Regarded purely from the military point of view, the capture of Riga by the Germans and their subsequent rapid advance east of it are important events. The Dvina line, with its lateral railway running at a convenient distance behind the broad river, was easier for the defense to hold permanently than any other on the way to Petrograd. The possession of Riga itself, under conditions of short-range menace, had for two years been of limited value to the Russians. But at least they were enabled to deny the use of its great port, its buildings and its railway junction to the invading enemy, for whom they would have constituted an invaluable advanced base. A single day's fighting which cannot have cost the Germans any serious losses, .sufficed to transfer the whole of these advantages from one side to the other.

Politically the episode has an importance similar to that of the Roumanian defeat last year. It gives the Central Powers a sensational victory in the East to set off against their uninterrupted series of heavy but indecisive defeats in the West and the South. It enables their militarist rulers to re-gild the halo of success which still crowns them in the eyes of their own people. It ensures that in the peace talk, which must be looked for in this as in the two previous winters during the months when hard weather imposes a truce on the battlefields, Germany and Austria will be able to talk as the equals, if not the superiors, of their adversaries. One has only to recall the peace talk of last winter and the degree to which its whole tone and color were altered by the result of the Roumanian campaign, in order to appreciate that this last point is a very real and

important one. Of course, if the Germans push their success much farther, and, in the extreme case, if they push it to Petrograd, still blacker possibilities will have to be considered.

It seems certain that the defeat was due entirely to Leninism and indiscipline in the Russian 12th Army. It has been notorious from an early stage in the revolution that the Northern Army Group was the most demoralized by Extremist propaganda, largely owing to its proximity to Petrograd. Riga itself, with its large population of Baltic Germans, became a main center of army agitation. Last midsummer, when the possibility of Russian offensives was being discussed, it was generally agreed that, while one might be hoped for in the south and was not impossible in the center, the work of Leninism in the Northern Army Group rendered an offensive there quite out of the question. The Germans must have known this state of things at least as long as anybody else; and if they did not attack many months ago, the reason must be sought in motives of policy. They reckoned that a premature tearing of the Riga veil might rally the patriotic elements in Russia, and arrest the wider spread of the disorganizing spirit. How carefully they chose their date may be seen from their waiting till the close of the Moscow Congress, the results of which might have been much more in accordance with General Kornilov's wishes if his sentences had been punctuated by the boom of German guns on their way towards the other capital.

The early steps in the defeat, however, were taken before the Congress broke up. The first-the evacuation of the Russian bridgehead at Uxküll

-occurred early in August. It was due to the treachery of a Lettish battalion, for which we have not heard of any punishment. The second, and more important, was the withdrawal of the defenders from the advanced enfilading positions which they occupied near the sea. This withdrawal-a matter of several miles on a longish front-seems to have been "voluntary," like so many others. It forfeited ground previously gained and held by desperate fighting under the direction of General Russky and General Radko Dmitriev, and it let the Germans come right up to the main defenses of the town. It was this, no doubt, which prompted the prophetic reference to the Riga front in General Kornilov's Moscow speech. Yet the positions were still strong and still, as General Kornilov implied, capable of defense by willing defenders. Their abrupt collapse was plainly attributed in the official communiqués to the further misconduct of the troops. There has since been a contradiction from the Assistant-Commissary of the Government on the Riga front in a telegram to the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Delegates, stating that the troops behaved splendidly and were only defeated by the weight of the German artillery. But no big-gun explanation is tenable in the light of the distances which the Germans immediately covered-about forty miles in four days. Big guns can usually crush a particular position inside their range (though seldom within twentyfour hours); but they take a long time to move, and Western experience has shown that on a narrow front an advance beyond their range can always be arrested by machine-guns, if the will to arrest it exists.

It is well to try, in this matter, to see things as they are, not for purposes of recrimination, but to avoid our being caught napping and over-startled

Of

by future events. We must all hope that Russia will recover; though it is not very just to those in charge of her destinies to talk as if six months' military demoralization could be exorcised in a week or two by strong action. But put the case at its worst; suppose Petrograd to fall, and suppose its fall to inspire no effective rally of the Russian spirit; what then? course, such a development would be ground for profound regret, and not least on account of the prejudice which it would eventually work to the cause of democracy both in Russia and throughout the world. But on the military side we ought to recognize that, if the Allies had to carry on the war without Russia, they could do so successfully. Already throughout the campaigning season of the present year, they have had only passive help from her, apart from her brief and abortive offensive. By passive help we mean that she detains a certain number of German and Austrian units on her front; but the number and quality of these units is now low, and the occupation of most of them is such a "rest cure," that to a large extent they can be and are treated merely as the necessary reserves to be drawn on for the Western and Italian fronts. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that the drain which Russia makes on her Allies for matériel, for skilled personnel, and for shipping tonnage is enormous. Military supplies and stores are poured into her month after month as into a bottomless well. For all the more technical services of her Army-not merely big guns, but such services as wireless telegraphy, armored cars, motor transport, aeroplanes-the great bulk of the matériel, and a far greater part than is commonly realized even of the personnel, have to be furnished from abroad. We are not suggesting for a moment that the Allies should

eut down this help. They will continue to support Russia, as they always have done, with the greatest possible loyalty, so long as she is open to be supported. But it is nevertheless the case that the vast resources supplied to her, of which at present she makes such ineffective use, would have made a great deal of difference to the offensive on the other fronts, if they could have been concentrated for use there. accession of the United States to the ranks of the Allies was the accession of a nation with much more ultimate The New Statesman.

The

military strength than the Russian; and the development of that strength is not now so remote that we cannot afford to wait for it, whatever temporary setbacks may be experienced in the East of Europe. The prophets who said that Russia's recovery would take too long to affect the present war have had some confirmation in recent events. We may still hope that they will prove wrong. But it is time to realize that, even if they are right, the Western Powers can and should win the war notwithstanding.

"Have you," said Francesca, "seen our sunflowers lately?"

"Yes," I said, "I've kept an eye on them occasionally. It's a bit difficult, by the way, not to see them, isn't it?" "Well," she said, "perhaps they are rather striking."

"Striking!" I said. "I never heard a more inadequate word. I call them simply overwhelming the steam-rollers of the vegetable world. Look at their great yellow open faces."

"I never," said Francesca, "saw a steam-roller with a face. You're mixing your metaphors."

"And," I said, "I shall go on mixing them as long as you grow sunflowers. It's the very least a man can do by way of protest."

"I don't know why you should want to protest. The seed makes very good chicken food." "Yes, I know," I said, "that's what you always said."

"And I bet," she said, "you've repeated it. When you've met the tame Generals and Colonels at your club, and they've boasted to you about their potatoes, I know you've countered them with the story of how you've turned the whole of your

lawn into a bed of sunflowers calculated to drive the most obstinate hen into laying two eggs a day, rain or shine."

"I admit," I said, "that I may have mentioned the matter casually, but I never thought the things were going to be like this. When I first knew them and talked about them they were tender little shoots of green just modestly showing above the ground, and now they're a forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlock aren't in it with this impenetrable jungle liberally blotched with yellow, this so-called sunflower patch."

"What would you call it," she said, "if you didn't call it sunflower?"

"I should call it a beast of prey," I said. "A sunflower seems to me to be more like a tiger than anything else." "It was a steam-roller about a minute ago."

"Yes," I said, "it was a tigerish steam-roller."

"How interesting," she said. "I have not met one quite like that."

"That," I said, "is because your eye isn't properly poetical. It's blocked with chicken food and other utilitarian objects."

"I must," she said, "consult an oculist. Perhaps he will give me glasses which will unblock my eye and make me see tigers in the garden."

"No," I said, "you will have to do it for yourself. For such an eye as yours even the best oculists are unavailing."

"I might," she said, "improve if I read poetry at home. Has any poet written about sunflowers?"

"Yes," I said, "Blake did. He was quite mad, and he wrote a poem to a sunflower: 'Ah! Sunflower! Weary of time.' That's how it begins."

I'm

"Weary of time!" she said scornfully. "That's no good to me. weary of having no time at all to myself."

"That shows," I said, "that you're not a sunflower."

"Thank heaven for that," she said. "It's enough to have four children to look after-five including yourself."

"My dear Francesca," I said, "how charming you are to count me as a child! I shall really begin to feel as if

Punch.

there were golden threads among the silver."

"Tut-tut," she said, "you're not so gray as all that."

"Yes, I am," I said, "quite as gray as all that and much grayer; only we don't talk about it."

"But we do talk about sunflowers," she said, "don't we?"

"If you'll promise to have the beastly glaring things dug up—"

"Not," she said, "before we've extracted from them their last pip of chicken food."

"Well, anyhow," I said, "as soon as possible. If you'll promise to do that I'll promise never to mention them again."

"But you'll lose your reputation with the Generals and Colonels."

"I don't mind that," I said, "if I can only rid the garden of their detested presence."

"My golden-threaded boy," said Francesca, "it shall be as you desire."

R. C. Lehmann.

Lord Northcliffe has done good service in emphasizing, for the information of those of us who are far away from the United States, the great things which America is doing for the cause of civilization. At this distance it is exceedingly difficult to keep in touch with the many activities of the Americans, and Lord Northcliffewho is behind the scenes of themcan do much from time to time to help us. While we can read his articles with satisfaction, since they reveal the American giant fully awake, there is a passage in one of them which causes us no little uneasiness.

Lord Northcliffe tells us that Congress was asked on August 24th to vote £227,000,000 for the construction

of merchant vessels-an amount which at even the present high prices would represent some four million gross register tons-and then adds the chilling comment that shipbuilding is the one enterprise in which more might be done than is being done at present. "I have already expressed my opinion," he writes, "which is shared by many people here, that so long as the Allied Governments hide the truth as to the real nature of the submarine danger, the burning enthusiasm which Americans are putting into their air service will be lacking in the American shipyards." If this enthusiasm for shipbuilding be really lacking, as Lord Northcliffe suggests, then the outlook both for America

and for the Allies cannot but cause grave anxiety. For of what use is it for the Americans to spend £128,000,000 upon building a vast fleet of aeroplanes if the ships in which to convey them to France are not built? Of what use is it to set up the 16 war cities, which Lord Northcliffe so interestingly describes, and to train and equip men in their hundreds of thousands and in their millions, if the ships are not to be built in which to transport them to Europe and to supply them when there? Even at the best British shipbuilding cannot catch up with the submarine losses already suffered, and to be suffered, until the end of next year. We are depending upon American ships to bring the New World to redress the balance of the Old, and any suggestion that they will not be forthcoming in the necessary numbers, and at the necessary speed of output, cannot lightly be passed by.

Fortunately we find in the New York Commerce and Finance, a responsible journal, figures which go some way, at least, to counteract the impression made upon our minds by Lord Northcliffe's remarks. The Associated Press, on August 24th, gave out-no doubt under official inspiration-the Government's shipbuilding program. The total was put at 1,270 ships of 7,968,000 gross tons. This was in addition to nearly 2,000,000 tons now in course of construction in American yards, which have been commandeered by the Emergency Fleet Corporation. A The Economist.

large part of the commandeered fleet and of the Government fleet is expected to be completed by June 30, 1918. The total cost of this program, together with purchases of vessels, will amount to 400 millions sterling. The contracts already let amount to 1,919,200 tons, about to be let 2,968,000 tons, under negotiation 1,281,000 tons, and miscellaneous vessels 1,800,000 tons. The Shipping Board has already received 110 millions sterling for construction and 50 millions for commandeering, and is asking for 80 further millions in the fiscal year to June 30th.

Our contemporary, Commerce and Finance, points out that the present American shipbuilding is at the rate of little more than a million and a half gross tons a year, and by January is expected to reach a rate of two million tons a year. The Shipping Board's program above described contemplates trebling the present rate of construction. This means many more yards on the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf, and Lake fronts. It means the enrolment of workers in scores of thousands, and working night and day. Of course, this program of shipbuilding, which is designed to create an American merchant marine of ten million gross tons, exists at present principally on paper. Yet when the Americans move they move very fast, and they must realize that upon carrying out their program depends the issue of the war and the future of their and our civilization.

It is related that when Queen Victoria reviewed her troops on their return from the Crimea somebody asked Lord Panmure, then Secretary for War, whether the Queen

was

touched. "Certainly not," he replied, "who should touch her?" "But was she not moved?" persisted the questioner. "Of course not," answered Lord Panmure. "She had an iron