to their prestige, and could not fail to weaken our own position in Egypt and the East, besides affording the Germans more encouragement than any of their empty victories in Russia. There is no course possible but to go forward, whatever may be the cost; and, if adequate forces are employed in a suitable area of operations, there is no reason why success should be long deferred or the cost be great. The Turks have massed their available forces in the Peninsula, and, favoured by the character of the country and the small extent of front, secured on either flank by the sea, have made their positions impregnable to assault. But a large extent of seaboard is open to the Allies, and there are localities where the conditions are less unfavourable.

Our Italian Allies have been engaged, for the most part, in overcoming the initial disadvantages of their political frontier. The operations on the Alpine frontier have aimed at gaining possession of the cordon of commanding positions, defended by permanent forts armed with heavy guns, which the Austrians designed to dominate all the practicable routes. It has been impracticable to bring up artillery of adequate power to demolish the fortifications or to cope with the guns of the defence. Despite these difficulties, frequently enhanced by adverse weather, the Italians have established themselves in all the principal passes, and have made progress towards Trent by the Val Guidicaria on the south-west, by the valley of the Adige, and from the direction of Arsiero on the south, and by the Val Sugana on the east. They have also gained ground towards the KlagenfurtFranzensfeste railway at Toblach by the Sexten and Rienz valleys, and at Tarvis from the west and south. On the Isonzo front a prolonged offensive in July made them masters of the first line of entrenchments on the Carso plateau, south-east of Gradisca; but the defences of Gorizia have hitherto defied their efforts. Our Allies have fought with great courage and resolution, and, besides making their own frontier secure, have diverted large Austrian forces from the Russian front.

Vol. 224.-No. 445.

2 Q

W. P. BLOOD.

II. AT SEA.

DURING the past three months no incident has occurred to interfere with the world-wide influence exercised by the British Fleet to the inestimable advantage of the Allies. The nations associated with this country have continued to draw strength-military, financial and industrial-from the sea. Our command of maritime communications is more assured, indeed, than ever. 'The British fighting fleet,' as the First Lord of the Admiralty remarked in a letter published on Sept. 5,

'has become relatively stronger than it was [at the opening of hostilities] and there is no reason to suppose that during the future course of the war this process is likely to be arrested.'

This statement, in association with the disclosure that the expenditure on the Navy, instead of being 146,000,000. during the current year, as was estimated in May, will be 190,000,000l., suggests that our naval power is still being increased and consolidated.

In German newspapers, drawing inspiration from the Marineamt, it has been repeatedly stated that the Grand Fleet has remained in hiding' during the period of the war and that the enemy's ships have looked in vain in the North Sea for any evidence of British naval power. In contrast with such statements, Mr Frederick Palmer, the accredited representative on the Western front of the leading newspapers of the United States, has supplied the world with a picture of the ways and means by which the enemy's fleet-second in strength only to our own-is being neutralised, and of the elaborate machinery by which the command of the waters round the British Isles is exercised. One statement, in particular, reveals the completeness of the measures adopted to 'contain the enemy's fleet and to exercise economic pressure:

'In all, England has 2300 trawlers, mine-sweepers, and other auxiliaries, outside of the regular service, on duty on the blockade from the British Channel to Iceland and in keeping the North Sea clear. Their reservist crews have been most zealous in performing their important part in overcoming the kind of naval warfare which Germany has waged.'

These ships are the frail tentacles of British sea-power; they are engaged by day and by night, in 'feeling for ' the enemy's mining vessels and submarines. With confidence in the power which lies within instant call, they are continually cruising in the waters which surround these islands and thus keeping the Near Seas open for the commerce of this country and our Allies. If we are exercising an irregular form of longdistance blockade, as has been suggested, it can at least be urged that it is no 'paper blockade,' but is, in fact, more effective,' to borrow the adjective used in the Declaration of Paris, than any measures hitherto concerted by a maritime State. The conditions of warfare have changed radically since the Nelsonian period, owing, in the main, to the evolution of the submarine, the development of the torpedo and mine, and the increased range of the guns of shore-defences; and consequently there has been a variation in the methods of applying economic pressure against the enemy. But the changed character of blockade operations reflects not the 'navalism' of the world's greatest Sea-Power, but as the Order in Council of March 16 last emphasised -the considered action of the Allies, whose men-of-war are assisting in the most colossal task of its kind ever attempted. This distinction is one of some importance, because 'navalism,' as distinct from militarism,' is on its trial. This is the first great war waged with the new instruments which science has placed within the grasp of the naval officer. The claim which the Allies have made in reply to protests by neutral nations, whose commercial activities are necessarily restricted by the action of British and French warships, is that they are committing no act which is opposed to the sense of the law of nations as applied to modern warfare at sea.

6

The blockade is rendered effective by the ubiquitous operations of small auxiliary craft; these weak vessels search the seas in virtue of the overwhelming strength of the Grand Fleet under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. The battleship, not the submarine, ensures command of the sea. According to Count Reventlow, who draws his inspiration from Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, that vast force amid the northern mists is twice as strong as the High Sea Fleet of Germany. That admission

reveals the extent of the 'margin of safety' which exists and makes the blockade fully operative.

In spite of the enemy's submarines, we command the North Sea, the Grand Fleet periodically sweeping these waters and challenging the enemy to action. Mr Palmer has supplied a pen-picture of the great aggregation of British naval power putting to sea:

'While we were on board Sir John Jellicoe's flagship a message was brought to the Commander-in-Chief, who called his flag secretary and spoke a few words to him, after which we learned that the whole Fleet was ordered to proceed to sea. Later, on board a destroyer at the entrance to the harbour, the guests watched that unprecedented procession of naval power make its exit, led by the graceful light cruisers and the flotillas of destroyers.

""Are not German submarines waiting outside?" we asked. "No doubt. Two or three are always there," an officer replied. "But the destroyers know how to keep them off."

'Blithely cutting the choppy waves, and with broad, foaming wakes, the destroyers, attendant satellites of the great fighting ships, ran in and out among them by virtue of superior speed, as confident in their evolutions as the hovering gulls on their wings. Indeed, wherever we had been on our trip we had seen the destroyers always on the move, flotilla blinking its signals to flotilla. . . . Entranced, one still watched the spectacle, with the head of the Fleet lost in the mist of approaching nightfall and the black clouds from the funnels. Eight, sixteen, twenty Dreadnoughts were counted as they went past with clockwork regularity, and out of other smoke-clouds in the harbour more Dreadnoughts were coming, before the King Edward VII and other preDreadnought classes had their turn. . . . Our last glimpse as we rounded the headland was of that seemingly endless column of ships, which stood between German ambition and the seas of all the world, still not free of the harbour, on its way to its unknown errand in the North Sea.'

Whatever credence may have been given in neutral countries to the misrepresentations of German writers, it must have been removed once and for all by this description of the British Grand Fleet putting to sea in face of all the enemy's submarines and to the humiliation of the second greatest navy of the world, sheltering behind its minefields and shore guns in the 'wet triangle of which Heligoland forms the apex.

The revelations of this American journalist, in association with admissions made by the First Lord of the Admiralty, indicate the failure which has attended the enemy's war of attrition, waged with the aid of the submarine against our men-of-war, our transports and our merchant ships. The Grand Fleet has not been deprived of a single unit by this new agent; not a soldier has lost his life while crossing the Channel, though the transport Royal Edward' was destroyed in the Egean Sea; the number of merchantmen sunk has been relatively small; our supplies of food and raw material have not been apparently decreased. Owing to our unrivalled ship-building resources, the Grand Fleet is far stronger now than it was when the war opened, and the British mercantile marine has been able (as Mr Balfour has said) to make good every vessel lost. Resorting to a form of attack on merchant shipping as inhuman as it is illegal, the Germans have done us absolutely no military injury; they have murdered about 2,000 noncombatants in cold blood-many of them neutralsbesides destroying about 150 merchant ships-for the most part small, slow and old craft. The losses represent less than 1 per cent. of our Merchant Navy.

On the other hand, the enemy has suffered serious military injury by this policy of outrage and murder. He has antagonised neutral States, for his 'blind' operations have inflicted almost as serious damage on the nations not at war as they have done upon us. Friendly relations are of military value; Germany confronts the world as an outlaw State-a State which has denied the law of nations and the dictates of humanity; she has no friends. The character of the crimes committed at sea, not merely when the 'Lusitania' and the Arabic' were destroyed without warning, but when merchant ships have been torpedoed at sight, was exhibited by the United States Government in its Note of May 15:

'It . . . assumes ... that the Imperial Government accept as a matter of course, the rule that the lives of noncombatants, whether they be of neutral citizenship or citizens of one of the nations at war, cannot lawfully or rightfully be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruction of unarmed merchantmen, and recognise also, as all other nations do, the obligation to take the usual precaution of visit and search to