September 19, 1918 
LAND 6? WATER 
electors choose. Now, it is quite certain that no one to-day 
}ias the least inkling as to how the majority of the electors 
intend to vote. 
It is not altogether reassuring to be told that on the issue 
of the war the heart of labour is sound, and that the strikes 
and threats are due, not to any doubt as to the importance 
of victory, 'nor to any impatience of the sacrifices that are 
necessary before it can be obtained, but solely from the 
detennination, first of one group of workmen and then of 
another, to have its 'fair share in the immense profits and 
prosperity which our vast national expenditure has brought 
to so many favoured classes. Fighting men returned from 
the front on a fortnight's leave do not, so far as I have learned 
from their opinions, find much consolation in this theory. 
To them it frankly seems as if British morale was very little 
better than the Gerihan. They realise that the discourage- 
ment of the enemy arises largely from the fear that defeat 
is certain? But when they are told that the continual dis- 
locations in our national machine are to be explained, not by 
pacifism, but by the belief that, as victory is assured, it is 
a good time to see to a just distribution of the spoils, they 
are inclined to think that the British malady may be quite 
as disabhng. And, after all, is it so certain that pacifism 
is dead in this country ? 
The Three Mislead Classes 
It has been suggested and, it would seem, plausibly, 
that there are three classes to whom a peace by under- 
standing appeals. There is the small minority of 
internationalists, the peace-at-any-price crowd. It was 
of such, as the Prime Minister has just reminded us, 
that the party recently in control of Russia was composed. 
People of sense hardly need so early a development of 
bloody anarchy in that country to convince them of the 
end to which all such doctrines inevitably lead. The 
second group are those who simply cannot believe that 
victory is attainable. It is these whom the All Highest and 
his myrmidons have in view when they preach the^octrine 
of "victorious defence.". The third group is composed of 
those who, while hardly denying that victory is possible, 
do not believe that the difference between the thwarting of 
Germany, which we have already achieved, and her military 
defeat is worth the further sacrifices that defeat would 
entail. If one might, then, offer a humble suggestion to 
Mr. George and the other statesmen who will be appealing 
to the country for their suffrages, it is that instead of, or in 
addition to, telling us what they will do for this country 
when the war is over, they should explain with a little greater 
precision how the war is to be terminated by victory, and in 
somewhat greater detail why the surrender of Germany and 
her forcible disarmament are conditions precedent to the 
new era we are determined to create. And as a humble 
contribution towards such an exegesis I propose to draw 
attention to a singular fact not hitherto clearly elucidated. 
It is that, except for the brief Verdun hallucination, the Ger- 
mans have never since November, 1914, believed in the pos- 
sibility of a military victory over France and England. 
They did .believe in victory and in the offensive without 
which it was inconceivable, but it was sea offensive and not 
a land offensive on which the enemy's Higher Command 
relied. The significance of the present acknowledgment of 
failure lies in this, that a military decision would never have 
been sought this year unless on the supposition that the 
submarine had made it possible. And that the abandon- 
ment of the offensive is an acknowledgment, not of military 
failure alone, but of complete collapse in both elements. 
I begin, then, by remarking that from the outbreak of war 
to the end of the German effort to bre^k through our posi- 
tions at Ypres and seize the Channel ports, the enemy's 
offensive in the West was entirely a land offensive. But 
from November, 1914, until February, 1916, he made no 
attempt whatever on the French or British forces that looked 
like an effort to get a decision. His military effort was 
made elsewhere. But he did in the spring of 1915 begin a 
naval offensive against the Western Powers which, in his 
then ignorance, he certainly supposed would be of a very 
formidable character indeed. But the first submarine 
campaign failed largely for lack of material, and it was not 
imtil the spring of the following year that he had accumulated 
forces, both by land and sea, for seeking the decision that 
he so badly needed. In 1916 the sea offensive was thwarted 
by the threat of American intervention. The attack on 
Verdun, costly as it was in life to both sides, could not be 
continued once Sir Douglas Haig had begun the Battle of 
the Somme. It was Germany's weakness in 1916, first that 
the submarine offensive failed, and next that the sortie of 
the German Fleet and its dexterous flight from the battle- 
field of Jutland, was materially fruitless. The lact that 
Scheer had evaded destruction was undoubtedly an immense 
moral asset in keeping up German spirits both after the 
failure of Verdun and while von Falkenhayn was steadily 
giving ground on the Somme. But the battle was without 
tangible results. The enemy had merely escaped to fight 
another day — not, indeed, with his fleet, but with his sub- 
marines. 
The Real Counter Stroke 
Germany's real counter-stroke to the failure on the Somme 
was the new under-water campaign that opened in the follow- 
ing August. It was a stroke of real efficacy, and was intended 
to be a warning to Great Britain of what would happen 
when that efficacy was doubled or trebled by ruthlessness. 
It was this that pointed the .shaft of the Empetor's eirenicon. 
We were to confer or perish by blockade. The significance 
of this threat is worth emphasis. The thing that most 
strikes the naval student is the technical miscalculation which 
the threat involved. The menace of a complete and devas- 
tating blockade was so obviously a brutum fulmen, if only' 
a right defence to that ' blockade was once adopted. It 
was Germany's good luck that we retained too long a naval 
Higher Command whose prejudice against convoy seemed 
invincible. But, rightly interpreted, the true significance of 
this threat was the implicit admission, not only that military 
victory was unattainable, but that a further military offen- 
sive must defeat its own ends. And so long as any sort of 
Russian Army stood in the field the justness of this opinion 
was unquestionable. The year 1917, then, opened with the 
German military command tied down to a land defensive 
and putting all its faith in victory on the seas. 
1917 was marked by two surprises. After six months' 
passive submission to the German onslaught at sea we at 
last reformed our naval command, adopted convoy, and by 
September had reduced the submarine menace to negotiable 
proportions. Germany, therefore, saw the prospects of sea 
victory fading into a future ever more dim and remote. But 
to balance this disappointment she was suddenly relieved of 
all anxieties on the Eastern front, so that her military strength 
in the \Vest was at a stroke increased by at least 50 per cent. 
And so, just as the winter of 1916-17 had been spent in pre- 
paring for the sea offensive which was to be decisive, so the 
winter of 1917--18 was devoted to preparing for a new land 
offensive, which unexpectedly promised a road to victory. 
But again miscalculation made the effort abortive. The 
German view of the submarine campaign was distorted by 
the extravagant hopes based upon it. It was, as we all 
know, embarked upon through the definite promise of the 
professionals that it would put Great Britain out of the war 
business in, at most, six months' time, and would make 
American intervention, at any time, impossible. And, as 
if to back up this prophecy, extravagant claims were made 
from week to week and from month to month as to the 
amount of tonnage sunk. These publications were no doubt 
primarily intended by the German Admiralty for self-justifica- 
tion and for the purpose of propaganda. It seems almost ' 
certain, however, that the higher military command — which, 
it may be remembered, since Hindenbxu-g took over in 1916, 
had included the general direction of the naval forces— took 
these figures literally. It drew from them the deduction 
that the British forces must be greatly enfeebled, that our 
capacity to draw on man-power would be reduced to a 
minimum by the necessity of producing at home what we 
used to import by sea, and that the old prophecies about 
America, at least, still held good. And, believing their own 
figures, they disbelieved our statements as to tonnage 
destroyed and replaced, and discounted, as boastful and 
visionary, our forecasts of what the American shipbuilding 
effort would produce. They certainly did not realise the 
astonishing results once oiu" carrying capacity had been 
subjected to a scientific reorganisation. 
As a consequence, they started on their offensive in March 
entirely blind to all the essential of the situation. The only 
point on which they were right was the tenuity of the British 
forces actually in the line in France. But then, as the Prime 
Minister has just told us, our main reserves were at home. 
Not, of course, that they were altogether wrong in their 
conjecture as to the American strength that they might 
encounter. For, at the end of February hardly 300,000 
Americans had been landed in France, and of these little 
more than half could have belonged to fighting units. It is 
natural enough that they should have assumed — knowing 
as they did the scale of the American enlistments— that it 
was the absence of available shipping that made the English 
numbers dangerously slender and the American nhmbers 
altogether inconsiderable. Thus, though the submarine had 
