LAND &? WATER 
December 26, 1918 
LAND&WATER 
? Chancen Lane, London, fF.C.2. T,l. Holbcm 2818 
THURSDAY. DECEMBER 16, 1918 
Contents 
PAGE 
A Masterpiece of Vulgarity . . 
I 
Leading Articles 
2 
The Stages of Victory— II. 
Hilaire Belloc 
3 
Why the Turkish Empire Must 
BE Dissolved 
Henry Morgenthau 6 
The Freedom of the Seas 
Cjml Cox 
7 
A Remarkable Chart of the War 
\ 
8-9 
Life in Brussels 
Captain R. A. 
scott- 
ames, M.C. 
10 
The Egoist . . . . A Story by Douglas Jerrold 
12 
Rhineland : The New Front Line 
13-14 
A German Genius 
J. C. Squire 
15 
The Theatre 
W. J. Turner 
16 
The Reader's Diary 
Peter Bell 
17 
The Levy on Capital 
Hartley Withers 
18 
Aerial Motoring To-day and 
To-morrow 
H. Massac Buist 
19 
Household Notes 
20 
Notes on Kit 
24 
Marshal' Haig 
LONDON'S welcome to Marshal Haig and his 
generals showed that the British people was in 
no doubt as to the quality and scope of his and 
their achievements in the field. The popular 
welcome extended, of course, far beyond their 
persons : it was a demonstration of gratitude to the armies 
which they led and which they represent. Every man who 
fought with and under them cannot be publicly and indivi- 
dueJly thanked ; but every man can take to himself the 
cheers that were given to Haig and Plumer, Home and 
Rawlinson. But there was a personal character also in 
London's greeting. Marshal Haig has been one of the least- 
advertised Commanders-in-Chief whom the British Army has 
ever had. In the months of his greatest triumphs he was 
most conspicuously ignored by our political heads. This 
was observed by the public, which did not, whether things 
were going iU or well, consider itself competent to "form a 
judgment of the miUtary merits of individual commanders, 
but which did feel that so long as a general was deemed 
worthy to retain his command it was cruel, unjust, and 
impolite to cold-shoulder him, or give the impression of 
cold-shouldering liim. Marshal Haig has not been adver- 
tised by the politicians and the Press ; and he has not 
advertised himself. He has typified all those qualities which 
we like to think of as being the leading qualities of British 
soldiers, whatever their rank : imperturbabihty, good humour, 
cool judgment, and dogged tenacity. He was a cavalryman, 
but he was also a Scot, and a first-class man at his book and 
office work ; and the wisdom of his selection as Lord French's 
successor was never, even when he so resolutely pressed 
home his great victory, so effectively demonstrated as in 
those black weeks last spring. What was wanted then was 
not brilliant inspirations or dash, but coolness in face of a 
possible catastrophe, competence to make use of every local 
opportunity of resistance, ability to yield ground, but never 
too much ground, self-control, pertinacious work, determina- 
tion to hold on until the tide should turn. It was necessary 
that the commander should have these qualities ; it was 
equally necessary that his army should believe him to have 
those quahties ; had the army not had confidence in Marshal 
Haig, the defeat of the spring must almost infallibly have 
turned into disaster. But the Army — and an Army, after 
experience such as ours has, has an unerring "feel" for the 
character of its man — never for one moment doubted the 
competence and the tenacity of its general. It felt that in 
leaning upon him it was leaning upon a rock, And it was. 
The Air Service 
It is ramoured that Lord Weir is about to retire from his 
position at the Air Board. Attached to this rumour there 
appeared in several papers an extraordinary report that the 
Government intend to abolish the Air Service, and to transfer 
its functions to the War Office. On the face of it, this report 
was so ridiculous that not only are we unable to conceive 
any responsible Government making such a change, but we 
are unable to imagine how any responsible paper could bring 
itself to suppose that such a change could be made. All 
experience proves conclusively that operations in the air, 
like operations by land and by sea, were so important and so 
peculiar as to demand a separate department and a separate 
service. Everybody remembers how, with enormous diffi- 
culty and in the face of great obstacles, the aerial branches 
of the Army and Navy were amalgamated, and their 
administration transferred from the War Office and the 
Admiralty, and handed over to an entirely new body with 
a Cabinet Minister at the head of it. Since the Air Board 
came into existence the Service has developed a peculiar 
technique and outlook ; and it is certain that if there were 
ever another war the arguments for unity and separateness 
of aerial control would be even more forcible than before, 
and that the importance of aerial operations would far exceed 
their importance in this war. It is perfectly clear that if we 
amalgamated the Air Board with the War Office, the next 
step would be to set up a new Naval Air Service, and the 
next, if and when some emergency arose which demanded 
efficient and coherent action, a new amalgamation would take 
place, and some new Lord Weir would be once more put at 
the head of a new department. The Royal Air Force will 
remain, and the Air Board will remain, the only question 
that remains unsolved is who spread about this astonishing 
report, and for what purposes he, or they, flew this kite ? 
For a kite of some sort it must be, and there must be some 
sort of after-thought behind it ; no journalist would have 
thought of inventing anything so grotesque. 
Drugs 
Since the " Billie Carleton " case the newspapers have been 
flooded with "drug cases," and with articles on the delights 
and dangers of opium, morphia, cocaine, heroin,, and more 
recondite drugs of which we confess we were previously only 
dimly aware. It seems certain that the drug traffic, and the 
luxurious, as apart from the medicinal, consumption of dnigs, 
are far more widespread than most of us had imagined. It 
was certainly news to us that Englishwomen from the West 
End had been known to resort to Cliinese opium dens in 
Limehouse ; we had read of such things in "shockers," and 
assumed that they sprang from the hectic imaginations of 
novelists. Everything possible should be done to stamp out 
this vice. But we confess that we see no signs as yet of its 
being checked by measures publicly taken. The long and 
intimate newspaper articles on the sensations of drug-takers 
— their imaginative exaltations, their sensual experiences, 
their intellectual excitements — seem' to us more likely to 
turn bored weakhngs into drug-taking than to cure "victims. " 
It is true that they are always coupled with descriptions of 
madness and terrible death resulting in indulgence ; but every 
drug-taker knows about this, and those who have not taken 
drugs are apt to think that they themselves might escape 
the penalties of over-indulgence ^nd that the risk is worth 
it if they can get the visions and pleasures so alluringly 
unfolded by the penny-a-liners. We are sure that these 
pleasures are exaggerated ; in any case they ought not to 
be described in newspapers. Equally to blame are the 
magistrates who impose ridiculous sentences on the harpies 
who trade on their fellows' weaknesses ; only last week a 
woman got one month for possessing packets of cocaine which 
she obviously intended to dispose of. The penalties ought 
to be so large — large penalties will always check cold-blooded 
crime — that no one but a semi-lunatic will think it worth 
while to sell these drags even at £20 an ounce. If men can 
make £1,000 a year and spend only a month a year in gaol, 
men will certainly go on selling cocaine. 
