real essentials of the situation. 
The first is the condition of the defensive line — that it 
should remain unbroken. The second is the rate of the 
losses which are being inflicted upon the enemy. The third 
is the effect that will be produced by the great reserves 
when they come into play : whether this be in a war of 
movement suitable for or in the shape of a counter-offensive 
upon a standing line. This last feature of reserve, which 
must be no more than named (although the enemy is, of 
course, well aware of it, and has discussed it at length in 
his Press), is that with which the Germans are most con- 
cerned, and upon which we should therefore most rely. — H. B. 
