break the first
and worst shock of the enemy's attack, and to allow, once we have
concentrated that attack upon ourselves, the rest of our forces,
the masses of manoeuvre, or at any rate a sufficient portion of
them, to come up and give us a majority in _this_ part of the
field."

Alongside these slight criticisms we may mention, perhaps, another
criticism which has been publicly levelled against Mr. Belloc's writings
on the military aspect of the present war. The issue of the _Daily Mail_
of September 6, 1915, contained an article in which Mr. Belloc was
charged with grave errors of judgement. The gist of this article was
that Mr. Belloc had regarded an enemy offensive in the West in the
spring of 1915, as certain to take place, whereas, in point of fact, the
Germans made their great effort against the Russians in the East. This
was the chief charge brought against Mr. Belloc; and to it were added a
number of lesser charges of which the majority were perfectly just,
showing how in this place and in that Mr. Belloc had overrated one
factor or underrated another.

With this criticism it is unnecessary to concern ourselves further than
to note the nature of Mr. Belloc's reply, which appeared in _Land and
Water_ on September 18, 1915:

There is in such an indictment as this [he says] nothing to
challenge, because I would be the first, not only to admit its
truth, but, if necessary, to supplement the list very lengthily. To
write a weekly commentary upon a campaign of this magnitude--a
campaign the facts of which are concealed as they have been in no
war of the past--is not only an absorbing and very heavy task, but
also one in which much suggestion and conjecture are necessarily
doubtful or wrong, and to pursue it as I have done steadily and
unbrokenly for so many months has tried my powers to the utmost.

But I confess that I am in no way ashamed of such occasional errors
in judgment and misinterpretations, for I think them quite
unavoidable. They will be discovered in every one of the many
current commentaries maintained upon the war throughout the Press
of Europe and even in the calculations of the General Staffs. Nay,
I will now add to the list spontaneously: In common with many
others, I thought that an invasion of Silesia was probable last
December. At the beginning of the war I believed that the French