y men who
could do the same thing. I happen to have specialized upon military
history and problems, and profess now, with a complete set of maps, to
be doing for others what their own occupations forbid them the time and
opportunity to do."

CHAPTER VI

MR. BELLOC AND THE WAR

Having contrasted these two summaries, we will leave the reader to form
his own estimate of the nature of Mr. Belloc's work and of the
qualifications he brings to it. There remains to be determined the
measure of success which has attended Mr. Belloc's "attempt to give an
explanation of what is taking place." "There are many men," he says,
"who could do the same thing." On this point we cannot argue with Mr.
Belloc. He may know them: we do not. What we do know is that there are
many men who are trying to do the same thing. In saying this we have no
wish to belittle either individuals or as a class those courageous
gentlemen, among whom the best-known, perhaps, are Colonel Repington and
Colonel Maude, who are striving, and striving honestly, we believe, to
provide the readers of various papers with an intelligent explanation of
the courses taken by the different campaigns. Nor do we regard them as
in any way imitators of Mr. Belloc. We merely assert that no single one
of them is achieving his object so nearly as Mr. Belloc is achieving
his. This should not be understood to mean that the course of events has
proved Mr. Belloc to be right more often than it has proved his
contemporaries to be right, though if it were possible to collate all
the necessary evidence, such a statement might conceivably be proved
correct. This assertion should be understood, rather, to mean that no
single commentary on the war, regularly contributed to any journal or
newspaper, displays those merits of dispassionate honesty, detailed
explanation and lucid exposition in so marked a degree as does Mr.
Belloc's weekly commentary in _Land and Water_.

Were there any necessity to adduce proof of this it would be sufficient
to regard the great gulf fixed between the circulation of _Land and
Water_ and any other weekly journal of the same price. It is of greater
service, however, to realize how and why Mr. Belloc surpasses his
contemporaries than to waste space and time in proving what is already
an admitted fact. The two outstanding features of Mr. Belloc's work in
_Land and Water_--two of the most conspicuous features, indeed, as will
be seen in the course of this