Chapter Two.

Our Invincible Navy.

It is the brightest and most encouraging feature of the War that British supremacy at sea is unchallenged and probably unchallengeable by Germany.

It is true that the main German Fleet has not yet dared to give battle in the open sea, and that the endeavours of scattered units afloat have met with speedy disaster. It is no less true that should the “High Canal Admiral” venture forth from the secluded shelters in which the Imperial German Navy has for so many months concealed itself, its prospects of dealing a successful blow at the maritime might of Britain are exceedingly slender.

None the less, it is incredible that, sooner or later, the German Navy will fail to attempt what German writers are fond of describing as a “Hussar Stroke.” We can contemplate that issue—and we know our sailors do so—with every confidence. In every single particular—in ships, in men, in moral, and in traditions—the British Navy is superior to that of Germany. Even without the powerful help we should receive from our French and Italian Allies, British control over the ocean highways is supreme.

A Radical journal, which for years past has been conspicuous for its laudation of everything German, has lately tried to make our flesh creep with tales of the mounting in German warships of a monster gun—said to be of 17-inch calibre—which was so utterly to outrange anything we possess as to render our control of the North Sea doubtful and shadowy.

It is strange to find a journal which, before the War, was one of the chief asserters of the peaceful intentions of Germany thus passing into the ranks of the “scaremongers.” When the late Lord Roberts ventured, before the War, to point out the dangers which lay before us, he was denounced as an “alarmist.” Yet on the very doubtful supposition that a single shell which fell into Dunkirk was a 17-inch missile the Daily News has built up a “scare” article worthy only of a race of panic-mongers, and full of false premisses and false deductions from the first line to the last. Such are the changed views brought about by changed circumstances!

But even supposing that the Germans actually possess a 17-inch naval gun, is the Daily News content to assume that the Admiralty and the Government are not fully aware of the fact and that they have taken no steps whatever to meet the new danger? It is a literal fact that we have always been an inch or two ahead of Germany in the calibre of our biggest guns—the history of the Dreadnought fully proves that—and it is incredible that we should suddenly be caught napping in a matter on which we have led the world. I leave out of consideration the purely technical question as to whether such guns could by any possibility be fitted to ships designed and partly constructed to take smaller weapons; experts say that such a change would be impossible without what would amount to practical reconstruction.

Putting these considerations on one side, is the record of our naval service such as to justify us in assuming that they know less than they have always known of the plans and intentions of the enemy?

Mr Balfour’s reply on the subject was plain and categorical; the naval authorities know nothing of any such weapon, and do not believe that it exists. In all probability we shall be quite safe in accepting their estimate of the situation, and whatever the facts may be the Navy may be trusted to deal with new penis as they arise. After all, a Navy is not merely so many ships and so many men armed with so many guns of such and such a size. That is a fact which, however imperfectly it is appreciated in Germany, is well known here. Tradition and moral count even more afloat than ashore; we possess both. A Navy whose chief achievements have been the drowning of helpless non-combatants in the infamous submarine campaign may hardly be said to possess either.

For many months now the German flag has vanished from the ocean highways of the world. For many months British commerce has peacefully pursued its pathways to the uttermost ends of the earth.

There have been times when the depredations of German raiders, such as the “Emden,” caused some inconvenience and considerable loss. There have been times when the submarine campaign has apparently had a great measure of success. But though many ships, with their cargoes and with many innocent lives, have been sunk, nothing which the German pirates could do was sufficient seriously to threaten our overseas trade. Very soon the marauders were rounded up and destroyed, and in a space of time which, before the War, would have been deemed incredible the seas were practically free for the passage of the ships of the Allies.

In the early days of the War many good judges believed that the German commerce raiders would have been as effective against our overseas trade as were the French privateers in the days of the Napoleonic wars. Certain it is that it was the universal expectation that our losses in mercantile tonnage would have been far more grievous than has proved to be the case.

We see now that this expectation was unduly alarmist. But it was entertained not merely by amateur students of war, but by many of the sailors who have given a lifetime of thought to the problems of warfare at sea. Every lesson that could be drawn from history suggested that the life of the German raiders would have been far longer than actually proved to be the case. Those lessons, however, were learned in the days when the war fleets were composed of great sailing vessels which could keep the sea far longer without fresh supplies than is possible to-day. Cut off from any possible sources of regular supplies of food, coal, and ammunition, the few German ships which remained at liberty when war broke out were quickly hunted down by superior forces and destroyed until, a very few months after the outbreak of war, Germany’s strength afloat was closely confined to the Baltic and a very small portion of the North Sea.

Nothing like the achievements of the British Navy has ever been witnessed in the history of war. Not even the most enthusiastic believer in sea power could have dreamed of such brilliant and striking successes; not even the most enthusiastic admirer of the British Navy could, in his most sanguine moments, have expected such results as have been attained.

When we come to think of the expanse of ocean to be covered, the services which the British Navy has rendered to civilisation will be seen to be stupendous. Not merely have all the German ships which were at liberty outside the North Sea and the Baltic been hunted down and destroyed, but the Grand Fleet, the darling of the Kaiser’s heart, the object upon which millions have been poured out like water with the express purpose of crushing Britain, has been penned up in the narrowest of quarters, and from every strategical point of view has been reduced to practical impotence. True, it succeeded, under cover of fog and darkness, in sending a squadron of fast ships to bombard undefended Scarborough, where its gallant efforts resulted in the killing and wounding of some hundreds of women, children, and other non-combatants who, had we been fighting a civilised foe, would have been perfectly safe from harm. But a repetition of the attempt at this dastardly crime led to such condign punishment that the effort has never been repeated, and from that day to this German excursions at sea, so far, at least, as British waters are concerned, have been confined to the occasional appearance of stray torpedo craft and the campaign of submarine piracy and murder which has left upon the name of the German Navy a stigma which it will take centuries to eradicate.

With the one solitary exception of the unequal fight off Coronel, where the “Good Hope” and “Monmouth” were destroyed by the greatly superior squadron of Von Spee, the Germans have uniformly had the worse of any sea fighting which they ventured to undertake. Even the Baltic, in which they fondly imagined they had undisputed supremacy, has been rendered more than “unhealthy” by the activities of British submarines—so unhealthy, in fact, that the German attack upon the Gulf of Riga, which was to have led to the crushing of the Russian right wing and the advance upon Petrograd, ended in a dismal failure and the precipitate flight of the attackers. That they will be any more successful in the future is practically unthinkable. Stronger, both relatively and actually, than before the War, the British Navy calmly awaits “the day,” hoping it may soon come, when the Germans will stake their existence upon a last desperate effort to challenge that mastery of the sea the hope of which must be slipping for ever from their grasp.

It is only necessary to say a few words about the atrocious policy of submarine “frightfulness” which culminated in the sinking of the “Lusitania” and the deliberate sacrifice of the lives of some 1,200 innocent people who had nothing whatever to do with the War. That policy, the deluded German people were solemnly assured, was to bring Britain to her knees by cutting off supplies of food and raw material, and starving her into submission. It is worth noting in this connection that the Germans to-day are calling upon heaven and earth to punish the brutal English for attempting to “starve the German people” by a perfectly legitimate blockade carried out in strict accordance with the rules of international law. We heard nothing of the iniquities of the “starvation” policy as long as the Germans hoped to be able to apply it to us in the same way that they applied it to Paris during the war of 1870-71; it was only when they realised that the submarine policy had failed that they began the desperate series of appeals, directed especially to the United States, that they were being unfairly treated owing to Britain refusing to allow them the “freedom of the seas”—in other words, refusing to sit idly by while Germany obtained from the United States and elsewhere the food and munitions of which she stood, and stands, in such desperate need.

As a matter of fact, the German submarine campaign has not even succeeded in reducing appreciably the strength of the British mercantile marine.

Despite our losses, our mercantile marine is to-day, thanks to new building and purchases, but little weaker than when war broke out, while, so far as we can judge, the submarine campaign has failed to contribute in the slightest degree to the rise in food values which has imposed so great a burden upon large classes of people in our country. It has been in fact, a complete and absolute failure. It has cost us, it is true, many valuable vessels and many valuable lives, but as a means to ending the War it has achieved practically nothing. The policy of terrifying by murder has prospered no more afloat than it did ashore, while outside the ranks of the combatants it has done nothing but earn for Germany the contempt of the whole civilised world, to bring Germany within an ace of war with the United States, and to brand the German Navy and the entire German nation with an indelible stain of blood and crime.

The submarine policy was a policy which could have been justified only by complete success. It may suit the German Press, led by the nose by the Government, to tell the German people that hated England was being rapidly subdued by the efforts of the “heroic” murderers commanding the German U-boats. We know differently.

We have the authority of Mr Balfour for saying that the German losses in submarines have been “formidable,” and it has been stated—and not contradicted—in the House of Commons that no fewer than fifty of these assassins of the sea have met the fate which their infamy richly deserved. Unofficial estimates have put the number even higher. We shall not know the exact facts until after the War, but we know at least that the German people have at length awakened to an uneasy realisation of the fact that they have murdered in vain, and that they have covered themselves with undying infamy to no real purpose.

I do not suppose that knowledge sits very hardly upon their consciences; but even in Germany there must be people who are beginning to wonder what judgment the civilised world will pass upon them in the future, and how they are ever to hold up their heads again among civilised nations. And not even a German can remain perpetually indifferent to the judgment of the civilised world.

By every means which ingenuity could devise and daring seamanship could carry into execution Germany’s submarines have been chased, harried, and sunk, until, as we are informed upon reliable authority, the chiefs of the German Navy are finding it increasingly difficult to find and train submarine crews. And small wonder! No one questions the bravery of the German sailor, whatever we may think of his humanity. But, also, he is human, and not the superhuman being which the Germans imagine themselves to be. And when he sees, week after week and month after month, submarine after submarine venturing forth into the waters of the North Sea only to be mysteriously swallowed up in the void, one can understand that he shrinks appalled from a prospect sufficient to shake the nerves of men who, whatever their other qualities may be, have not been bred for hundreds of years to the traditions and the dangers of the sea. Small wonder that they quail from the unknown fate which for ever threatens them! Many sally forth never to return; others, more fortunate, on reaching home have a tale to tell which, losing nothing in the telling, is not of a nature to encourage their fellows.

It is said that a single voyage in a German submarine is enough so seriously to try the nerves of officers and men that they need a prolonged rest before they are ready to resume their duties. Imagine the conditions under which they live! Hunted day and night by the relentless British destroyers, faced ever by strange and unfamiliar perils and by traps of which they know nothing, it is hardly a matter of surprise if their nerves give way.

The War has given us the most wonderful example the world has ever seen of what sea power means. Thanks to their undisputed command of the ocean, the Allies have been able to carry on operations in widely separated theatres practically free from any of the difficulties which would certainly have proved insurmountable in the presence of strong hostile forces afloat. We and our Allies have been able to transport men and munitions wherever we wished without serious hindrance, and even in the presence of hostile submarines we have only lost two or three transports in eighteen months of war. That, it must be admitted, is a very wonderful record.

Even the tragic blunder of the Dardanelles gave us a striking instance of what sea power can effect. We were able, thanks to the Navy, not merely to land huge forces in the face of the enemy, but we were able also to re-embark them without loss under circumstances which, by all the laws of war, should have meant an appalling list of casualties. There can be no doubt whatever that had the re-embarking troops on the Gallipoli Pensinsula tried to reach their ships without having firm command of the sea, not more than a very small percentage of them would have survived.

In considering the bearings of naval power to the great struggle as a whole, we must always keep in mind what the Germans expected and hoped when they declared war. We know, of course, that they did not expect Britain to enter the War. But at the same time they must have realised that there was a possibility of our doing so, and they had formulated a plan of campaign to meet such a contingency. We know pretty well what that campaign was. The German theory has been put into practice since; unfortunately for the Germans, it has not worked out quite in accordance with the text-books. They declared for the “war of attrition”; their idea was that, by submarine attacks, the British Fleet could be so whittled down that at length the German main Fleet would be able to meet it with reasonable prospects of success. Their Fleet, while the process of attrition was going on, was to remain sheltered in the unreachable fastnesses of the Kiel Canal. The latter, however, is the only part of the German programme which has gone according to the book.

The “High Canal Fleet” remains in the “last ditch,” and apparently, at the time of writing, seems likely to remain there. But the process of attrition has not made the progress the Germans hoped for. It is true we have lost a number of ships through submarine attacks. But it will not be overlooked by the Germans any more than by ourselves that the greater part of our losses was sustained in the early days of the submarine campaign. As soon as the Navy “got busy” with the submarine pest our losses practically ceased, and it is now a long time since we have lost a fighting unit through torpedo attack. As is usual with the Navy, our men set themselves to grapple with unfamiliar conditions, and their success has been very striking. Not only have they been able to protect themselves against submarine attack, but they have made the home seas, at any rate, too hot to hold the pirates, dozens of which have been destroyed or captured. And when the submarine war was transferred to the Mediterranean it was not very long before the Navy again had the menace well in hand. In the meantime our building programme was pushed forward at such a rate that a very large number of ships of the most powerful class have been added to the fighting units of the Fleet, with the result that not merely relatively to the Fleet of Germany, but actually in point of ships, men, and guns, our Fleet to-day is stronger than it was when war broke out. That, again, is an achievement wholly without parallel. And it is one of the chief factors in considering the future of the campaign. The Germans have never been able to rival us in speed of construction even in times of peace; it is in the last degree unlikely that they have been able to do so under the conditions that have prevailed during the past eighteen months. I have not the least doubt that we are fully justified in assuming that our final victory at sea is assured—if, indeed, it is not practically won already. The conditions are plain for everyone, both at home and abroad, to see for himself, and we have plenty of evidence to suggest that they are fully appreciated in Germany; the idle quays of Hamburg, the idle fleets of German merchant ships rotting in the shelter of neutral ports, the peaceful progress of the ships of the Allies over the seas of the world, and the growing stringency of conditions in Germany brought about by the British blockade are quite sufficient evidence for those Germans—and their number is growing—who are no longer blinded by the national megalomania.

Our Navy is a silent service; it would perhaps be better for us if at times it were a little more vocal. For there is no disguising the fact that there is a body of impatient grumblers at home who, because we do not read of a great sea victory every morning with our breakfasts, are apt to ask what the Navy is doing. We can be quite sure that that question is not asked in Germany. There, at any rate, the answer is plain.

We can discount, I am sure, the tales we hear of Germany starving, and that the horrors of Paris in 1870 are being repeated. That story is no doubt diligently spread abroad by the Germans themselves in the hope of appealing to the sentiment, or rather the sentimentality, of certain classes in the neutral nations. At the same time, we cannot shut our eyes to the growing mass of evidence which goes to show that the stringency of the British blockade is producing a great and increasing effect throughout Germany. To begin with, her export trade, despite the leaks in the blockade, has practically vanished, and it must be remembered that modern Germany is the creation of trade with overseas countries. She grew rich on commerce; she might have grown richer if she had been content with the opportunities which were as fully open to her as to the rest of the world. It is due to the steady strangling process carried out by the British Navy that her long accumulation of wealth has been decisively checked, and that she is dissipating that accumulation in what is inevitably bound to be a sure, if slow, bleeding to death. And, whatever may be the course of the War, Germany’s overseas trade can be resumed only by the permission or through the destruction of the British Navy. That is a factor of supreme and tremendous importance.

In the British blockade—in other words, in the British Fleet—we have the factor which in the long run must make possible the final overthrow of Germany. I am not suggesting that we can win this war by sea power alone; the final crash must come through the defeat of Germany’s land forces, since she is a land and not a sea Power. But it is the operation of sea power which must make the final blow possible. Sea power, and sea power alone, will make possible the final blockade of Germany by land as well as by sea. The ring of the blockade already is nearly complete; and when the British and French, advancing from the base at Salonica, link up, as they must sooner or later, with the Russian forces coming south across the Balkans, Germany will be held in a ring of iron from which she will have no means of escape.

She realises fully that she has not the remotest chance of breaking through the lines of the Allies in the West; she has failed utterly to break the Russian line in the East. It is vital for her to break the ring by which she is nearly surrounded, and in this fact we have the explanation of her dash across the Balkans. So far that dash has been attended with a great measure of success owing to the failure of the Allies to win the active support of Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria. She has succeeded in crushing Serbia and Montenegro, and in linking up with her Turkish Allies through the medium of the Constantinople railway. But Salonica, firmly held by the Allies, must ever be a thorn in the side of her progress to the East, and until she succeeds in reducing it her flank is open to a blow which would shatter her prospects in the East as decisively as they have already been shattered in the West. We cannot imagine that the Allies have gone to Salonica solely for reasons of their health, and it needs no great acquaintance with military history to realise that the possession by the Allies of the Salonica lines may be as fatal to Germany as the holding of the lines of Torres Vedras by Wellington was fatal to the plans of Napoleon.

The analogy is not exact—analogies seldom are—but “the Spanish ulcer” is sufficiently reproduced for practical purposes. German commanders in the East can never feel safe so long as Salonica remains in our possession. And I have no doubt that when the time is ripe we shall see the Allies advancing through the Balkans to join hands with the Russians and, it may be, with the Rumanians. Then Germany will be definitely isolated, and the process of exhaustion, already considerably advanced, will proceed with ever-growing momentum, until it reaches the point when a combined attack on land by the whole of the Allies simultaneously will prove irresistible. I am not one of those who believe that Germany can be defeated by economic pressure alone. But it cannot be denied that economic pressure offers the greatest means of so weakening her power of resistance that her final military defeat will be rendered immeasurably easier.

And we must always remember—there is too strong a tendency in certain quarters to forget it—that it is the principal duty of the British Navy, so long as the German Fleet prefers idleness to fighting, to bring about the reduction of the German power of resistance by a remorseless strangulation of her trade. Our policy in this respect is perfectly definite. It is that, paying due regard to the undoubted rights of neutral nations, we will allow nothing to reach Germany which will assist to prolong her powers of resistance.

There has been a strong disposition in some quarters to represent the British Navy as fighting with one hand tied behind its back owing to the supposed apathy or worse of the Foreign Office. Sir Edward Grey, in perhaps the greatest speech of his long career, has sufficiently disposed of that charge. It is not denied that from a variety of causes, some of them at least beyond our control, Germany has obtained supplies which we would very gladly have denied to her. But, unfortunately for us and fortunately for her, neutral nations have their rights, which we are bound to respect unless we wish to make fresh enemies. It is beyond doubt that supplies are leaking into Germany through Holland and Scandinavia which we should be glad to keep out. It is absolutely impossible to prove enemy destination in all these cases, and it must be remembered that unless we can prove this we have no right to interfere with the commerce of neutral nations, who are quite entitled, if they can do so, to supply Germany with precisely the class of goods which the United States is supplying to us.

We are too apt to overlook the fact that there is nothing criminal in supplying guns and ammunition to Germany. Neutral nations are free to do so—if they can. We are entitled to stop them—also if we can. But we are not entitled to interfere with the legitimate commerce of a neutral nation; in other words, we must prove that contraband is intended for the use of the enemy before we can lay hands upon it.

It is this feature of international law which makes it so difficult for us to declare an absolute blockade of Germany. And it is just this aspect of the case which is the justification of the trade agreements of the kind which has been concluded with Denmark. Under that agreement, and under similar ones, we allow certain goods to be imported in normal volume to neutral countries under the assurance that they will not be re-exported to Germany. The agreement with Denmark has been violently attacked, and attacked, as everyone admits who has seen it, without the slightest justification. It is admitted that it does not give us all we would like to have; but, on the other hand, it is also admitted by those who have seen it that it gives us a good deal more than we could hope to obtain by other means short of what would be practically a declaration of war.

And even the hotheads among us would shrink from telling either Holland or the Scandinavian countries that unless they surrender their rights and do as we wish, we should at once declare war upon them or practically force them to declare war upon us. We need have no shadow of doubt what Germany would do if she wielded the power we do. She would show, as she has shown, scant consideration for the rights of neutrals. But, thank heaven! we are not Germany, and we fight with clean hands.

We have to solve the problem of making our blockade as effectual as possible while paying scrupulous regard to the rights of others. That problem is in process of solution; the importation of commodities into Germany is decreasing day by day; and if we are not at the end of our difficulties in this respect, we are at least drawing into sight of the achievement of our purpose. And the more fully that purpose can be attained, the nearer draws the end of the great struggle and the emancipation of the civilised world from the dominion of brute force.

Chapter Four.

Our Mastery of the Air.

The story of the British air service in the days before the War is so characteristically English that I must give a few lines to it if only to make quite clear the realisation of what we have done to meet the new dangers which, as usual, caught us unprepared.

We exhibited as a nation a most regrettable reluctance to comprehend the value of the aeroplane and the airship as a means of making war.

We failed utterly to grasp the fact that with the coming of the aeroplane a new factor had entered into military science, just as, in the early days of the submarine, we neglected the new invention until we had lagged behind other nations to an extent that, under different circumstances, might well have proved disastrous. We made a few feeble and futile efforts in aeroplane construction; we dallied tentatively with airships of a microscopic pattern. The flying wing of the Army was half starved, and the advice and remonstrances of the men who had really studied and understood the subject were cold-shouldered by the authorities to whom everything new and revolutionary was—and too often is—anathema.

I have studied the progress of aviation from the time when I acted as a judge at the first Aviation Meeting held in this country—on Doncaster racecourse. It may perhaps be remembered that in the early days of flying, when the Daily Mail offered a prize of 10,000 pounds for the first flight from London to Manchester, a misguided evening journal derisively offered a prize of a million pounds for the first man who flew, I think, ten miles.

No doubt the sneer was inspired partly by professional jealousy of the Daily Mail, but it revealed, in very striking fashion, the mental attitude, shared unfortunately by our military authorities, of those who refused to see in the new arm anything more than a very complicated, useless, and dangerous toy.

Time has slipped along since Sommer, Le Blon, and Cody flew at Doncaster; the pioneers of aviation persisted in their efforts, and within three years of the Daily Mail’s offer being made the prize had been won. Tremendous progress was made in every department of flying, and the keener students of military affairs realised that in the aeroplane there had arrived a weapon, both of offence and defence, which would go far to revolutionise warfare as it had been understood in the past.

None the less, our Army lagged far behind the rest of the world. Either the War authorities were not sufficiently insistent, or the Treasury turned a deaf ear to their appeals for money for the development of the new science.

The result was that while our French friends and our German enemies—for they were our enemies even then, as we have now good reason to know—were pushing ahead with aerial investigation and securing a lead which might well have been fatal to us, the British air service languished in comparative neglect. It is certainly hardly too much to say that but for the assistance given by the Daily Mail flying in England would have been utterly and totally neglected. The result was what might have been expected, and the outcome was characteristically British.

When the War broke out we were in a condition of decided inferiority to the French fliers—that perhaps mattered little, as we were fighting on the same side—and very much behindhand in relation to Germany, which mattered a great deal. We had to make up in quality—and of the quality of our airmen there was happily no question—what we lacked in equipment. We were entirely without airships comparable in any way to the Zeppelins, and we had nothing like the number of the German “Tauben.” Most happily for us the quality of our airmen proved far beyond anything which Germany possesses, and in the matter of men we took at once, and have since held, a commanding lead.

It was not long before the value of the new arm was signally demonstrated. In all probability the fate of the British Army in the early days of the War was decided by air reconnaissance. It was one of the air scouts who discovered the enormous concentration of German troops before Sir John French’s army, and thus gave the timely warning which made the great retreat from Mons a possibility.

What followed reproduced in striking fashion the early history of the submarine, and proved very clearly that our deficiencies in the matter of aircraft were not due to any defect in personnel or energy or inventiveness. Striking advances were made when the obvious requirements of the War became manifest.

Money, of course, had to be poured out like water, and no doubt we spent a great deal more than would have been necessary had we made due preparation in time of peace. But, at any rate, thanks to the British genius for improvisation, the work was done. Men and machines were soon forthcoming in ever-increasing numbers, and it was not many months before Sir John French was able to announce that our airmen had established a definite personal ascendency over the airmen of the enemy. That ascendency has been fully maintained.

Man for man and machine for machine we lead the Germans in the matter of flight, so far at least as the aeroplane is concerned. German losses in aerial conflict have been very much heavier than our own, a fact that is not surprising when the personal equation is taken into consideration. In natural daring and personal initiative—two of the qualities indispensable to the successful airman—the French and the British characters are far superior to the German. We can look forward with complete confidence to any comparison that can be made between the rival air services so far as the heavier-than-air machines are concerned.

A good deal has been said lately about the new German Fokker machine, and there has been a good deal of loose talk as to its formidable possibilities. As a matter of fact, its wonders appear to have been very much exaggerated, for it is only a powerful engine put into an obsolete type of French machine. It is not without significance that it is designed for purely defensive purposes, and is absolutely forbidden to cross the German lines under any circumstances whatever. It is a very small, very heavily engined monoplane, carrying a formidable gun, and for short distances capable of very swift climbing and very high speed.

For its own special purpose it is undoubtedly a first-class engine of war, but that it has met its match in the British and French battle-planes was clearly shown during a recent raid on Freiburg. During that raid, a great part of which was over enemy territory, the fighting machines which acted as escorts to the bombers fought no fewer than ten battles with the Fokkers and Aviatiks; and when we remember that the only aeroplane of the Allies to be lost out of the entire squadron was compelled to descend through engine trouble, we can easily understand that highly exaggerated reports as to the efficiency of the rule-of-thumb Fokker had by some means got into circulation. In all probability they arose from the comparatively numerous victims among our flying men claimed by the German official news just after the Fokker made its appearance. But the reason for the seeming disproportion in numbers was very simple. We were constantly the attacking party; in other words, our airmen were constantly over the German lines, while the Germans, as far as they could, gave our lines a very wide berth. The following figures, quoted in the House of Commons by Mr Tennant, are illuminating. They relate to four weeks’ fighting on the Western front, practically all of which had taken place in German territory:

British machines lost, 13.
Enemy machines brought down, 9.
Enemy machines probably brought down, 2.
British bombing raids, 6.
Enemy bombing raids, 13.
British machines used, 138.
Enemy machines used, about 20.
Machines flown across enemy lines, 1227.
Enemy machines flown across our lines (estimated), 310.

Now we need not go farther than these figures to see that the apparently heavier British losses are due not to any superiority on the German side, but to the enormously greater risks taken by our men. They are constantly flying over the German lines, whereas the German airman appears—probably with good reason—to keep to the comparative safety of his own territory, where he is protected by the German anti-aircraft guns. And that when it comes to actual combat in the air the British battle-plane has little to fear from the Fokker is shown by the experience of one of our airmen who single-handed fought a duel with three Fokkers and brought them all down. Moreover, we have always to remember that when a battle is fought the defeated Fokker comes to earth in German territory, and we cannot definitely count it as destroyed, whereas if one of our machines is brought down the Germans are always as sure of it as we are.

Another factor which shows how great an advantage we have over the enemy in the matter of the air service is revealed by the comparative failure of German bombing attacks and the havoc that has been wrought by the French and British squadrons. Leaving the Zeppelin raids for the moment out of the question, there can be no difference of opinion that the Allies’ air raids have been enormously the more destructive, not in the matter of the sacrifice of civilian life—pre-eminence in that regard is easily claimed by the Huns—but in the havoc wrought on military objectives.

When we turn to the dirigible airship—the lighter-than-air machine—the comparison at first sight seems hopelessly against us. We have nothing that can be compared to the Zeppelin in either speed or power of destruction. We have, it is true, a number of airships of different types, but experience so far has not shown that they are of great, if of any, practical value. Our military authorities have deliberately pinned their faith to the aeroplane, and so far as this War is concerned it would appear that we are hopelessly outclassed in the matter of airships.

But we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by appearances. We must not fail to take into consideration the fact that so far as its real military value is concerned the Zeppelin has shown itself to be an absolute and costly failure. This may seem at first sight a hard saying when we think of the many victims of the Zeppelin raids, of the women and little children slaughtered, of the civilians murdered in midnight raids whose lives against any opponents with the slightest regard for the laws of war or for their own good name would have been absolutely safe.

But the facts cannot be disputed. The Zeppelin is a murder machine pure and simple. Its military value is absolutely negligible, and the destruction it has wrought has been of no military significance whatever. Out of all the victims it has claimed during its frequent nocturnal expeditions here and in France, only the barest handful have been soldiers, and on none of the raids has any military base sustained the slightest damage. Moreover, it has failed in its avowed object of terrorising; neither our own people nor the French have been weakened—rather have they been strengthened—in their determination to carry on the War to the only issue consistent with the future existence of civilisation. The only real and tangible results of the Zeppelin raids from a military point of view have been to cover the Germans with a stigma of crime and murder for which they will pay dearly in the future, and to make the Allies more than ever determined to root out the nest of vermin which for so long has troubled Europe. They have done more, perhaps, than anything else except the infamous submarine campaign to convince the civilised world that so long as Germany retains her power of mischief there will be no peace for the nations at large.

There is no disguising the fact, however, that, for what it is worth, the Zeppelin for the moment holds the field.

We have not yet succeeded in discovering any means either of keeping the raiders away when the conditions are favourable for their visits, or of dealing effectively with them when their presence is detected. Undoubtedly the problem is a very difficult one. Zeppelins can fly so high that gunfire is practically ineffective against them, as has been proved in the raids on both Paris and London; the one recently brought down by the French was flying much lower than usual. They are able to take very effective cover behind any clouds that may be about, and the difficulties by which the aeroplanes are faced in locating and attacking them at night appear to be well-nigh insuperable under present conditions. In time, perhaps, we shall have fleets of powerful aeroplanes which will be able to take the air and not merely rise swiftly to the height at which the Zeppelin flies, but remain aloft all night, if need be, until the dangers inseparable from a landing in the dark have disappeared.

But it must not be forgotten that the very factors which give the Zeppelin its invulnerability against attack practically destroy its value as a fighting machine. No one—not even the commanders of the Zeppelins themselves—would pretend that, flying at a height of 12,000 feet or so on a dark and cloudy night, they can say with certainty where they are, or that they can drop their murderous bombs with any sure hope of hitting an object which would be their justification from a military point of view. They simply wait until they think they are over an inhabited area, and then drop their bombs in the hope of killing as many people as possible, or, perhaps, luckily striking some material object and doing real damage. That is not war as the civilised world understands it, but simply anarchism.

A distinguished writer recently expressed the opinion that as the Germans were essentially a practical people they would not waste effort by dropping at haphazard bombs which they had been at such pains to carry to this country, and that they must therefore be genuinely under the impression that they were doing real military damage. But their whole record in the War entirely disposes of this theory. We know quite well—the Germans have told us so, and their acts have borne out their words—that the policy of “frightfulness” commends itself to their judgment. Their one idea is to terrify; they hope to do enough damage and kill enough people to bring about in England a movement for peace. Nothing but defeat will convince them that they are wrong.

And this consideration brings me naturally to another—the subject of reprisals. If we cannot stop the Zeppelins coming or deal with them adequately when they are here, can we teach the Germans a lesson which will convince them that two can play at the game of “frightfulness,” and that in the long run we can play that game better than they can themselves? I think we can, and I think we should.

It has been one of the most striking characteristics of the career of Lord Rosebery that on more than one occasion he has put into terse and vigorous expression the opinions of the great majority of the English people. With all his apparent detachment, Lord Rosebery has a wonderful understanding of what England is saying, and still more what it is thinking, and the reader will call to mind more than one occasion on which the nebulous and only half-expressed thought of England has been suddenly crystallised in the clearest fashion through the mouth of Lord Rosebery. This has unmistakably been the case in the matter of the Zeppelin raids.

In a recent letter to The Times, dated February 3, Lord Rosebery put the English point of view with his customary clearness and directness. He wrote:

This last Zeppelin raid has cleared the air. There may be difficulties from the aircraft point of view in reprisals. I am not behind the scenes, and I do not know. But as regards policy there can be none. We have too long displayed a passive and excessive patience.

We all remember Grey’s noble lines, “To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land.” For “plenty” read “bombs” and you have the Prussian ideal. To scatter bombs over a countryside, to destroy indiscriminately the mansion and the cottage, the church and the school, to murder unoffending civilians, women, children, and sucklings in their beds—these are the noble aspirations of Prussian chivalry, acclaimed by their nation as deeds of merit and daring.

Let them realise their triumph. Let us bring it directly to their hearts and homes. Let us unsparingly mete out their measure to themselves. Nothing else will make them realise their glories. And the blood of any who may suffer will rest on their Government, not on ours.

I am firmly convinced that in that letter Lord Rosebery expressed not merely what the great mass of the English people are thinking and saying to-day, but that he expressed a great and real truth.

In the early days of the War it was the fashion here in England to affect to believe that we were at war not with the German people—represented by the pro-Germans in our midst as a kindly, harmless, and industrious lot of folks—but with the mysterious “military caste” who were supposed to have usurped all authority, and to be driving the delightful German people at large into the commission of all kinds of bestial outrages which were entirely foreign to their wholly delightful nature. I should imagine that fiction has long gone by the board. We have seen the “delightful” German nation sent into paroxysms of inhuman glee by such outrages as the sinking of the “Lusitania”; we have seen them time and again savagely gloating over the slaughter of men, women, and children by their murderous Zeppelins; and if those savage outbursts of delight have done nothing else, we have at least to thank them for teaching us the lesson that we are at war with the entire German nation, and that between that nation and the civilised world there is a great gulf fixed which in our time at least will not be bridged over.

Do we owe any consideration to such a nation? Do we owe to them any of the chivalry and honourable forbearance which we have shown, not once, but a thousand times, in our long contests with civilised adversaries on a hundred fields in all parts of the world? Are our hands to be tied and our people to suffer through our adherence to creeds of warfare which the Huns evidently regard—as they regard Christianity itself—as a lot of worn-out shibboleths?

I say emphatically “No,” and I say the time has come when we should take steps, in Lord Rosebery’s words, to bring home the triumphs of the Zeppelins to German hearts and German homes.

It is too much the fashion in this country to look upon the German as a stolid individual with nerves of steel, who is not to be shaken from his serenity by any of the trials which would bear hardly upon ordinary mortals. There never was a greater mistake. I am quite ready to admit that the German can look unmoved upon a great deal of suffering in other people—that is a characteristic of bullies of all nations; and if the German has not shown himself to be a super-man, he has at least convinced the world that he is the super-bully in excelsis. And the only argument that appeals to him is force, naked and unashamed. In his heart of hearts he knows it. That is why he believes that England to-day is cowering in impotent terror under the menace of the Zeppelins, because he knows that is exactly what he would be doing himself if the positions were reversed, and he cannot understand other people who are built on very different lines. We know how one of the early raids on Freiburg produced an instant panic flight of every German who could afford to get away from a district which had suddenly become “unhealthy.”

Now we have it in our power to reproduce that panic in a dozen German towns within easy reach of our lines in France. And we know something of the real effects of a bombardment by one of the Allied squadrons. In the recent raid on Petrich only fourteen French aeroplanes took part. Yet the Bulgarians officially admitted that they sustained a thousand casualties—far more than we have suffered in the twenty odd Zeppelin raids on England.

Surely it is high time we made it clearly known that any repetition of the bombardment of an unfortified area would be followed by reprisals of the most merciless nature. We can imagine what the effect would be of a big British or French squadron of aeroplanes pelting the German frontier towns with a hail of high explosive and incendiary shells. Assuredly the Zeppelin raids on England would seem futile in comparison. And just as assuredly it would bring home to the German nation as nothing else ever will that the policy of “frightfulness” in which they have elected to indulge is one which will call down upon them a richly deserved punishment. I believe that, speaking generally, the entire world would approve of our action if we decided to take such measures of reprisals as German crimes call for. The responsibility would be Germany’s, not ours. We have fought, as our French Allies have fought, with clean hands.

I believe that stern punishment of this nature is the only possible means of putting an end to the German campaign of murder, and it is for that reason that I advocate it without the slightest hesitation or compunction. The idea of those who believe that reprisals are called for is not to punish the Germans so much as to convince them of the error of their ways and to protect our own people. I believe that our air squadrons could set up such a reign of terror in the Rhine towns that even in Germany the demand for the only possible measure of protection—the cessation of the air raids on unfortified places in France and England—would become irresistible. The German Government may continue to delude the German people about events that are happening outside Germany; they could not by any possibility hide the facts if the air war were effectively carried on to German soil.

Further, I firmly believe that half a dozen smashing aerial attacks upon German towns and cities would do more to put a stop to Germany’s unending infraction of all the laws of civilised warfare than the futile notes and protests of President Wilson have effected in a twelvemonth.

It will be objected by those who seek to make war in kid gloves that if we carry out these raids German women and children must inevitably suffer. I do not shrink from the conclusion, though I regret the necessity which has been forced upon us by the Germans themselves. I am not at all ashamed to say that one little English baby dead in the arms of its weeping mother, killed not by the accident of warfare, but of set, savage, and deliberate purpose, far outweighs in my mind any sentimental or humanitarian considerations for our enemies. We should have no ground of complaint if the Germans confined their raids to proper military objects; and if, in the course of those raids, civilians were accidentally killed, that would be one of the penalties of being at war, and we should be justified in asking our people to bear their sorrows with what fortitude they could. The case is widely different when men, women, and children are slain in a foul campaign of insensate murder; and I say again that in self-defence we are entitled to throw mere sentiment to the winds and protect ourselves by any means in our power. And the best means of protection we have against these murderous raids is to hit the Hun in the same way, to give him a taste of his own medicine; in the words of Lord Rosebery, to bring his triumph directly to his heart and his home. Thus, and thus only, we shall convince the German people, and through them the German militarists, that in the long last it does not pay to outrage the conscience of civilisation.

To sum up, I think it is certainly true to say that in the domain of the air the Allies have established and can maintain a definite superiority over the enemy. That they have established it is plain; that they can maintain it is, I think, equally plain, because they have the larger resources, and because successful aerial work calls for the exercise of qualities which both the French and the English possess in a far more marked degree than do the Germans. Our air raids have been far more destructive from the military point of view than anything the enemy has been able to accomplish; they have been better devised and more capably carried out by men who were better fitted for the task they had in hand. It remains to be seen whether the German superiority in the lighter-than-air machines will give them any real advantage.

At present all the arguments point to the greater value of the aeroplane upon which the Allies have pinned their faith. In any case, it is too late, probably, for us to take up the question of airship construction with any hope of making effective use of it during the present War, and we must do the best we can with what we believe to be the superior weapon. My own view is that on the whole the superiority of the Allies is fully assured, and that now and to the end the credit of winning the War in the air will and must remain with us.

Chapter Six.

The Terror in Germany.

I am most emphatically not one of those who think we ought to take for granted all the stories we get, often from German sources, of the condition of things in Germany.

We know enough of German methods to know that for her own purposes she is capable of flying kites of varying types and shades; and one of the kites which was very prominently flown in the early days, comparatively speaking, of the War was the fiction that for her own brutal and illegal purposes England was “starving German babies” through the medium of her infamous (in German eyes) blockade.

It mattered nothing to the Germans that in 1871 the blockade of Paris and the starvation of the civilian people was one of the principal means by which she enforced the capitulation. The Hun never likes his own medicine. What was, when applied to France in 1871, a stroke of German genius, becomes, when applied by the British Fleet to Germany in 1915, a crime so infamous as to call down all the vengeance of heaven upon the brutal English.

In German eyes no weapon of war is legitimate if it is applied against the sacred persons of Germans; on the other hand, any and every device of the devil becomes a righteous punishment if it is used against Germany’s enemies. Surely never was any people in the world so lacking in a sense of proportion and common sense! There is no doubt, I think, that the first “starvation” cries which emanated from Germany were a cunningly devised plan to work upon the sympathies of neutrals and, in particular, upon the United States. There are always in every country a certain number of good, sentimental souls whose hearts are apt to run away with their heads, who are apt to think or act very much as their emotions lead them, and are entirely incapable of looking at more than one side of any question. It was to just these people and, of course, to the German people in America, that the first frantic “starvation” appeals were directed. I firmly believe that at that time there was little or no serious shortage in Germany, and that the outcry that was raised was merely a ruse to catch the sentimentalists’ attention. It succeeded to a certain extent, and it gave the “hyphenated” section of the American people an opportunity of which they took full advantage for renewed girdings against England. But neither then nor at any other time did it succeed in its real purpose, which was to procure by fair means or foul a relaxation of the British blockade.

How serious that blockade was to become I do not believe the German people or the German rulers realised in the early days. I do not believe they realised that it was possible so completely to cut off their supplies as to produce anything like grave inconvenience, to say nothing of actual want. They have learned differently since! There is a growing volume of testimony from competent observers that the effectiveness of the British blockade is at last beginning to tell its story in Germany. The “bread cards,” the “butter cards,” the meatless days, the frantic appeals to the German people to give up the grease in which they love to bathe themselves at their meals, may be, as the Government pretends, merely a wise conservation of their resources. But if that is all, this “conservation of energy” is being carried out on a scale which is rapidly disheartening and discouraging the German people in every part of the Empire.

The following extract from a Copenhagen paper no doubt puts the case so high as to be practically a burlesque, but it at least shows that countries adjoining Germany, and in free communication with her, understand that the shortage of food and other supplies is far more serious than the Germans are prepared to admit. A Reuter telegram from Copenhagen says:

The Labour journal, Folkets Avis, publishes a letter from a business man who has just returned from a six months’ round tour of Germany, in which he describes the conditions there as more desperate than those in Paris in 1870. The writer is convinced that there is not now a living cat or dog in the whole of Germany, all having been eaten.

Animal lovers trying to hide their pets have been betrayed by their neighbours and punished. Storks, swallows, starlings, and all kinds of wild birds have been systematically killed, and the result, he declares, will be felt in Scandinavian countries in the coming spring. All sea fowl have long since been exterminated.

I have not much doubt that this extract gives far too gloomy a picture if it is intended to represent the condition of the great mass of the German people; I do not believe, though I should like to, that starvation has gone so far as this. But it is more than likely—indeed, I believe it is practically certain—that there is in it a considerable basis of truth.

We have to remember that owing to the demoralisation of the German currency by the flood of paper money prices in Germany have gone up to an enormous extent, while at the same time, owing to the complete disappearance of her manufacturing and export business, wages have fallen in all but a few special trades. For this reason a large percentage of the population is feeling the pinch of want quite apart from any actual shortage of food in the country, and there may well be a good deal in the story of the Danish merchant that most of the wild birds, if not the very dogs and cats, have fallen victims to the necessity for obtaining food.

It will be convenient if we consider the shortage of necessaries in Germany under various heads, the first of which is naturally the deficiency in the food supply, since that is likely to exercise the profoundest influence on the great mass of the people. On this point we have abundant evidence, not only from neutrals who have been able to move more or less freely about Germany, but, still more important, from English people who have returned after being liberated by exchange or otherwise.

One and all are agreed that the German people are suffering from an actual shortage of food. It is not merely a question of prices, though these are far higher than they are in England, and the wealthy folk are still able to get almost all they want. There is, we are assured on evidence which it is practically impossible to ignore, a very serious shortage of many commodities of everyday use, the lack of which is severely felt, as, owing to the very high prices ruling, they are almost entirely beyond the reach of the people at large.

Now, in considering the question of the food supplies of Germany, it is important to remember that in normal times Germany imports some forty per cent, of the fodder used for feeding her sheep and cattle, and it is the scarcity of fodder that has produced the present shortage of meat. That such a shortage exists we know from the ordinances made by the German Government providing for two, three, and even four meatless days per week for everyone in Germany. In the early days of the War, confident that the struggle would be a short one, the Germans took no special pains to keep up their supply of cattle. It was only after the battle of Flanders that they discovered their mistake, and that the question of the supply of meat was destined to be critical.

Then came the panic legislation which led to the slaughtering of swine on an enormous scale. It was decided to devote all the available fodder to the feeding of cattle, since these would be the most difficult to replace after the War. Pigs were killed en masse, orders being given that the flesh was to be tinned to form a reserve. But it was soon found that even this was not sufficient to save the situation. Owing to the growing stringency of the blockade fodder for the cattle began to give out, and then it was decided to fatten pigs. In consequence the slaughter of cattle has increased enormously, and hence arises the growing shortage of milk, butter, and cheese.

Now whatever may be the leakages in the British blockade, it is quite certain that only the barest fraction of Germany’s former imports is getting through; nothing can reach her directly oversea, and our trade agreements with neutral nations to prevent reshipment, even if they are not all that we could desire, are certainly having a very great effect. And it is certain that, despite smuggling on an unprecedented scale, Germany is very far from getting anything like all that she imperatively requires. The pinch is there, and it is growing, and that it is growing rapidly is shown by the increasing violence of the German threats against England and her incessant announcements that she is really getting ready for some new “frightfulness” that shall put all her previous efforts completely into the shade. We hear and note, but we are in no wise terrified.

Frantic efforts are being made by the Germans to purchase and import cattle food of all descriptions, and in addition such fats as butter, lard, and margarine, the shortage of which has produced an enormous effect throughout the Empire. It is our business to see that she fails; and with our Navy given a free hand, I am confident that we can do so.

We know how serious the shortage of bread has become; we know that no German can purchase bread without a “bread card,” and that the amount he can purchase is severely restricted. We know that he is ordered not to eat meat on certain days of the week. We know, too, that in various towns, even in Berlin itself, the maddened people have already broken out into “bread riots,” and that their mutinous gatherings have been dispersed by the police. Not even the well-drilled German will consent to go on indefinitely on an empty stomach. There have been cavalry charges in some towns, there have been violent riots in many, people have pillaged shops; “in fact,” says the German writer of a letter found on a prisoner, “we have a war at home as well as abroad.”

Another letter sent from Munich to “cheer up” a prisoner at Oleron says, “Wherever we go, and wherever we may be, we see nothing and hear nothing except misery and poverty.” A letter from Greiben contains similar lamentations, and adds, “With all our strength we have accomplished nothing, and we shall soon be ruined.”

Germany’s chief imports at present, secured, of course, by devious ways since she is unable to import anything directly, are cotton, wool, copper, lead, paraffin, rubber, nickel, oils, wheat, rye, and barley. These are all of vital necessity to her continued existence, not merely to her successful conduct of the War. With the food shortage growing day by day, she must import even larger and larger quantities, and unless she can do so the end is inevitable; a point must come at which German moral will simply go to pieces. Our blockade is hastening that moment. None the less, we have to remember that starvation alone will not bring Germany to subjection; she will always obtain and grow supplies to a certain extent, probably enough to stave off actual starvation on a scale which would induce her to sue for peace. We have to complete the process of attrition, valuable as it is, by force of arms, and only a decisive military defeat will put an end to German aims and ambitions. That is a cardinal fact of which we must never lose sight.

There is hardly an article of food or drink for which the German chemists have not succeeded in finding more or less satisfactory substitutes. Bread is one of the best known instances. The German “kriegs-brod” or “war bread,” though it is nothing like so palatable or so nourishing as ordinary bread, is yet sufficient to sustain life, though there is reason to think it sets up digestive disorders. Similarly, a glance at the German papers will show dozens of advertisements offering substitutes for endless other articles of diet. These substitutes are very interesting; whether they are satisfying is another question, and one which we can leave the beleaguered Germans to find out for themselves. “Acorn coffee,” “artificial fats,” “artificial honeys,” wooden instead of leather shoes, “German tea” (whatever that may be), “egg substitute,” “wood meal,” sausage substitutes with “more than the nutritive qualities of beef”—these are only a few picked at random. No more convincing testimony to the value and effectiveness of the British blockade could be asked for. These are not the announcements of the German Government, intended to deceive, but the advertisements of business men who have to pay good solid German cash—or it may be notes!—for them. They speak more eloquently than any comment of ours could do.

A good deal of surprise has been expressed that, in view of the undoubted shortage of many necessities in Germany, there has been no apparent falling-off in the equipment or supplies of the German Army. In reality this is not a matter that need disturb our judgment on the general question. We have to remember that Germany is organised on a military basis, and that the militarist party, who most decidedly hold the upper hand, will see to it that as long as there is a pound of food in the country it will not be the Army that will go short. In every department of German life everything is subordinated to the demands of the Army, and no one can question that this is the correct policy. Any serious shortage or discontent in the Army would bring the military structure crashing to the ground, and there can be no doubt that the shortage which exists will have to go much farther before its effects are felt in the field. It will come, beyond doubt, but it is more than likely that shortage of men will make itself felt first.

The views of AbbÉ Wetterle on this point are worth quoting. He was before the War Deputy for Alsace in the Reichstag. When war broke out he escaped to France, and has lived there since. He considers that the Central Empires are already beaten.

“Germany is at the end of her tether, that is the truth,” he says. “She can no longer obtain credit, and the value of the mark is falling every day. After having mobilised ten million valid and invalid soldiers, Germany, whose losses number three and a half millions, and whose auxiliary services behind her lines require 1,700,000 men, can no longer fill the gaps in her Army, and her battle-line grows in extent every day. Famine stares her population in the face. By February or March at latest the lack of food will be severely felt. Riots have already taken place in her large cities, and they will gradually multiply and become more violent. Lack of men, lack of money, lack of food—such is the danger which threatens Germany.”

Now we know very well that the German newspapers are controlled by the Government to an extent which is unknown in any other country in the world; not even the British censorship has such drastic powers. The columns of the German papers are therefore about the last place in which we should expect to find any inkling of the real situation as it exists in Germany to-day. It is the Government order that everything shall be painted couleur de rose. Yet even the German Press is becoming restive under the strain, and is beginning to say things which a very short time ago would have been impossible. Here is a telling extract from the Socialist paper Vorwarts, one of the few of the German journals which has risked a good deal in its insistence upon letting out at least some of the truth. It says:

In a few weeks the sowing and preparing of the fields for the new harvest will have begun, and upon that harvest everything will depend. The coming harvest is of immeasurable importance for the German people. Fantastic speculations as to great imports of foodstuffs from the Orient have now become silent. Germany depends during the duration of the War upon her own production of food... It is evident now that our much-praised organisation of our economic system is in no way so good as enthusiastic amateurs would like us to believe.

This is not exactly the language of a conquering nation whose Chancellor declares that she has sufficient for all her needs, but I have no doubt that it represents the real situation and reflects the prevailing anxiety much more accurately than Dr Helfferich’s boasting speeches, which are undoubtedly meant for foreign consumption.

It is not merely in the matter of food supply that Germans are face to face with conditions which are giving her leading men cause “furiously to think.” It is true it is what makes the most immediate impression on the public at large. But there are men in Germany who realise that there is a world to be faced when the War is over, and that as the days slip by Germany slips into a worse and worse position for meeting the conditions she will have to confront after the declaration of peace. I will first deal very briefly with some of the social aspects of Germany’s present condition.

Germany’s terrific losses in killed and maimed men, coupled with the terrible drop in the birth-rate, which has fallen far lower than it did in the Franco-Prussian War, are causing the gravest anxiety among the German economic thinkers. Next to the fall in the birth-rate, the rate of mortality among newly-born children is causing alarm; and when we remember how admirable are the German arrangements for the preservation of infant life, we can realise that very grave causes must be at work to account for the existing state of things. That those causes are connected in some degree with the efficacy of the blockade is probable, but a greater contributory cause has been the general distress caused by the War, and the failure of the municipal authorities to provide the necessary relief.

The pensions payable to the widows of German soldiers who have died in action are very small; distress and misery have entered the families where there are many children, and many of those are succumbing to the prevailing lack of food. To such a pitch has Germany been brought by the insane ambition of her rulers!

Orphans in Germany now number 800,000, Many of these orphans must for years remain a tax upon the State; they will be bouches inutiles until they reach the wage-earning age, and they will provide after the War, just as they are providing at present, a problem which will tax Germany’s economic and administrative resources to the uttermost.

Another problem with which the Germans will have to deal is the appalling increase in crime. In spite of the fact that a great proportion of the men of the country are serving with the Army, the statistics of crime make appalling reading, and offences of all kinds are especially numerous among children. The juvenile Hun behaves as a Hun to the manner born once he is removed from the stern parental control which in times of peace keeps him within what, for Germany, are reasonable bounds. And even in times of peace the figures of juvenile crime in Germany are terrible. In the year 1912 the following crimes were committed in Germany by boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen:

Criminal assaults, 952.
Murder and manslaughter, 107.
Bodily injuries, 8978.
Damages to property, 2938.

These figures for boys alone are far more than the entire total of such crimes ever committed in England. For instance, the yearly average of crimes of malicious and felonious wounding in England for the ten years 1900-1910 was 1,262; in Germany for the ten years 1897-1907 it was 172,153. And the population of Germany may be taken at 65,000,000, with that of England at 45,000,000. These statistics give us some idea of the real character of the nation which holds itself up as the apostle of “kultur” to the rest of the world, and shows us what blessings we might expect under Teutonic rule.

It is naturally very difficult to get thoroughly reliable information as to the exact condition of things in Germany. Most of the “neutrals” whose stories appear in the English Press appear to be rather too apt to say the things which they think will best please English readers. None the less, their stories cannot all be invented, and we have valuable corroboration of many of them in the shape of reports published by neutral observers in the neutral Press—especially in countries where the prevailing sympathy tends to be pro-German—and from our own people who have returned from Germany.

A particularly valuable example of the former comes from Copenhagen. Dr Halvdan Koht, one of the foremost Norwegian historians, is known for his distinctly pro-German leanings. Yet, after a prolonged stay in Germany, he draws in the Christiania newspaper Social Demokraien a decidedly dismal picture of German life and of the state of public feeling in Germany. “The people are tired of the War” is his conclusion. It is true the whole country considers that Germany is safe, but the whole country has arrived at the conclusion that its adversaries, especially Great Britain, cannot be crushed. The fact that Great Britain is still in full possession of all her territories, that she cannot be attacked on land, and is less affected by the War than Germany is rapidly dawning on the whole people. Moreover, it is being realised that, in spite of her immense military strength, Germany will never be able to enforce a definite decision in her favour. Dr Koht interviewed a number of people of all classes on this subject, and all expressed similar views and heartfelt weariness of the War.

On this subject I might also quote the view expressed by a lady who reached England recently, one of the first batch of the so-called “reprisal women” who, the Berlin authorities have decided, are eating too much meat and butter, and must therefore be sent home. “Germans are suffering agonies,” this lady said, “especially the poor people. They know, in spite of the lying Press, that their sufferings are merely beginning, and they are preparing themselves for more suffering until their rulers are forced to realise that the limits of endurance have been reached, and then sue for peace.” The Germans, she added, “are ready to bear the financial losses and the appalling losses in men, but life on rations is simply driving them insane. The bread cards at first amused them like children, as one more opportunity of obeying orders, of which they are so fond. Now they have butter cards, fat cards, and, in some places, petroleum cards.”

I do not think we can disregard all the evidence that is rapidly accumulating as to the widespread distress in Germany to-day. And I do not think that that distress is likely to decrease. We have it on the authority of Mr Asquith that the tightening of the blockade is proceeding, and the tighter we pull the strangling knot which the British Navy has drawn round the German neck, the sooner we shall return to the days of peace.

But, in the words of Lord Headley, “When Germany wobbles we must hit as hard as possible in the right place and in the right way. But let us make sure of our own set purpose and fixed resolve, that now that we have made up our minds, there shall be no indications of wobbling on our part.” That, I think, expresses the judgment of the nation as a whole. We do not want to sit down in the hope that the “war of attrition” will do our business for us. It is “the long push, the strong push, and the push all together” of Britain and her Allies which alone will bring us to a triumphant success. The “war of attrition” is helping to bring nearer the day when the great push will be possible, but of itself alone it will never compel victory over an enemy who—it would be foolish to think otherwise—will fight to the last gasp.