We see then that Mr. Belloc, in his weekly commentary in _Land and Water_, is doing for others not merely "what their own occupations forbid them the time and opportunity to do," but _what they could not do for themselves_, even had they the time and opportunity.
To undertake this task he is peculiarly qualified. In his writings on the war, indeed, Mr. Belloc appears as an expert, in the true sense of that much abused word. He says of himself, in the paragraph already quoted--"I happen to have specialized on military history and problems." That is again too modest an estimation of the facts. He has done far more than merely to specialize on military history; he has given military history its true place in relation to other branches of history. The study of history at the present time is specialized. We subdivide its various aspects, classify facts and speak of constitutional history, economic history, ecclesiastical history, military history, and so forth. Now Mr. Belloc, in addition to his study of all the branches of history, has not merely made a special study of military history, but has realized and proved, more fully than any other historian, of what tremendous importance is the study of military history in its relation to those other branches of the study of history, such as the constitutional and economic. "In writing of the military aspect of any movement," he says, "it is impossible to deal with that aspect save as a living part of the whole; so knit into national life is the business of war."
In those words, "so knit into national life is the business of war," Mr. Belloc has finely expressed his conception of war as one of the weightiest factors in human events. In accordance with this attitude Mr. Belloc has shown us, what no other historian has ever made clear, that the French Revolution, "more than any other modern period, turns upon, and is explained by, its military history." In the preface to his short thesis _The French Revolution_ there occurs this passage:
The reader interested in that capital event should further seize (and but too rarely has an opportunity for seizing) its military aspect; and this difficulty of his proceeds from two causes: the first, that historians, even when they recognize the importance of the military side of some past movement, are careless of the military aspect, and think it sufficient to relate particular victories and general actions. The military aspect of any period does not consist in these, but in the campaigns of which actions, however decisive, are but incidental parts. In other words, the reader must seize the movement and design of armies if he is to seize a military period, and these are not commonly given him. In the second place, the historian, however much alive to the importance of military affairs, too rarely presents them as part of a general position. He will make his story a story of war, or again, a story of civilian development, and the reader will fail to see how the two combine.
