LAND 6? WAf ER 
September 12, l^JlS 
LAND&WATER 
5 Chancery Lane, London, W.C.z. Tel. Ht>lbom%z% 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 191 8 
Contents 
page 
Their Turn Next (Cartoon) 
Raemaekers 
I 
Current Events 
2 
The Operations 
Hilaire Belloc 
3 
The Defeat of the Submarine . . 
Arthur Pollen 
6 
Kerenskv 
J. Coudurierde 
Chassaigne 
8 
The Rising Sun in Russia 
Gregory Mason 
9 
The Prisoners 
Effendi 
II 
The Dardanelles Bombardment 
Henry Morgenth.i 
lu 12 
A Long War Poem 
J. C Squire 
14 
The Reader's Diary 
Peter Bell 
15 
The Theatre : At a Music Hall 
W. J. Turner 
16 
The Financial Front 
Hartley Withers 
17 
Household Notes 
22 
Notes on Kit 
■24 
The Old Line under New Conditions 
THE Allied advances have continued. On the 
whole front we are almost back on the old spring 
line, the line from which the Germans started 
the great rush towards Amiens. We have 
recovered all the ground we have lost this year 
except three narrow strips : a strip in Flanders (the con- 
spicuous feature of which is the Messines ridge), a strip 
running southwards from Cambrai to the "corner" of the 
broad German wedge in France, and a small strip on the 
Aisne. West and north-west of Cambrai, where the breach 
was made in the •" Hindenburg switch line," we hold Qu^ant, 
Inchy, and a belt of country which has never been in our 
possession since 1914 ; and we are there almost within a 
rifle-shot of Bourlon Wood. On the map, in fact, it is vir- 
tually "as you were." The Germans are emphasising this 
fact and (naturally) ignoring the infinitely more important 
facts that on balance they have lost far more .heavily than 
we, that it is they who have had (if we regard the advance 
and the retreat as one long continuous action) to acknowledge 
defeat, and that the end of this stage in the war sees them 
more evidently incapable of a finally victorious stroke than 
ever before. At the week-end they announced bombasti- 
cally that they had now everywhere reached their main 
defensive positions : in other words that they had not been 
attempting a thorough resistance before, and that they could 
confidently challenge us to a struggle along the old line. 
It was clear to every one with a grasp of the rudiments 
of the situation-— some of our journalists were already talking 
as though the Germans were in rout, and there was no reason 
why they should make a stand in one place rather than in 
another — that they must attempt to hold us, if not on the 
old hne, at any rate on a line'approximating to it and modi- 
fied to meet new tactical exigencies. As we write the pace 
of our progress has been arrested. Where the next develop- 
ment of the Allied attack will take place, whether or not the 
conditions for another and a greater blow have been reached, 
are things concerning which it cannot be useful, and might 
be dajjgerous to speculate. What, humanly speaking, is 
established is that our retention of the initiative is assured, 
and that the Germans, in view of the increasing relative inferi- 
ority of their rvumbers, resources, and moral, are on a down- 
ward slope that can lead them to only one end. 
The Russian Tangle 
The Russian picture as presented to the public, is all fore- 
ground and no background. The foreground is tragically 
full. In a few days the Allies have made important moves 
on the Murman Coast and in Siberia, the Czecho-Slovaks 
have continued their romantic successes, there has been an 
attempt on the life of Lenin, his colleague Uritzky has been 
assassinated, and the infuriated Red Guards (who absurdly 
attribute these outrages to the English and the French) have 
brutally murdered Captain Crorrye, our Naval Attach^, a 
man who was admired and liked by every Russicin who had 
had dealings with him. The British Government has vehe- 
mently protested against this outrage, and retaliated by arrest- 
ing the Bolshevik Ambassador ; the Bolsheviks, so far, have 
not replied. Beyond this all is rumour and speculation. We 
hear of wholesale massacres in Petrograd, of risings here and 
executions there, of the movements of independent armies, 
the actions of independent communities, of disorganisation, 
plague, famine, growing hopes and growing despairs. But 
the general public is certainly not iri a position to judge 
either of the state of Russia or (what flows in part from it) 
of Allied policy. Almost all the news we get is indirect or 
(at least probably) tainted ; and all we get is very little. 
Russia is a cauldron boiling behind a curtain ; we can hear 
the hissing and bubbling but we cannot see what is in the pot. 
We do not — though we hope the Government is better informed 
— precisely know what is the strength of the Bolsheviks, what 
is their hold over the peasantry, how strong is the demand 
for vigorous Allied intervention, what elements we can rely 
upon to assist us and themselves as we advance, what measure 
of welcome or resentment is accorded to us by the population 
as a whole, to what extent conscious pro-German influences 
are in control, what chances there are of Russia being pulled 
together and pulled together in a way favourable to the Allied 
cause, and the limits which the Allies have set to their interfer- 
ence. All we are certain about is that owing to the Bolsheviks' 
mismanagement, weakness and troacliery, the Germans 
threatened vital points, and we, with every justification, have 
taken steps to counter them. Bejond that we can do no 
more than trust the Allied Governments and wait for more light. 
More Train Discomfort 
We are not going to complain about the reduction in the 
number of trains which is threatened. A year ago the railways 
had 8J weeks supply of coal in hand ; this year they have only 
4 J weeks supply. " War traffic" certainly does not diminish ; 
the ordinary commercial traffic of the country must go on ; 
we are allowed much more coal for household purposes than 
are our continental allies ; you cannot make half a ton of coal 
do the work of a ton. In other words if coal be as short as it 
is alleged to be, we are compelled to economise somewhere, 
and a reduction in the amount of space available for passen- 
gers on trains will probably (though we do not know what 
saving of coal in this direction is estimated to be feasible) 
cause less hardship than any other economical step. But we 
do not think that it is necessary or desirable to sugar the pill 
by talking about " fewer joy-rides." There are two reasons. 
The first is that what joy-riding is still done is mostly done by 
people whb have plenty of money to spend and who (de- 
monstrably) do not mind how uncomfortable their travelling 
may be so long as they arrive at their destinations, pier and 
band, trout-stream or golf-course. We shall not stop joy- 
riding unless we make it compuhory for every traveller to 
go through an examination and obtain a permit : a process 
the introduction of which would lead to a Ministry even 
larger than the Ministry of Munitions. And the second con- 
sideration is that the vast majority of civilian travellers now 
are not " joy-riders " at all but people who are on business, 
who are attending to urgent private affairs or who are snatching 
a brief holiday — generally at a very short distance from their 
homes. The journalists (most of whom live in Brixton) 
would make a great noise if anyone tried to stop their " joy- 
riding " on the District Railway ; these rules do not strike 
most people's imaginations until they apply to themselves. 
We must face the facts : if fuel is cut down and trains are 
fewer we shall not so much diminish the amount of travelling 
done as stiU further overcrowd the trains which are already 
in a condition which even the fantastic pen of the Daily 
Mirror's great cartoonist can scarcely exaggerate. People 
who are bound to travel are going to travel in still greater 
discomfort : and they must face it. 
