April 4, 1918 
Land & Watef 
centre — or, rather, these are to be found in its immediate 
neighbourhood. It is a perfect focus of great roads. 
Arras, as we have seen, is yet another secondary objective 
which the enemy must regard. He has tried once hard to 
break that hinge, and it is exceedmgly probable that he will 
try again. But it still remains true that, short of a rupture 
in the line elsewhere, the exposed southern flank is, at 
present, the cnicial piece of ground upon the fortunes of which 
the decision depends. H. Belloc. 
Postscript 
Since writing the foregoing, on Easter Sunday, March 31st, 
■ the battle has not developed in the matter of ground, but 
the official dispatches and the commentaries of correspondents 
make it plain that-Saturday was filled with a most intense 
effort to create a rupture between the French and the British 
to approach the main railway, and therefore to exercise 
the greatest pressure possible just north of Montdidier up 
to the stream of the Luce. 
The effect of the event measured in ground was not great. 
The heights west of the Avre were rushed by the enemy, 
and he took the village of Mesnil, which had up to that day 
formed the corner of the great angle. He gained a maximum 
depth in this sector of only a mile and a half. But the 
significance of the day was not the trifling gain in ground, 
nor even the sector upon which it was obtained, but the 
tremendous weight of infantry with which the enemv attacked, 
and the very high price he was willing to pay, and did pay, 
ifor his defeat. Thirteen divisions at least were identified 
upon the small front chosen for the effort. For S(bme reason 
which is not easy to define, there was not sufficient weight of 
enemy artillery behind this effort : and yet the enemy 
thought it so imperatively and immediately necessary that 
he sacrificed here alone for the moment perhaps 20,000 men 
and had permanent losses of perhaps 8,000 in trying to 
get forward. 
Meanwhile, upon the open front, which is strategically 
the problem of the whole battle— the front between Mont- 
didier and Noyon — there was no appreciable gain either 
way ; but we have had, with regard to that front, since the 
main article was written, the very significant piece of news 
that the enemy was beginning to entrench, especially in 
front of Lassigny, just west of which point the French 
pressure had begun to be felt most severely. If it show 
proof of the enemy's intention— if he fail to enlarge his 
line — to create a new siege front thus advanced, his power 
to do so obviously depends upon the factor of time : whether 
the Allies can begin their full pressure upon him so early 
as to prevent the completion by him of a good defensive 
scheme. We know from the experience of this war that a 
salient, no matter how awkward, can be held if time for 
the proper defence of its two angles is given. The still 
sharper salient of St. Mihiel is an example.— H. B. 
Sea and Land Communications 
To the Editor, Land & W.\ter. 
Sir,— Writing on "Raiding the Rhine Cities," Mr. Belloc 
mentions our maritime communications are "slow and 
vulnerable," whilst the enemy's communications, being 
contmental, are "therefore rapid and invulnerable." I have 
never been able to see the force of these conclusions. Why 
should a fixed permanent way like a railway be less vulner- 
able to aerial attack than ships (which have a choice of 
routes over hundreds of miles of the pathless seas) are to 
destruction at the hands of submarines ? In the latter case 
a submarine cannot injure a route; it can only destroy 
ships, and it must do this individually and separately ' On 
the other hand, the destruction of a" railway bridge or part 
of the permanent way may hold up the traffic of an entire 
system. And surely a railway, with its junctions, bridges 
and tunnels, offers a much better target for a bomb dropped 
from an aeroplane than a vessel offers to a submarine. 
I should have thought that a fleet of aeroplanes, expressly 
employed for bombing the enemv railways and roUing stock 
as often as the weather permits, might have proved far more 
disastrous to him than anything he might inflict upon us 
with his under-sea craft Our enemv is very short of loco- 
motives, freight cars, etc.. and his 'rails are beginning to 
wear out. It would seem, therefore, that constant and 
systematic attacks in this direction would cripple him in a 
very vital place. 
Arthur Kitson. 
The British Empire Club, St. James's Square, 
March 22nd, ,1918. 
Pendant la Bataille 
By Emile Cammaerts 
La lune s'est. levee derriere les peupliers, 
Limpide et pure comme uiie fiancee, 
Sous le souffle du soir les branches ont frissonne . . . 
Donne leur la Victoire, 6 Dien des armees. 
La brume serpente le long de la riviere, 
Les sansonnets jacassent perches sur la goutti^re. 
La rosee du printcmps parfume la poussiere, . . . 
O Dieu des armees, ecoute nos prieres. 
Les oiseaux se taiscnt, les enfants sont couches. 
La prairie est tendre et douce sous le pied. 
Tout est calme ici, tout est serenite . . . 
Donne leur la Victoire, 6 Dieu des armees. 
Ce n'est pas pour la gloire, ce n'est pas pour la guerre, 
Pas meme pour I'idee, pas meme pour la terre. 
Mais pour le ciel, Seigneur, et son sacre mystfere, . . . 
O Dieu des armees, e.xauce nos prieres. 
[all rights reserved] 
From a German Note Book 
THE German Imperial Budget for 1918, which was 
recently published, was a reminder to the German 
pubUc that they are paying heavily for glory. The 
ordinary Budget balanced at 366 million pounds sterling, 
as compared with 224 milUons last year, and of the total 
expenditure for the year, 295 millions sterling was for 
interest on the public debt. A modest 9 millions sterling 
sufficed for the purpose in 1914 : No wonder the Pan- 
Germans are dinning into the ears of the workers that 
unless Germany obtains an indemnity, she will be bankrupt. 
But bad as the position appears to be in the Budget, the 
whole of the financial statement is fictitious. Expenditure 
on the army and the navy is left out altogether ; and what 
IS to be said of a Budget which gives no indication of this 
very important item ? Furthermore, as it stands it repeats 
the old 1914 figures, with some slight variations, and thus 
guileless Fritz is led to believe that 38 millions sterhng will 
be forthcoming this year from Customs duties. All the worid 
knows that owing to the British blockade the amount received 
by Germany from Customs duties has sunk very low indeed. 
Yet these 38 millions figured in the Budgets for 1915, 1916 
and 1917, and they turn up once more in 1918. It needs 
no great insight to estimate the true value of a document of 
this kind. Nevertheless, Germany, one of the Great Powers 
of Europe, is not ashamed to have recourse to Ijnng and 
deceptive statements of a character which even a bankrupt 
Central American Repubhc would disdain. 
Even this make-believe Budget, however, ends with an 
enormous deficit, which will have to be made good by special 
war taxes. They are talking of higher duties on beer and 
spirits, and taxes on business transactions. But why no 
taxes on incomes, it may be asked ? The answer is simple. 
The Pan-German annexationists who desire to pocket as 
much belonging to other countries as they can seize are very 
unwilling that their purses should be touched. In a recent 
debate on the Prussian Diet, Freiherr von Zedlitz, one of 
the leading Ughts of the reactionaries, called upon the Govern- 
ment to oppose with all the forces at its command any further 
encroachments on the part of the Imperial Treasury on private 
incomes and private property. 
Sport and Fashions 
Ever since the beginning of the war there has been a move- 
ment in Germany to get rid of all foreign words, which have 
been replaced by native productions. In a large number 
of instances the transformation succeeded ; but a few words 
were left over for which no exact German equivalent could 
be found. Characteristically enough, these included the 
words "lady" and "gentlemen," both of which were in 
common use in Germany. Perhaps the reason for the failure 
is that Germany lacks what these words indicate. And now 
it is the turn of sport. The hnguistic speciahsts are greatly 
troubled to find exact German expressions for "sport" itself, 
for "lawn tennis, " "hockey," "golf," " cross-countrv, " 
starter," "amateur." Scholars agitate themselves over 
the search, and when they find a more or less satisfactory 
equivalent, it sounds strange even in German ears. 
