I 2 
Land & Water 
April 25, 19 1 8 
(Continued from page 'J). 
able to reassure us on the value of tliis artillery as a menace 
to trading shipping going up and down the Channel. If the 
enemy held the coast of France from Dunkirk to Cape Oris 
Nez, his guns could reach Shoreham on the Sussex coast and 
Orfordness in Suffolk ; ■ so that the whole of Kent, all of 
Surrey and Sussex that lie east of the main Brighton line 
would be under his fire. His hmit of range would be just 
short of Croydon, from a point just opposite Erith to the 
south of a line through Chelmsford and Colchester. The 
lower corner of Suffolk, including Ipswich, would complete 
the danger area. The Thames, of course, would be under 
fire almost right up to the docks in London. 
This may all sound very terrifying, but it would be entirely 
without naval significance, for the simple reason that at 
these extreme ranges no aiming with a gun is possible at all ; 
and the value of guns of this kind, trained even on a great 
city like London or Paris, is not distinguishable from that of , 
regularly conducted air raids. Indeed, as far as destruction 
of life is concerned, it is probable that the same number of 
air bombs^from the fact that their explosive charge is so 
much greater — would be far more deadly than the 9-inch 
shell, whjch the German long-range gun is supposed to carry. 
As to such guns, or even the much more accurate naval gun, 
being mounted on the coast to prevent the passage of mer- 
chant shipping, this menace is entirely chimerical. If the 
best naval ordnance in the world were perfectly mounted 
and controlled from Dover or Calais, shipping could, in 
broad daylight on a clear day, pass up mid-Channel with 
complete safety, if they adopted the simple precaution with 
which every merchant skipper is famihar, from his experi- 
ence with submarines. He has only got to zigzag his course 
to make hitting impossible at ten miles, and at twenty no 
accurate fire of any sort would be conceivable. We must, 
therefore, look for a purely mihtary explanation of the 
enemy's present mihtary pohcy. A. H. Pollen. 
Climax of Two Great Wars: By j. Holland Rose, Lkt.D. 
AT no time during the present war bave the pros- 
pects of the British people been so gloomy as they 
were after the collapse of Austria in the Wagram 
Campaign of the year 1809 and the disgraceful 
Walcheren expedition of that autumn. It may 
be well to outline the situation in the j'ears 1810-11 and to 
suggest comparisons at some points with that of the far 
greater war against the Central Empires and their Allies. 
In this article I attempt to form estimates on mihtary and, 
naval affairs at the two periods, and in a subsequent article 
to treat questions of food-supply, commerce, and financial 
stability. 
The defection of Russia has brought about a state of affairs 
not unlike that which Napoleon's triumph over Austria pro- 
duced in 1809. Thenceforth, up to the end of 181 1, he threw 
his whole strength into the West. In 1810 a veteran army 
under Massena swept through Spain and Portugal, and 
pinned Welhngton's forces to the Lines of Torres Vedras. 
The tenacious Kritish resistance (far from appreciated at the 
time) saved frorn utter ruin the cause of the Portuguese and 
Spanish "Patriots," inaugurated a time of balance in the 
Peninsular War, and encouraged the Tsar, Alexander I., to 
the independent fiscal policy which brought about the French 
invasion of Russia in 1812. Thus the years 1810-2 form 
the crisis of the Napoleonic War. Without Torres Vedras, 
there would have been a timorous peace, an unchallenged 
French ascendancy, broken by no retreat from Moscow, no 
Leipzig, no Waterloo. 
The obedient journalists of Berlin have asserted that the 
great German push which began on March 21st, 1918, can be 
more than once repeated ; that they do not rely chiefly on 
the submarine campaign, but will force a military decision. 
In a general way, therefore, the present push may be compared 
with the effort of Massena ; but Germany confronts Allies 
who equal her in determination and excel her in man-power, 
money, and material. She controls a central mass of terri- 
tory and possesses an admirable mihtary organisation — 
advantages possessed in a unique degree by Napoleon over his 
feeble opponents of 1810-11. But her mass, like his, is 
gripped by sea power ; and she, any more than he, cannot 
escape from its economic pressure by subjecting Russia as 
he did at Tilsit in 1807. Indeed, the more the Teutonic yoke 
galls the Russians, the more likely are they to cast it off at 
the first opportunity. The more intelligent Germans blame 
their Government for imposing humiliating terms on Russia, 
just as Talleyrand censured Napoleon for alienating pubhc 
opinion in 1811-12. But the Germans persist, even as he 
persisted. Early in 1812 his nervousness as to the East 
prevented him sending into Spain the forces needed for 
ending the war. Even so, the Germans persist in their 
penetration of Russia. Sooner or later, then, sympathy must 
reawaken among the Russians with their former Allies, just 
as in the winter of 1811-12 Alexander I. based his resistance 
to the Napoleonic decrees on his confidence in Wellington's 
indomitable resistance, while the duke fought his uphill 
fight with the more spirit because he foresaw the Russo- 
French rupture. Adsit omen ! 
As the Berlin Press assures the world that the time is at 
hand when the war-will of the Western peoples must collapse, 
it may be well to recall the odds against which our fore- 
fathers fought. The census of 1811 gave the population of 
Great Britain as 12,596,803 souls. That of Ireland in 1821 was 
6,801,827 ; and in 1811 it may be reckoned at about 6,250,000. 
The numbers of the white population in our chief colonies are 
not known until the following dates : Canada, 1,172,820 in 
1844 ; New South Wales (inclusive of what is now Victoria), 
36,598 in 1828 ; Van Diemen's Land, 12,303 in 1824 ; 
Western AustraUa, 2,070 in 1834 ; South Austraha, 17,366 
in 1844 ; New Zealand, about 3,000 or 4,000 in 1847 ; Cape 
Colony, 68,180 in 1839. In 1811 these figures would be 
about one-half of those just presented. Consequently, we 
then had no military succour from the British race beyond 
the seas ; and, owing to the disputes with the United States 
and the Dutch, Canada and Cape Colony (not to speak of 
India) needed considerable garrisons from the motherland. 
It , is well, then, to realise that the British race within 
the Empire (including the Irish, but excluding the French- 
Canadians and the Dutch of Cape Colony) numbered less 
than twenty milHons in the year 181 1. Captlin C. W. 
Pasley, R.E., in his Essay on the Military Policy of the British 
Empire (1811), reckons only Great Britain as counting in the 
war, and, estimating the population of the Napoleonic 
Empire and vassal States at 77,000,000 souls, concludes that 
the odds against us were more than five to one. Probably 
he exaggerates the hostile numbers and underestimates our 
own ; but, after Napoleon's annexations of the Papal States, 
Illyria, Holland, and N.W. Germany (as far as Lflbeck), the 
French Empire must have included nearly 60,000,000 souls. 
This, however, is not all. In June, 1812, Napoleon marshalled 
for the Russian campaign 147,000 Germans from the Con- 
federation of the Rhine, and some 80,000 Itahans, 60,000 
Poles, and 10,000 Swiss, besides exacting contingents of 
50,000 from the quasi-dependent States, Austria and Prussia. 
If we include all the lands which furnished the Emperor with 
man-power, Pasley 's estimate of the odds is within the mark 
— at least, for 181 1. 
It is needless to point out the sharp contrast afforded by 
the present struggle. Probably the white population of the 
British Empire now approaches — or even equals — that of 
Germany, about 68,000,000. The deficiencies of the AlUes 
are in their scattered positions and their military unprepared- 
ness. But in 1811 the British and the Spanish and Portu- 
guese patriots were still more deficient by comparison with 
Napoleon. He had the great advantage of inheridng a 
system of national conscription founded by the French 
Jacobins in August, 1793, and developed more systematically 
in 1798. He applied this system to his vast Empire, and 
expected vassal princes to supply almost as large a quota. 
True, by the year 1810, warlike enthusiasm had declined, 
and bands of refractory conscripts had to be hunted down. 
The levies which he exacted from his vassals were half- 
hearted, only the Poles and the North Italians fighting with 
enthusiasm. Still, love of glory, hope of plunder, or the 
longing to secure a lasting peace impelled the mass forward. 
As Count Segur says : "There was not a hope which Napoleon 
could not flatter, excite, and satiate. . .' . A war was often 
only a battle or a short and brilliant excursion.'! Such, too, 
is the Prussian tradition, based on the triumphant wars of 
1864, 1866, 1870. 
To break down the moral which in 1810-11 still inspired the 
best of Napoleon's troops was a stupendous task ; but 
Welhngton impaired that moral at Busaco, wore it down at 
Torres Vedras, displayed the full fighting strength of the 
British soldier at Badajoz, and his superiority in the mighty 
clash of Salamanca (July, 1812). Even so, in the present 
w^r, the Allies, owing, first, to lack of numbers, and then of 
