LAND &? WATER 
October 31, 1918 
LAND&WATER 
5 Chancery Lane, London, IV. C. 2. Ttl. H,lb,rnz%ii 
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 19 18 
Contents 
page 
The End of the Dance (Cartoon) 
Raemaekers 
I 
Leading Articles 
2 
The Meaning of a Lull . . 
Hilaire Belloc 
3 
The Definition of Victory 
Hilaire Belloc 
5 
What is Victory ? — II 
Xrthur Pollen 
9 
Austria in Extremis 
R.W. Seton-Watson 
ir 
The War Scare of 1875 
Winifred Stephens 
12 
The Glories of Bruges . . 
G. C. Williamson 
14 
Looking Backward 
J. C. Squire 
It. 
With a Motor Convoy in German 
East Africa 
I. M. B. 
17 
The Theatre : Macbeth 
W. J. Turner 
20 
The Reader's Diary 
Peter Bell 
22 
Protecting the Investor 
Hartley Withers 
24 
Household Notes 
26 
Notes on Kit 
28 
The Deforincd Transformed 
EVENTS are moving so swiftly that it is impossible 
for a weekly paper to hope to keep up with them. 
As we write, the blows of Marshal Foch seem to 
have brought Germany almost to her knees. A 
remarkably humble note has gone to Washington 
requesting the Allies to formulate their conditions for an 
armistice — a task for Marshals Foch and Haig, Admirals 
Beatty and Wemyss ; and Ludendorff, who has been for 
four years the brain of the German Army, has retired. 
Ludendorff is reputed to have been a very politically inclined 
soldier, and his departure is taken to signify the victory of 
the civil over the military authority. This victory is pro- 
claimed in terms by Dr. Solf, who declares that the German 
constitution is being revolutionised, and that the Reichstag 
will in future have supreme control. We may hope that 
this is so. But, in the first place, we must observe that 
Dr. Solf is Dr. Solf, a man who has been a faithful minister 
of the old regime during and before the war, and that we 
shall have more confidence in new German measures when 
they are announced by new German men. And, in the 
s'econd place, we must remember that merely principles and 
not machinery are as yet before us. Even constitutional 
machinery will be of little avail unless the power of the 
military caste is first broken ; we know that the Reichstag 
fias always had the right of refusing war credits, but we 
know what would have happened if it had refused them. 
We sincerely hope that the change has come. It means the 
end of Europe's bloodshed and misery, and sooner or later 
come it must. But it has always been held that in the last 
resort the Junkers might try to save their skins by a 
camoufl ge constitutionalism, coupled with " tempting " 
peace offers, and even at this last moment we_can^ afford 
to assume nothing. No promises from Germany, no obvious 
reforms, are sufficient to ensure the peace we want if Germany 
retains her power in the field and (consequently) an element 
of bargaining enters into the negotiations. The indispensable 
preliminary to talk is, as President Wilson has laid it down, 
an armistice under such conditions that the power of the 
Allied armies to dominate the enemy, and finally destroy 
the power and the prestige of the Prussian Army, should 
remain unimpaired. 
The Break Up 
Small and great events indicate how certain'^ it is that, 
unless we allow the cup to be dashed from our lips, we have 
now won the war and all our aims in the war. The neutral 
countries bordering on Germany, released from the tension 
of fear, are demonstrating their conviction that she is doomed ; 
and Denmark has gone so far as to send a note demanding 
that the question of her stgjen northern Schleswig should 
be reopened. And Austria, in a desperate note to Wilson, 
announces in so many words that she is willing to make a 
separate peace. If we gave an account of the negotiations 
it would be stale by the time these notes appear. But 
there is one thing that should remain immutable, and that is 
our terms. It is extremely unfortunate that the Allied 
Governments after four years have not been able to formulate 
publicly proposals of which almost the last "t" should have 
been crossed. Our default has left Austria an opening to make 
proposals herself, and there will be some who will support 
a process of haggling. But, as we have said here 50 often 
before, there is not room for much of it unless we are to 
trample upon the principles for which we have stood. We 
are solemnly pledged to the independence of Czecho-Slovakia 
and Jugo-Slavia ; we cannot but insist on the redemption of 
Italian Irridenta, Austrian Poland, and Hungarian Rumania ; 
and little remains save the delimitation of frontiers and, 
presumably, discussion over commercial access to the sea. 
Happily every day sees some doubtful element in the situa- 
tion cleared up owing to the action of the central nation- 
alities themselves. Czechs, Southern Slavs, and Poles have 
all set up national authorities in. their respective "capital " 
towns ; the Ruthenians (who may be expected to join the 
Ukrainian State) have done the same thing in Lemberg ; and 
even the German Austrians, with their old supremacy gone 
and an insolent Hungary on Iheir flank, are talking of ad- 
mission into the German Confederation. The puppet Carl 
may already be in hiding. The Dual Empire has ended ; 
what remains is a truncated but compact kingdom of 
Hungary and a Duchy (or Empire, if the Hapsburgs still 
prefer the name) of Austria. The proudest dynasty in 
Europe has gone under because of its own long blindness, 
bigotry, and cruelty, and because European nations cannot 
indefinitely be kept in subjection. 
Influenza 
We do not wish to be scaremongers about influenza. Bad 
epidemics have been known before ; as far back as the 
eighteenth century a British fleet, watching the French 
coast, had to come home because almost its whole personnel 
was down with the disease. In our own time, although 
no one would deduce it from the papers, heavy death- 
rolls have not been unknown ; and the general pseudo- 
contempt for it only existed because it was so often mild, 
and because the border-line between it and an ordinary 
cold was so indefinite to most people's eyes and so often 
ignored. When London papers come out with headlines 
about "The Plague- Wave," they are guilty of monstrous 
exaggeration, and of exaggeration so deleterious in its effect 
upon the public mind at a time of national crisis, that we 
are tempted to wish that we could drop a few journalists 
into the Black Death or the Plague of London. It has not 
yet come to the dead-cart, the bell, the crier, and the red 
cross on the threshold. The problem is a serious one, never- 
theless. No one can understand how influenza disseminates 
itself so rapidly over the world ; it has no obvious connection 
with soil or climate ; and it is seriously suggested by the 
Times that its deadlier grip on us now is due to the depressing 
effects of four years nerve strain — one more argument against 
war, the worst of human scourges. The public was relieved 
to hear that the Local Government Board had summoned a 
special conference to discuss the disease. But we cannot 
help reflecting that in a well-organised country the necessary 
research would have been done years ago. We have spent 
time and money investigating the maladies of the West 
Indies and Nigeria ; but as for influenza it was a British 
disease and nobody's job. The next time anyone publicly 
opposes or obstructs the formation of a Ministry of Health 
—we leave open the question as to whether actual research 
should be done there or in an allied department feeding it 
with results — -we trust he will be howled down. 
