8 
LAND 6? WATER 
October 24, 1918 
in insisting upon its condemnation and punishment and on 
reparation for the evils it lias done, we sliould liave with 
us, as on no other matter, the support of all the world. Here 
at least there can be no question but that the maxim of 
St. Vincent will apply. 
The German Colonies 
The German colonies cannot be restored for three reasons. 
First, the whole of their colonial enterprise lias been a moral 
enormity. Tlie Germans have but one method in treating 
natives. It is the method they have exhibited nearer homo in 
the treatment of Belgium anil conquered France. To those 
who doubt this I would commend the study of that admirable 
volume, \-()n Hiigel's The Gervlan Soul. It is the work of 
one who knows tlie German intimately and treats him with 
an insight that is as sympathetic as it is severe. Colonial 
enterprise has more than anything fostered the bmtality 
to which Germans are prone. Von Hiigel dissects and 
analyses th s tendency with the precision of a demonstrator 
in physics. His case is completed by this extraordinary 
incident. "Not a decade ago," he says, "at a centenary 
celebration connected with the town and university of Heidel- 
berg, one of the scenes enacted, which symbolised German 
colonial rule, began with German colonial officials in tropical 
costumes bastinadoing their native subjects, and ended with 
these same officials stringing up on trees these same coloured 
men." 
The next reason against the restoration of the colonies is 
that the Germans have been as bad neighbours in Africa 
as in Europe. Thev have introduced there exactly the 
element which the United States in the days of Munroe 
resolved should never disturb either of the American con- 
tinents. And it is a final point that, just as the German 
colonies have been made starting points of treason and 
rebellion in neighbouring states, so their seaports might in 
future be made available for outrages at sea. The security 
of the world's trade demands that this opportunity, like the 
possession of submarines, should not be given. 
The Future of the Submarine 
There is, lastly, a question that affects the future of all 
sea war, and that is : what rules, if any, can be made to 
secure a tolerable use of the submarine in future times ? 
As my readers know, I have for three years maintained that 
the simplest solution of all would be for the great Powers 
to declare the submarine contraband of humanity, to forbid 
its manufacture in their own countries, to see to it that it is 
not manufactured in any of the late enemy countries, and 
to threaten any country that attempted to contravene this 
regulation with a ruthless boycott. There can be no practical 
difficulty in the elimination of the submarine if Great Britain, 
the United States, F"rance, Italy, and Japan agreed to make 
it effective. Had this been proposed by Great Britain 
before the war it might have been objected to on the ground 
that the nation with the strongest surface fleet had the 
greatest motive for abolishing that form of naval force that 
threatened to drive the surface fleet into obsolescence. But 
war has fortunately proved that for practical purposes the 
submarine has not affected surface warfare materially. As 
an instrument in battle, or as an instrument to be used 
against the principal battle units, it has failed almost com- 
pletely. But the most conspicuous of its disappointments 
is, as wc have so often seen, its total inability to prevent 
invasion b}' a power possessing superiority of surface craft. 
It has lost, that is to say, the one role universally assigned 
to it in pre-war days — that of being a cheap substitute for 
navies for weak Powers. The argument is familiar, and 
need not now be developed at length. 
But if there is any reluctance to accept it as conclusive, 
then at least restitution for all damage done by submarine 
should be established for all times as a law of future wars. 
It is possible that, if it is once clearly understood that the 
civilised community will insist upon the replacement of every 
ship and every cargo that the submarine destroys, that there 
may be some hesitation -in employing it in an outrageous 
manner. 
It cannot be too strongly emphasised that in the forth- 
corrting peace discussions the conduct of sea war will be 
among the most debated of all matters. There are many 
in England who are prepared to abandon the right of search, 
and to accept those principles loosely associated with the 
phrase, the freedom of the seas. The fallacies underlying 
this discussion are many, and this is not the time to expose 
them. But from one observation I cannot forebear. In 
the wars in which the sea riglits of Britain were the most 
relentlessly asserted, the sea service of the world suffered 
not at all. Few of the prizes that were taken or lost were 
destroyed. Neutrals during war had every facility for 
trading with the most powerful of the sea belligerents, and, 
when war was ended, the total sum of the world's tonnage 
was vastly greater than at its beginning. It is the new 
and not the old principles of war that have produced the 
present lamentable state of things. 
Mr. Pollen will continue in our next issue his analysis of the 
results of peace on the future of sea war. 
Soldiers of Fortune: By J. O. P. Bland 
" "W~^Lf/S ga change, plus c'est la mime chose " is a saying 
g ^^ probably more generally true of China than of any 
m other country, for the reason that the nation's 
^ characteristics have become rigidly fixed by long 
centuries of self-centred isolation and the unbroken 
continuity of the Confucian system. Nevertheless, in the 
application of philosophic thought to human affairs, it is 
also true that out of the East we may always expect some- 
thing new. The latest phases of the eternal struggle for 
place and power that absorb the activities of the intellectual 
bureaucracy of China revea' the growth of a type of mili- 
tarism which no other race could possibly have invented 
or endured. This new system of arts and crafts, whereby 
the profession of arms has been made not only extremely 
lucrative but also practically devoid of personal danger for 
those who practise it, could only have been evolved and 
applied by the genius of a passive Oriental people, steeped 
in those traditions which combine deep reverence for wealth 
with an instinctive shrinking from personal violence. It is 
true that the rudiments of this philoso])hic conception of 
militarism have been known and practised at intervals by 
exceptional minds throughout the course of China's historj-, 
and, even in our own days (as witness the military career 
of that pre-eminent mandarin, the late Li Hung-chang), 
but there has never been in the past anything to equal the 
recently developed scientific combination of non-combatant 
militarism with the best principles of modern high finance. 
Two factors have chiefly conduced to the evolution of a new 
and very interesting species of mandarin, viz., the Repub- 
lican military millionaire : these are, firstly, the lack of any 
effective central authority at Peking possessed of the requisite 
sanction of public opinion ; secondly, the gradual recogni- 
tion by the leaders of the "military" faction of the fact 
that it is possible to feed and finance troops by means of loans 
from abroad when, through sheer lack of material, the plun- 
dering of native cities has ceased to be remunerative. 
For those who look to the League of Nations to establish 
permanent peace on this planet, and to make a regenerate 
world "safe. for democracj'," there is food for serious thought 
in the methods by which the military governors (Tuchuns), 
who now control the destinies of China, are making life and 
property imsafe, in the sacred name of democracy, for a 
quarter of the human race. Remembering what happened 
at Peking in 1900, one wonders by what machinery of com- 
pulsion or persuasion the League would proceed to the 
restoration of law and order in Cathay ? 
The Passing of Yuan Shih-k'ai 
Before we come to consider the ingenious devices by 
which the Tuchuns and a handful of professional politicians 
are systematically exploiting the country, it may be well to 
review briefly the causes which have provided them with 
the opportunity of so doing. When, in 1911, the benevolent 
despotism of the Manchu dynasty collapsed as the result 
of its own internal decay, and of the popular unrest cre&ted 
by foreign aggression, the Government of the country passed 
into the hands of the Intellectuals of the Young China party, 
as ripe fruit falls from a tree, simply because the old bureau- 
cracy became completely disorganised by the very suddenness 
of the crisis, and because Sun Yat-sen and his followers 
represented the only political force possessing any cohesion 
