August 8, 19 1 8 
Land & Water 
The Fourth Year of the War: By H. Belloc 
The Battle Ground of Mount Kemmel 
Official Pholo 
THE fourth year of the war has been marked by 
three main conditions, each of which has had its . 
own development in the course of the twelve 
months, and the combination of which at the 
present moment has produced the situation in 
which the struggle now lies. 
These three elements were : 
1. The elimination of Russia. 
2. The advent of American forces in the field. 
3. The submarine campaign and its counter-weight 
of special building on the Allied side. 
The first of these factors is the dominating one. It is 
this which led to the general consequences of the year, which 
reacted upon the second, giving it a special form, and which 
so nearly retrieved for the enemy the inconclusive character 
of the third. 
It is characteristic of the uncertainty of war and of the 
very large part which the political factor plays when the 
first stages of exhaustion are reached, that in the minds of 
most observers, and particularly in that of the enemy's 
command, the' order was reversed. It was upon the third 
element — the submarine campaign — that the greatest reliance 
was placed." Neither the enemy nor the AlHes could foresee 
how at once rapid and enormous would be the effects of the 
Russian collapse. Yet in point of fact it was this which 
became the master condition of the whole year, as we shall 
presently see. 
The reason that no one could foresee the immense effect 
of the Eastern change was that the conditions were quite 
unprecedented in history, military and civil. This is a war 
in which not only all the greatest States have become 
involved, but also in which the strain has fallen directly 
upon every member of those States, and this strain has been 
so severe, and cumulatively severe, as the struggle was 
prolonged, that it tested what may be called the breaking 
point of social structure in each society engaged. 
The essential character of the Great War— the thing that 
has made it possible— is that the modern nation (partly from 
its high organisation, rapidity of communication, and unity 
of control, partly from the religious character which 
patriotism has come to bear in it) is conceived as the end of 
human hfe, and the individuals composing it as no rnore 
than parts of a whole ; parts which have no true separate 
existence, and which, therefore, owe all they have— up to 
their very lives — to the State. 
Whether this extreme modern doctrine be sane or no is 
rnatter for fliscussion. At any rate, since the French Revolu- 
tion it has received a prodigious extension, and is the under- 
lying cause of all that has happened in these four years. 
A structure or organism of this sort clearly depends for its" 
continuance ujMjn two conditions : A moral one, proceeding 
from the individual himself, which we call patriotism ; and 
another, partly moral and partly material, which is the 
Jiold a modern Central Government possesses over individuals 
through its possessioh of perfected means of conimunication 
and control, coupled with the habit individuals have acquired 
in modern times of admitting such control and blindly obeying 
it. Each of these factors has, according to the type of 
nation involved, a limit. There is a limit after which the 
strain upon the individuals becomes too great for the collec- 
tive unity to be maintained, and this limit is reached the 
sooner where, for any reason, the strain has been greater 
than elsewhere, the moral bond of patriotism less strong, 
or the means of central government less perfected. 
In the ancient: and established societies of the West that 
limit has, not been reached. In Central Europe it has not 
been reached among the Northern Germans, partly because 
the great military prestige of Prussia, their master, has been 
maintained ; partly because they have a whole generation 
of astonishingly rapid economic effort to preserve ; 'partly 
because the control of the State is there more thoroughly 
developed than anywhere else in the world ; and partly 
because, though the economic strain upon the population 
has been very severe, the war has been fought on foreign 
soil, and has appeared to all the citizens as a series of success- 
ful advances. 
The Southern Germans have come much near.er the breaking 
poirrt. The only independent group of them, that of the 
Central Danube, having to work in harness with a totally 
different race of equal pewers — the Magyar — and both with 
an uncertain supremacy over various separate groups of 
Slavs, is handicapped. The Austro-Hungarian Dual Mon- 
archy is further less organised, can control distribution less 
well than North Germany, and is condemned to perpetual 
compromise in its domestic problems. Nevertheless, though 
it has gone further on the road to disintegration by far than 
its Northern Ally, the Empire governed from Vienna and 
Budapest has held together so far. 
In the Russian Empire, as we know, the breaking point 
was reached in 1917. Organisation was far weaker, com- 
munications much worse, armament insufficient, and losses 
gigantic ; patriotism less defined, and subject to divisions 
vaguer than but quite as serious as those of Austro-Hungary. 
The collapse really began in the third year of the war at 
the moment when the revolution began, but* its open effect 
was not seen until just upon the turn of the fourth year. 
Russian armies still stood in the field, and had during last 
July made notable advance towards Lemberg. Their 
strength appeared to be such that the maintenance of the 
war upon the Eastern front could be continued indefinitely, 
and the consequent advantage to the Western Powers, who 
were about to launch the second great offensive of the year, 
also indefinitely continued. But ten days before the Russian 
armies had come to the third year of their effort — upon 
Thursday, July 19th, 1917 — came an event which proved 
the internal disintegration of what had once been the Russian 
State, and which bore such fruit during the ensuing ten 
months as very nearly to decide the whole issue in the West, 
as well as in the Elast, in favour of the Germans. This 
event was the complete breakdown of the Russian front in 
the sector of Zborow, covering Tarnopol. 
This was not a case of a front breaking under extreme 
pressure or on account of some great tactical superiority in 
the enemy. It was a pure revolutionary movement. The 
nth Army simply dissolved of itself. The rot began with 
the 607th Regiment,j|which held the sector just north of the 
