The Spectator

From ‘Prisoners of War’, The Spectator, 13 March 1915: Let us mention also a passage from Hume's history quoted by Sir Graham Bower in an excellent letter to the Morning Post of Wednesday. Hume is describing the campaign of Edward III :— "The French officers who had fallen into the hands of the English were conducted into Calais, where Edward discovered to them the antagonist with whom they had had the honour tabs engaged, and treated them with great regard and courtesy. They were admitted to sup with the Prince of Wales and the English nobility, and after supper the King himself came into the apartment and went about conversing familiarly?

From ‘The Military Situation’, The Spectator, 13 March 1915: How does the war look as a whole? The best way to answer this question is to consider it from the point of view of some perfectly impartial person living in Germany, but with intellect and judgment unaffected by any patriotic emotions. What would such a person tell us of the war? Germany has been called a besieged country. With that epigram he would probably agree, except that he would add the word "partially." He would say she was closely besieged on her water front and on the western and eastern fronts, even though in the east the besieged were capable of very powerful sorties.

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 13 March 1915: The more the operations at the Dardanelles are considered the more clearly is their vast importance realized. If in co-operation with the Russian Fleet from the Black Sea we succeed in taking possession of what remains of Turkey in Europe, including the great fortress of Adrianople, and in holding securely both the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, the blow to Germany and Austria will be of the most tremendous kind. Apart, however, from the danger of counting your chickens before they are hatched, it would not be discreet to discuss the consequences in detail.

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 6 March 1915: The great German campaign against our shipping, under which we were to be cut off from all human aid and every merchant ship that dared to approach our ports torpedoed and sunk, has ended in what can only be called an amazing fiasco. In the first three days a little damage was done, but during the past week there have been no examples of the destruction of vessels by German submarines or even by mines. That no such losses are reported is not due, we are sure, to any economy of truth or holding back of news on the part of the authorities. It is the plain fact that the Germans have sunk none of our ships. To account for this failure is not an easy matter.

From ‘Lord Kitchener’, The Spectator, 6 March 1915: We are grateful to Lord Kitchener because at the very beginning of the war he formed what Mr. Bonar Law calls "a gigantic conception," not only of the military needs of the nation, but of our ability to meet those needs. Other men and lesser men, even though they might have bad enough imagination to see what might and ought to be done, would in the emergency have been daunted by the task before them.

From ‘The “Willing” Badge’, The Spectator, 6 March 1915: A final ground for giving badges to those who have offered themselves and been rejected must be mentioned. Under any scheme for the presentation of badges a register should be kept giving in general terms the ground on which each man was rejected—namely, medical reasons, such as heart weakness, and so on; physical defects, as, for example, some small deformity or some defect of vision; or, again, some such ground as inability to reach the standard of height or the standard of chest measurement. In the last two cases it may well be that the Government will come to see that after all small men can fight and march quite as well as big men, and endure hardship even better.