LAND 6? W'ATER 
November 7, 1918 
LAND&WATER 
5 Chancery Lane, London, fV.C.2. Tel. Htliom titS 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 191 8 
Contents 
Over the I-rfxipice (Cartoon) . . 
Leading Articles . . 
The Eni my's Crumbling Defences 
The Ai,te I- natives . . 
The Struc gle for Iron .. 
The German Internaiional Again 
The Psychology of the Turk . . 
"H.E." — A First Experience .. 
Shakespeare . . 
The Theatre 
The Reader's Diary 
The Treasures of Lille . . 
Currency Reconstruction 
Household Notes . . 
Notes on Kit 
Raemaekers 
Hilaire Belloc 
Artliur Pollen 
John Murray 
H. M. Hyndman 
Henry Morgentlu 
Martin Gilkcs 
J. C. Squire 
W. J. Turner 
Peter Bell 
G. C. \\'illiamson 
Hartley Withers 
PAGE 
I 
2 
3 
7 
9 
10 
lu 12 
14 
15 
16 
18 
20 
24 
26 
The Beginning of the End 
THE enemy fabric is cracking and breaking. The 
British have taken Valenciennes. The Americans 
are slowly eating their way through north of 
Verdun. The Italians have the Austrians on the 
run, have taken over 300,000 prisoners, and have 
seized Trieste ; the Serbians have entered Belgrade ; and 
armistices have been arranged with Turkey and Austria. 
The outer husk of the enemy coalition has been torn into 
shreds, and we are brought face to face with the kernel 
Germany — which has a smaller and harder kernel, Prussia. 
The war, in fact, is won. But, as we write, the date of its 
definite conclusion is still a matter of speculation. The 
position may be .compared to that of a game of chess. We 
have declared "mate in three moves." The Germans are 
not yet quite convinced that there is no way out of it. We 
have seen in the past that their temperament was such that 
they were not willing to take soundings with a view to a 
draw on rather favourable terms, such as they might (had 
the Allies been depressed, weak, and timid) have secured 
two years ago. We know that they are run by a caste whose 
motto, in General Bernhardi's phrase, has been "World 
Power or Downfall." It is quite possible that they are still 
in that obstinate frame of mind which refuses to accept 
defeat even when it has become inevitable and which will 
insist on a fight to the last ditch before conviction has been 
brought home to it ; in other words, to go through with the 
game until the king is checked and can move to no immune 
square. We frankly confess that we are unable to predict 
what will be Germany's attitude. There are certainly a 
great number of people there who know that the game is up ; 
there are equally certainly some people, and these people 
who in the past have had great influence, who obstinately 
shut their minds to that idea, and will want to continue the 
war even if they are driven out of France and Belgium, and 
attacked not only from the West, but from the Austro- 
Bavarian frontier. Inside Germany a struggle is raging 
between these two forces, and the pointer which will show 
which way the struggle is going is the Kaiser's crown. If 
peace is made almost at once the Kaiser, we believe, will go, . 
and with him the dominance of the Junkers ; if the German 
people accepts the inevitable, and defeat, it will have no 
further use either for the Junkers or for the Emperor. 
\ ''^ Ha psburgs 
"ally insisted on the inevit- 
Empire. It has now 
broken up ; and so finally that when the Hapsburg general 
on the Italian front agreed to an armistice he was, in reality, 
acting no longer for the Dual Empire, but merely for a dis- 
integrating combination of German-Austrians and Magyars. 
To a considerable extent the territorial arrangements of the 
Peace Congress have already been anticipated. Bosnia and 
Herzegovina have, on their own accord, declared their inten- 
tion of uniting with Serbia, now again in possession of 
Belgrade, and the adhesion of the Croatians is probably only 
a matter of days. The Czecho-Slovaks, already recognised 
by us as independent allies, have broken off their relations 
with Vienna and set up a Government of their own ; the 
destiny of the Austrian Poles and the Hungarian Rumanians 
is assured ; the Italians are in Tren* and Trieste, and will 
not quit them again ; and, for the rest, we have an inde- 
pendent Hungary (which will probably be a republic) and 
the (ierman-Austrian provinces which are now hung in the 
air. Their inclination seems to be to attach themselves to 
the German Empire ; and the German Empire, after this 
war, will in all probability be a looser confederation. The 
prospect may alarm some people. But we would point out 
(i) that most of the trouble in modern Europe has arisen 
from the frustration of national desires, (2) that the detach- 
ment of the subject Slavs from the German block has put 
an end to Germany's Eastern dreams, and (3) that Lutheran 
and militarist Prussia (witness Bismarck) has alwa3'S feared 
the adhesion of German-Austria on the ground that this 
would shift the German centre of gravity away frcm Berlin 
and produce a general "softening" of spirit and aim. We 
leave open the question whether there will survive any 
confederation at all. It is quite on the cards tkat Bavaria 
and Austria will break clean off. 
The Transition 
At this moment, owing to these momentous events, we 
are faced with what has been sensationally described as 
"The Outbreak of Peace." Suddenly operations will cease. 
Suddenly the Army, to an indefinite but, anyhow, immense 
extent, will be reduced. Suddenly the thousands of muni- 
tion factories and the three millions of munition workers will 
cease making shells, explosives, tanks, aeroplanes, and the 
thousand and one implements and instruments needed for 
the fighting services. Statesmen are faced with the obliga- 
tion of arranging the transition from war-ccnditions to peace- 
conditions, and arranging it so that it shall involve the 
minimum of inconvenience and distress to individuals and 
the minimum of loss to the community. What are they 
going to do ? We know that plans for demobilising the 
Army have been worked out exhaustively. That was done 
long ago, and we may assume that it has been done well. 
But what about the demobilisation of the munition workers, 
male and female ? What about the factories which have 
been engaged in making munitions ? What about the 
adaptation and replacement of machinery ? Has our Govern- 
ment devised any plans to meet these difficulties ? We 
have heard that it was at first proposed that munition workers 
should get a week's money and be turned on the streets. 
We have heard that a later proposal, seriously entertained, 
was that they should be given a fortnight's pay. We say 
bluntly that this is no good. We cannot have millions of 
people thrown into unemployment and waiting until room is 
found for them in industry. The essential thing is that 
there should be no interregnum of indolence during which 
people should lose their standard of life and their will to 
work. The deduction, therefore, is that — if we cannot ask 
people to go on making shells that will not be fired, and we 
must have time to convert fattories and replace machinery^ — we 
should pay unemployment insurance for a period, if necessary, 
of several months to all munition workers who are thrown out 
of work by the cessation of hostilities. And a further deduc- 
tion is that, in so far as this can be arranged, the period 
of " unemployment " should be used for training these people 
to do "peace-time work" for which there will be a demand 
in the near future. This question, we may add, will loom 
large at the General Election. 
