European field more than five millions during the better part of
the first year of the war. Though it must be remembered that if the
war lasted indefinitely she would have at her back at any period
indefinitely large reserves to draw upon.
Let us call Russia ultimately, for the purposes of the war during all
its first months, a minimum of three and a maximum of five millions.
Let us count Great Britain in those same months at two millions,
including all who have gone out, all since recruited, and the many
more who will not be either recruited or fully trained for some
months to come--but excluding foreign garrisons and naval forces.
Such an estimate is certainly a maximum for that period.
Then putting all these figures together and considering for the
moment no wastage, the figures become as in Diagram X.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM X. How will time modify the grave
disproportion indicated in Diagram IX? Taking, roughly, the first
few months of the war, apart from wastage, our enemies remain month
after month far superior to either half of the Allies they are
fighting--the French and English in the West, the Russians in the
East.]
_Observe in this diagram and retain it for purposes of judgment
throughout the war--it is far the most important truth to
retain--that, apart from wastage, our enemies remained throughout the
winter far superior to either half of the Allies they are fighting.
Remember that we did not put as against Austro-Germany in the West
more than 6 to 9 for a long time, nor Russia in the East certainly
more than 5 to 9._
The Allies combined will at last be superior to their enemy
numerically, but only superior in a proportion of 11 to 9 (exclusive
of wastage), and that maximum will not be reached till summer.
I have italicized that paragraph because the misapprehension of so
simple a truth is at the bottom of three-quarters of the nonsense
one hears about the campaign. It was at the bottom of the conception
that victory would be easy and short; at the bottom of the conception
that it would be certain, and it is at the bottom of much foolish
impatience and criticism to-day.
It was a knowledge of this truth which made the German Government
feel secure of success when it forced on the war at its chosen day
and hour (remember with what curious superstition the Germans passed
the frontier on the same day and at the same hour as in 1870), and
an ignorance of it alone can account for the follies one still hears.
Even as I write I rise from reading the account of a sermon by some
clergyman, an Englishman--but not in England, I am glad to say--who
talked of Germany, with her back to the wall, fighting the world, and
expressing his admiration thereat. He had evidently never considered
the element of numbers.
Now what about the wastage?
Luckily for us, German necessities, as well as German doctrine, have
involved very heavy wastage. And, luckily for us, that wastage has
been particularly heavy in the matter of officers.
A discussion on numbers does not allow one to stray into the
equally important moral factors of the war, but the fact may be
just alluded to that the whole general military organism of Germany
depends more than that of any other nation upon the gulf between the
officer and those next in command. Not only can you make a French
non-commissioned officer into an officer without fear of losing an
atom of the moral strength of the French military organism, but the
thing is done continually during peace and during war on a large
scale. In Germany you can do nothing of the kind.
The attack in close formation, with all its obvious advantages of
speed and with all the very fine tradition of discipline which makes
it possible, is another element of expense, but most expensive of all
is the determination to win at once.
Why have the Germans been thus prodigal of men in their determination
to win rapidly? A long war is dreaded by Germany for four separate
and equal reasons:
(1) That in a really considerable length of time two of her
opponents are capable of indefinite expansion--Russia and
Great Britain.
(2) Because all historical experience is there to show that
the French are a nation that rally, and that unless you
pin them after their first defeats their tenacity will be
increasingly dangerous.
(3) Because the power of the British Fleet is capable of
establishing a blockade more or less complete, and hitherto
only less complete from political considerations.
(4) Because the strategical problem, the fighting upon two
fronts, involves, as a method of victory, final success
upon one front before you can be certain of success upon
the other.
This last point merits illustration. An army fighting inferior bodies
on two fronts is just like a very big man fighting two much smaller
men. They can harass him more than their mere fighting power or
weight accounts for, and they can do so because they are attacking
upon different sides.
The big man so situated will certainly attempt to put out of action
one of his two opponents before he puts his full force against the
other. It would be a plan necessary to the situation, and it is
exactly the same with a Power or a group of Powers fighting upon two
fronts, although they find themselves in superior numbers on either
front, as the Austro-Germans do still.
For all these four reasons, then, Germany was bound to waste men,
and she did waste men largely until about the end of last year. She
threw them away recklessly during the first advance on Paris, next
during the great attacks in Flanders, then--quite separately--in her
desperate Polish effort to reach Warsaw, which goal, at the moment of
writing, she has wholly failed to attain.
But though we know that Germany and Austro-Hungary have lost men in a
greater proportion than the Western Allies, and though we may guess
that they have lost men in a greater proportion than our Eastern
Allies--in spite of the heavy losses in prisoners at Tannenberg--it
is less easy to give an accurate estimate of the proportion.
In one case and up to one date we can arrive pretty accurately at the
proportion. The German Empire alone had, up to a particular date in
the autumn, lost in hit, sick, and caught (I will speak in a moment
of the question of “returns”) 40 per cent. of the individuals up to
that date put into the field. Both the French and the English had up
to the same date lost just under 25 per cent.
I know that that figure 40 per cent. looks absurdly exaggerated
when it is put thus without support, but it is a perfectly sound
conclusion. If you take the lists published by Prussia, note the
dates to which they refer, the proportion of killed to the _admitted_
wounded, and add the proportion for Bavaria, Wurtemburg, and Saxony,
you find that at this date in the late autumn two millions were
affected, and Germany had not armed more than five millions at the
most at that time.
Now, as in our own case, the proportion of officers hit, wounded,
and caught was large compared to that of men; but what is more
important, perhaps, the proportion of officers killed or badly
wounded was very much larger in proportion to the slightly wounded
than was the case with the men; it is fairly certain that one-half
of the trained professional officers of the German service were
permanently out of action by the end of the year.
Supposing the Russian losses to be no greater than the Western Allies
(they probably are somewhat greater, from the conditions of the
fighting), or call them 30 per cent. instead of 25 per cent., and
supposing the Austro-Hungarian losses to be comparable to the German
(which, from the only available sources of statistics, they would
seem to be), then we can strike a very rough estimate of the element
of wastage, and we can say that if the central figure be taken as 9,
3.6 have gone; while of the 4 and 3 on either side (the proportionate
strength of the Allies West and East in the first phase) 1 has gone
in each case, leaving 3 and 2.
It will be seen that, from this rough calculation, the wastage of
the enemy has been so much greater than our own that, if it were
absolute, his preponderance in numbers would have ceased, and the
figures would stand nearly equal.
But there is one last element in the calculation which must not be
forgotten. The only people permanently out of action in the war are
the killed, the disabled, and the captured. Much the greater part of
the sick return to the centre, and _just over half the wounded_--at
least, in a modern war, and where there are good ambulance
arrangements and good roads for them to work on.
Now, though these “returns” are probably smaller in the East than
in the West (for in the Eastern field climate and absence of
communication are fatal to many of the wounded, who would be saved
in the Western field), we should do well to take a conservative
estimate, and regard it as half the wounded in each case; or,
excluding prisoners, more than a third--say, 35 per cent. of all
casualties.
We must add, therefore, in that proportion to all our figures, and
the result will slightly modify our conclusion, for as the central
body--the enemy--has had more casualties, so it has a larger number
of returns in proportion to its size, and the general deduction is
that at the moment of writing (late winter) the Germanic body and the
Allies opposed to them actually in the field or in training--just
behind the field and ready to approach it within a few weeks--are
nearly equal in total numbers, but with an appreciable margin still
in favour of the enemy.
SUPPLY
_After numbers, the second main factor in the strength of an army is
its supply--its means of obtaining clothes, food, shelter, ammunition
and all those objects without which it can neither exist nor fight.
The marvellously complicated and expensive organization entailed is
here fully explained._
SUPPLY
An army has two main factors of strength--that is, two main material
factors apart from the moral factors of courage, discipline, habit,
and relationship. These two material factors are first its numbers,
and secondly its supply.
The first of these is so much the more obvious in the public eye that
it is often alone considered. It is, of course, the basis of all the
rest. Unless you have a sufficient number of men for your task you
cannot accomplish that task at all. But the second, which is less
often considered by general opinion, is a necessity no less absolute
than the necessity for adequate numbers.
The general term “supply” covers all those objects without which
an army cannot exist or fight--clothing, shelter, food, weapons,
auxiliary instruments, ammunition.
Now it is not the intention of these few lines to enter into details
or to give precise information, such as may be obtained by reference
to the text books, but rather to bring out a few main points about
supply which are not generally considered, especially in moments
such as this, when the obtaining of numbers by voluntary recruitment
is the chief matter in the public mind. And these chief points with
regard to supply may be put briefly in three groups.
First we ought to grasp the _scale_ of supply: that is, the
magnitude of the operation which is undertaken when an army is
equipped, put into the field, and maintained there.
Next we must grasp the _rate_ of supply--the pace at which the stream
of supply has got to be kept moving (varying for various forms of
supply) in order that an army shall neither break down nor dwindle in
efficiency.
Lastly we must consider the _delicacy_ or liability to
_embarrassment_ of supply; that is, the difficulties peculiar
to the maintenance of an army in the field, the ease with which
that maintenance may be fatally interrupted, and the consequent
embarrassment which an enemy may be made to feel, or which the enemy
may make us feel, in this vital operation of war.
As to the scale of supply. Remark that there are in this factor a
number of elements easily overlooked, and the first is the element
of comparative expense. It is of no great value to put before men
rows of figures showing that a large army costs so many millions of
pounds. It is the _comparative_ economic burden of armed service as
contrasted with civilian work which is really of importance, and
which is much more easily grasped than the absolute amount of the
cost.
The great mass of men in an army are, of course, drawn from the same
rank of society as the great mass of labourers and artisans during
peace, and the very first point we have to note about a state of war
is that these men are provided for their trade with instruments and
provisions upon a higher scale than anything which they require in
their civilian life.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM I. The great mass of men in the army are drawn
from the same rank of society as the great mass of labourers and
artisans during peace; but they are provided for their trade with
instruments and provisions upon a higher scale than anything which
they required in their civilian life. The difference in the cost of
upkeep--clothing, food, implements, etc.--of a navvy and a soldier
for one year is shown approximately in the above diagram.]
Their clothing is and must be better, for the wear of a campaign is
something very different from the wear of ordinary living. It is
to this factor that one owes not a little of the complaints that
always arise during a war upon the quality of the material used by
contractors.
Let me give an example drawn from my personal experience. If I am
not mistaken, the heavy dark blue great-coat worn by the gunners in
the French service costs (when all expense was reduced to a minimum
through the agency of Government factories, through the purchase of
clothing wholesale, and through the absence of a whole series of
those profits attaching to ordinary trade) no less than 100 francs,
or £4. That great-coat stood for material and workmanship which,
sold in a West End shop in London, would have meant anything from
£6 upwards. In other words, the private soldiers all through a vast
body of men were wearing a great-coat of a quality--in expense, at
least--which only very well-to-do men, only a tiny minority in the
State, could afford in time of peace.
Next observe that you feed the man (I am glad to say) far better than
the modern capitalist system of production feeds him. You must do
this, or you would not be able to maintain your army at its highest
efficiency.
Many a man who in civilian life would never get butcher’s meat more
than once or twice a week, receives a pound and a quarter of meat
a day in an army. He receives over a pound of bread. And it is
curious to note in a conscript service how small a proportion of the
men--only those, indeed, who are drawn from quite the wealthier
classes--find the provisioning of the army distasteful (none find it
inadequate), and how, for the great majority, it is an advance over
that to which they were accustomed at home.
But there is much more than this high scale of expenditure in the
things necessary to the maintenance of the man himself. You are also
equipping him with special furniture far more expensive than that
which he uses in ordinary life.
You give to the minesman a rifle which is a carefully constructed
and expensive machine, much more valuable than all the tools that
would ever be in the possession of any but a small minority of
skilled artisans. He has belt, pouches, pack covering to match. He
must expend in the use of that weapon ammunition costing something
quite out of proportion to any expenditure involved by the use of his
implements in his civilian trade.
The cavalryman you equip with a horse, which he could not think of
affording as his own property, and which is superior in quality
to the horse he may be working with for a master in most trades,
let alone the fact that the proportion of men thus equipped with
horses is much larger than the proportion of men who in civilian
life have to deal with those animals. To the driver of a gun you
are apportioning two horses necessarily sound and strong; to the
non-commissioned officers throughout the field artillery, to a great
number of officers throughout the service, you are furnishing horses
which, in a civilian occupation, they could never afford, and you
are, of course, also providing the keep of those horses.
Many branches of the service you are equipping with instruments of
very high expense indeed. A field gun does not cost less, I believe,
than £600. And to every thousand men you actually put into the field
you may reckon at least four of these instruments. Every time one of
them fires a shot it fires away fifteen shillings. Apart from the
wear and tear of the field piece itself, a modern quick-firing piece,
firing moderately, will get rid of a ten pound note in ammunition in
a minute, and each piece is allowed from the base onwards 1000 rounds.
Further, an army is equipped with heavy artillery, the pieces of
which cost anything from many hundreds to many thousands of pounds,
according to their calibre (a 9.2, with its mounting, comes to
near £12,000); and it is also equipped with a mass of auxiliary
material--vehicles, mechanical and other, telephones, field kitchens,
aircraft, and the rest--none of which expense attaches to the same
body of men in their civilian life.
The scale of the business is further emphasised by the fact that
once war is engaged the nation as a whole is suddenly called upon to
produce material not only _more expensive_ upon the average, man for
man, than the same men would have used and consumed in the same time
in civilian life, but things _different from_ those things which the
nation was organized to produce for use and consumption during peace.
That change in effect is costly. And yet another element of cost is
the novel use of existing instruments.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM II. Many branches of the service are equipped
with instruments of very high expense indeed. A field gun, for
instance, does not cost less than £600. Every time one of them fires
a shot it fires away fifteen shillings. A modern quick-firing piece,
firing moderately, will get rid of a ten pound note in ammunition in
a minute. Each piece is allowed from the base onwards 1000 rounds and
the extent of this quantity is illustrated in the diagram--40 rows of
shells, 25 in a row.]
It is more expensive to use an instrument for some purpose for which
it was never designed, than to use it for some purpose for which
it was designed. That is a universal truth from the hammering in
of a nail with a boot heel to the commandeering of a liner for the
transport of troops. And in time of war the whole nation begins at
once to use instruments right and left for military purposes, which
instruments had been originally designed for civilian purposes.
All up and down France and England, for instance, at this moment,
every workshop which can by hook or by crook turn out ammunition
is turning it out, and very often is turning it out with
instruments--lathes, cutting tools, etc.--that were originally
designed not for making ammunition at all, but for making the parts
of bicycles, of pumps, of motors, of turbines, etc.
Another instance. Both Powers have found their motor-buses extremely
handy in this war. Paris has been almost bereft of them. London has
been largely denuded of her normal supply. But a motor-bus carrying
meat or even troops is not doing what it was specially designed to
do--to wit, to run on the good roads of a great town, with a certain
maximum load. It needs adaptation, it is used far more roughly, has a
shorter life, and is being therefore more expensively consumed.
Here is one fairly graphic way of showing what this scale of supply
means. Take an Army Corps of 40,000 men. That stands in meat
alone for one year for about as many beasts. It means in clothing
alone--initial expense--apart from waste of all kinds, and apart
from weapons and auxiliary machinery, something between (counting
accoutrement) a quarter and half a million pounds. It stands, in
_daily_ rations of bread alone, for nearly 200 sacks of wheat; in
material equipment--initial, apart from ammunition--it stands in
weapons and machines for at least another quarter of a million, in
_ready_ ammunition of small arms for at least £80,000, in shell for
as much again.
To all this conception of scale you must add two more points. The
soldier is moved in a way that the civilian is not. He is given at
the expense of the State and not for his pleasure, the equivalent of
a great quantity of lengthy excursions. He is taken across the sea,
brought back on leave or in convalescence, moved from place to place
by train or by mechanical traction, and all that upon a scale quite
out of proportion to the narrow limits of his travel during civilian
occupation. Within six months hundreds of thousands of Englishmen
have been conveyed to the heart of France, moved again in that
country over a space of more than a hundred miles, and a considerable
proportion of them brought back and sent out again in the interval.
Lastly, there is the indeterminate but heavy medical expense.
The second and last point in this consideration of scale is the
enormously expensive element of uncertainty. It would be expensive
enough to have to arrange for so much movement and so much clothing
and equipment upon a wholly novel and increased scale, if we knew
exactly what that movement and that equipment was to be--if, so to
speak, you could take the problem _statically_ and work out its
details in an office as you work out the costings of a great shop
or factory. But it is in the essence of an army that it should
be mobile, moving suddenly and as quickly as possible where it
is wanted, with no power of prediction as to how those moves may
develop. You are “in” therefore, for an unknown factor of expense
over and above the novelty and very high cost of the economic energy
you suddenly bring into play with war. And that unknown factor is the
extent to which you will be wasting and moving.
If considerations such as these give us some idea of the _scale_ of
supply, a further series of considerations will help us to appreciate
the _rate_ or _pace_ at which the stream of supply must flow.
There are several ways in which this can be graphically presented
through examples. Here are a few.
Great Britain controls half of the shipping of the world. She engages
in the present war and part of her floating mercantile resources is
suddenly required for the campaign. Those ships have to be constantly
steaming, consuming coal, provisions for their crews, materials for
repairs, at a far higher rate than their civilian use demanded; and
the thing translates itself to the ordinary citizen in the shape of
vastly increased freights and consequently increased prices for the
imports received by this island.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM III. Great Britain controls half the shipping
of the world. She engages in war, and a part of her floating
mercantile resources is suddenly required for the campaign. Those
ships have to be constantly steaming, consuming coals, provisions,
etc., at a far higher rate than their civilian use demanded; and
the thing translates itself to the ordinary citizen in the shape of
increased freights, and consequently increased prices for imports.
The groups A, B and C combined represent the shipping of the world--A
being foreign shipping. B and C together represent the whole of the
British shipping, while the group C by itself represents the portion
detached for the purposes of the war.]
Here is another example. This country is as highly industrialized as
any in the world. It is particularly fitted for the production of
mechanical objects, and especially for mechanical objects in metal,
yet suppose that even this country were asked suddenly (with no more
than the plant it had before the war) to equip such a force as that
with which the French defended their country last August--not to
equip it with ammunition but with weapons and auxiliary machinery
alone; the performance of such a task would have taken all the arms
factories of Great Britain more than two years.