LAND &> WATER 
October 24, 1918 
What is Victory?: By Arthur Pollen 
In this article Mr. Pollen analyses the nature as ivell as the results of victory, and 
proves, by historical parallels, that justice is the only foundation of a durable peace. 
1HAVE been asked to explain what is meant by the 
word victory. It n a matter on which it is highly 
important that we should have clear and precise ideas. 
War took all the Allies, but especially ourselves, by 
surprise. We fought because in honour bound to 
resent the attack on Belgium and<had this motive been lack- 
ing, we should have had to fight in self-defence. We 
fought without premeditation, without preparation, un- 
ready mentally, militarily, navally. Nor in fighting did we 
define our purpose more closely than to say, that the injury 
to Belgium should be made good and the military power of 
Prussia — the true and only begetter of this hateful tragedy 
— should once and for all bo ended. And now, when after 
marty vicissitudes, the Allies have victory in sight, the plain 
character of the war's ending is to many almost as great a 
surprise as the thunderclap of 1914. But there must be 
an interval between the certainty of victory and its achieve- 
ment, and we shall do well to spend it in making plain to 
ourselves and to those who arc 
to speak for us, what we intend 
our victory to mean. 
Definitions 
Let us proceed from simple defi- 
nitions of "war," "victory" ind 
"peace." 
1. War. War is a condition 
which follows, when between 
peoples . there is a conflict of 
national wills, so bitter that no 
solution bj' an appeal to justice 
or reason is possible ; when 
therefore the conflict inevitably parses to the arbitrament of 
force. 
2. Force. Force ^means opposed armies on land and 
navies at sea. They operate against each other by battle, 
and against both each other and the enemy's entire polity, by 
siege. The object of battle is to reduce and annihilate the 
enemy's force by kilHng his men, destroying his material 
and sinking his ships. The object of siege is to hamper and 
straiten the enemy nation, to make civil and miUtary supply 
difficult, .so that 'Ultimately the country and its armed forces 
are incapable of effective action. 
3. Victory. When the armies and navies of one side 
suffer complete defeat or, fearing annihilation, have to with- 
draw from the field, so that resistance— hitherto maintained 
in the hope either that the enemy will weaken or that some 
reinforcement will come — is at last recognised as futile, then 
the complete and final paralysis of national life becomes 
imminent, and the woi-Sted natiop has no choice but to sur- 
render. When this occurs the stronger side has achieved 
the victory. 
4. The Purpose of War. By victory the fighting men 
have achieved what their country has entrusted them to 
do. The conflict of wills has issued in the will of one side 
being triumphant, and hence enforceable. It then becomes 
the province of the statesman to translate the victorious 
will into action. This is the peace, or treaty, or settlement, 
that follows from the war. Thus, it has been said that the 
purpose of war to the soldier is victory, and to the statesman 
peace. 
5. Peace. If war is an irreconcilable conflict of wills, 
peace should mean the negation of this, that is, a recon- 
ciliation of wills. The ideal peace is then not merely a state 
of non-war, but a condition in which no originating cause 
of war exists. 
6. Justice. Clearly then, if we are to put victory to 
its right use, victory in action should produce, a peace that 
results in all parties, victors as well as vanquished, agreeing 
that the settlement conforms to something permanent and 
universal in all human wills. If it does not so conform, 
then the' peace that follows is not peace at all, but latent 
war. I This element pre-eminent in the human soul and com- 
mon to all human souls is the sense of jus'tice. 
7. . Security. The test of peace then, is not that the will 
of the stronger side is made effective after war, but that its 
provisions are universally and always recognised as just. 
Unless this condition is ensured the chief concHtion of peace 
must be lacking, and that is security. 
The Purpose of War to 
the Soldier is VICTORY 
— to the Statesman — 
PEACE. 
Is an Ideal Peace Conceivable .'' 
With these definitions before us, let us proceed to the case 
in hand. We are at once faced with this question. Has 
war ever ended in a peace which both belligerents agreed 
was right ? If victory is the triumph of one of two con- 
flicting wills, is a reconcihation of these conflicting wills ever 
conceivable ? Is it not indeed almost inevitable that the 
victor must impose his will, so that, though force has failed 
the vanquished, though superior force has constrained his 
action into submission, must not his will remain in perpetual 
conflict ? Does it not follow, from the bare meaning of the 
word victory, that the conquered's submission is unwilling, 
and hence that for active revolt the conqueror has only 
substituted hatred and the determination to revolt at the 
earliest opportunity ? Must it not then almost follow from 
war that the peace is that contradiction in terms, a "bad" 
peace ? The best reply to these questions is to show that 
in history, and in quite recent 
history, there are cases of wars 
that have ended in a bad peace 
and others that have ended in a 
good peace. And if we are to dis- 
tinguish these, we must go behind 
the peace and inquire into the 
nature of the will conflict that 
produced the war. • 
Take three salient cases. The 
Civil War in America ; the Franco- 
German war of 1870 ; and the 
South African war at the end of 
the 19th centurj'. In 1870 both 
Germany and France were origin- 
ally wrong. Before the Civil War the Southern States 
were egregiously in the wrong. Before the South African 
war there was a situation intolerable to the non-Boer 
elements in the Boer repubhcs, which was intoleranth- 
maintained, and the remedies lor this situation wen- 
ignorantly conceived, and unsympathetically propounded, 
and menacingly proposed. In a measiire, then, both 
sides were in the wrong here too. Now if in a war both 
sides are originally in the wrong, it must be unthinkable 
that the war can end with both agreeing that one is righj. 
And if one is right and the other wrong and the latter w-ins, 
wrong adfriittedly prevails. If one is right and the other 
wrong and the first wins, then indeed what is right may 
prevail. But such are the resentments and passions that 
war produces, and so great is the temptation and oppor- 
tunity for wrongdoing which victory bestows, that the side 
originally in the right may be tempted into wrong action 
when the war is over. War indeed may reverse the moral 
relations, so that- the conquered, originally in the wrong, 
may be left rightly irreconcilable, because victory inflicts 
intolerable injustice upon him. 
Settlements Bad and Good 
Now if we take the three wars that I have quoted and look 
at them in the light of their ultunate results, we shall surely 
agree that the Treaty of Versailles was a bad peace, because 
whether France was right or wrong before the war, that 
treaty left her the victim of an unconscionable spoliation. 
Forty years after the war was over, every Frenchman and 
every impartial person of other nations, still felt that act of 
oppression to be an outrage on the world's sense of justice. 
Take next the North and South War. It would be hard now 
to defend all the measures that the victorious side took 
when the war was over. But to-day, just as there is no sane 
Englishman that does not rejoice that George Washington 
defeated George the Third, so there is no sane man in the 
former rebel States who, so far from being rrierely recon- 
ciled to the issue of the Civil War, does not heartily rej'oice 
that Northern arms prevailed. In the Boer war we get a 
more striking instance still. If you could find a man with 
an intimate knowledge of South Africa up to the invasion 
of Natal, but ignorant of all subsequent events there until 
the invasion of Belgium, and explained to him how the 
Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Cape Colony and Natal 
were now all united as a confederated Union under a single 
government, of which the Boer Commander-in-Chief was the 
