Chapter I: Part 1

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

* Italics are denoted by underscores as in _italics_, and small
caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS.

* Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected.

* Errata emendations have been inserted into their proper places in
the text.

* Some maps and illustrations have been moved so that they do not
break up paragraphs and lie near the text they illustrate.

THE TWO MAPS OF EUROPE

THE TWO MAPS OF
EUROPE

AND SOME OTHER ASPECTS
OF THE GREAT WAR

BY
HILAIRE BELLOC

LONDON
C. ARTHUR PEARSON LIMITED
HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
1915

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. LTD.
_At the Ballantyne Press_
LONDON AND EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE TWO MAPS OF EUROPE 9

NUMBERS IN WAR 31

SUPPLY 55

WAR TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 75

WHAT TO BELIEVE IN WAR NEWS 99

WHAT THE WAR HAS TAUGHT US 115

FOREWORD

The six chapters of this little book discuss and explain six separate and most important phases of the present war. Every effort has been made to deal with the headings selected as comprehensively and as simply as possible, and it is hoped that, in this convenient form, the handbook will be welcomed by those who wish to follow the campaign with understanding. The various articles reprinted were written during the winter of the present year (1914-15), and many of the conclusions reached apply, therefore, to that period of the war only.

ERRATA

_Page_ 38, _line_ 17, 400 _should read_ 500.
„ „ 5000 „ „ 4000.
_Page_ 42, Description of Map, _line_ 3, 400 _should read_ 500.

THE TWO MAPS OF EUROPE

_Wherein the map of Europe, as it will be if Germany wins, is clearly defined and compared with the map of Europe re-arranged in accordance with the ideals of the Allies._

THE TWO MAPS OF EUROPE

It is everywhere admitted that the result of the great war must be either, upon the whole, to produce a new map of Europe upon the German model, or a new map of Europe upon the model suitable to the ideas of the Allies.

By this it is not meant that either ideal will be completely reached, but that in the settlement one or the other will certainly preponderate. Indeed, it is in the struggle between these two new maps of Europe as ideals that the motive of the war consists.

Now, before attempting to determine in a graphic fashion what those two ideals are--before, that is, trying to draw two maps which shall represent respectively the German goal and the goal of the Allies, we must lay down certain postulates which are not always recognized but which are certainly true.

Unless we recognize their truth we shall come to accept wild statements, and to be frightened of those ridiculous prophecies which propose the extermination of Germany on the one hand, or the rule of the German government over England or France on the other.

I. The first of these postulates is that a modern European nation no longer desires to _annex_ white men in Europe, and the territory they inhabit.

The example of Alsace-Lorraine alone has proved a sufficient lesson; the continued vitality of Poland after a hundred years has proved another, and even the difficulties of the Austro-Hungarian governments, with their subject races, a third. This does not mean that a modern European government would not annex in any circumstance. The possession of some all-important military or commercial point might occasionally make the perilous experiment worth while. But it means that the idea of annexation as an obvious corollary to military success has disappeared.

II. The second postulate is as follows: It is universally recognized--by the Germans quite as much as by ourselves--that the political boundaries so long established in Europe hardly ever correspond to exact national groupings, and very often violently conflict with the realities of national life.

No one is so foolish, for instance, as to pretend that the Finnish provinces of Russia are not quite separate from the rest of the Czar’s dominions in tradition, and consciousness, and habit, and all the rest that makes a nation. No one in England now denies the existence of an Irish nationality.

No one, to take an Eastern case, would pretend that the Serbian feeling of nationality was not very real, and was very far from being contained by the present boundaries of Serbia.

The excuse for the old point of view--the point of view that political boundaries were sufficient and that the true nationalities which they cut through or suppressed might be neglected--was that in time, with the modern rapidity of communication and the power of the modern State, these divergent elements would be _absorbed_, or _digested into_, the greater nationality which governed them. But experience has falsified this very reasonable conception. It has been found not only that this transformation did not take place, but even that the old real nationalities were actually getting stronger. Poland, for instance, artificially cut through by the German, Austrian, and Russian frontiers, did seem for a time as though it were going to spring into a Russian, a German, and an Austrian type of Polish men; and in the latter case, that of Austria, some considerable advance was made towards such a result. But generations passed, and the process did not continue; on the contrary, the tide began to set backwards, and the conception of a united Poland is far stronger to-day even in the small and successful Austrian portion of Poland than it was thirty years ago.

In the face of these two postulates, the true national groupings have discovered their power and have already begun to appear in real form, as it were, through the artificial political boundaries which divided or suppressed them. Any one, the Germans as much as the rest, proposing to reconstruct Europe must most certainly take account of such realities, and must deal with the many national groups of Europe as the stones out of which the new building is to be erected.

But the particular way in which those stones may be used, the combinations into which they may be grouped, the main influences which are to impose themselves upon particular great agglomerations of new nationalities are the whole issue of the debate, and form the whole subject of this war.

The German Empire and its Ally, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy--that is, the reigning house of Hapsburg-Lorraine--wants the re-arrangement to take a certain form which would leave the German speech and culture and tradition the predominating thing in Europe, and probably in the whole world.

The Allies, upon the other hand, are fighting for a less simple idea. They are fighting for the double conception of:

(_a_) Retaining the existing independence of certain
national groups.

(_b_) Erecting other independent or partly independent
groups, the existence of which and the general influence
of which shall restrict German and in particular Prussian
power.

This dual conception the Allies rightly term the preservation and the extension of national liberties in Europe.

Now before we can comprehend either what the Germans are striving for or what the Allies are striving for, we must make a catalogue of those national groups which are at the foundation of the whole business. In making that catalogue we must remember what it is that creates a national group.

(excluding the South, which is exterior to this war)

The Slavs Roman in Religion. True National Frontiers.

1, 2, 3, 4.--Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland.

National groupings have discovered their power and have already begun to appear in real form through the artificial political boundaries which divided or suppressed them. Anyone proposing to reconstruct Europe must most certainly take account of such realities, and must deal with the many national groups of Europe as the stones out of which the new building is to be erected.]

What makes a nation is _corporate tradition_. The strongest element in this is an historic memory. A nation which can point to having enjoyed a national existence in the past is much more firmly seated in its ambition to retain or to recover its independence than one which has never had such historic existence.

Another element in this constitution of a nationality is language. A common language is a much weaker element of nationality than tradition, as we see in the case of Belgium, which is almost equally divided between Latin-speaking and Teutonic-speaking people; and in the case of Switzerland. But it is none the less a strong thing; nowhere is it stronger than in the case of Poland. While, upon the other hand, you have exactly the opposite in the case of Irish national feeling; in the case of German-speaking Lorraine and Alsace; and you might very well have had a similar case in Bohemia where there is now a strong national feeling backed by a national Slav language, though that language was artificially revived comparatively recently.

Yet another factor is religion, and it is a most powerful one. It creates, for instance, a gulf between the Catholic and the Orthodox Slav, and it creates an awkward complexity in the problem of those Slavs whose religious ritual is Greek, but who are yet in communion with Rome.

It is impossible to attribute numerical value to each of these various factors, or to say that language everywhere counts for so much, religion for so much, etc. We have to take each particular case and judge it as it stands. And if we do that with an impartial judgment upon the real national feeling, we get some such list as the following, for the Continent alone.

(1) The French, who within their own boundaries are perfectly united; although certain districts (a little group in the Pyrenees and another little group in Western Brittany and another in the extreme north-east) speak a language of their own. To this French group should be added the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine which were annexed by the Germans in 1871. Alsace and Lorraine have enjoyed great material prosperity under German rule; the metal industry of the North has been immensely developed, and in a dozen other ways the German administration has increased their wealth, and has added to their population serious elements of German sympathy. But take the provinces as a whole and there is no doubt that their re-union with France is still the passionate desire of the great majority among them.

(2) Belgium is again undoubtedly the example of a separate--though less united--national group in whose individual feeling religion plays a great part, but still more historic existence through nearly a century as an independent State (during which century Belgium has vastly increased its population and its wealth), and for much more than a century the separate existence of the district as the Southern Netherlands as distinct from Holland.

(3) Holland, in its turn, both on account of its long independent existence, its strong national feeling and its peculiar experience as a commercial seafaring power, makes a third individual group. The populations immediately to the east of Holland in German territory speak a language of the same sort as the Dutch, and have the same social conditions and habits, but they have no desire to be Dutch, nor the Dutch to be incorporated with them.

(4) The Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, form an equally distinct unit, and are quite clearly divided into three separate national groups. And here we have two anomalies: A quite small belt of Denmark, much smaller than the total original extent of Schleswig-Holstein, annexed by Prussia fifty years ago, is really Danish, and maintains to this day its protest against the annexation. One may go so far as to say that this really Danish belt is no more than a tenth of the whole, but its protest is a proof of the vigour which national feeling has maintained against artificial political boundaries. On the other hand, the Finnish provinces of Russia are, in their articulate spirit, their governing class, their religion, and almost in their entire social life Swedish in tone. Norway is intact, neither suffering a portion of her population under alien rule nor pretending to govern populations alien to herself.

(5) The fifth great group is the German, and here there is so much complexity that what we have to say must only be taken very generally and roughly. But, roughly and generally, the German group is as follows:

All German-speaking men and women with the exception of:

(_a_) The bulk of the annexed provinces of Alsace-Lorraine
(a matter of sentiment), and

(_b_) The German-speaking cantons of Switzerland (a matter
of political boundaries).

Now the boundaries of this “German feeling” group in Europe are curiously involved and tortuous. Beginning at the Baltic, roughly at the mouth of the River Niemen (which the Germans call the Memel), the true frontier of the German type runs southward for a short distance until it reaches what is called the Region of the Lakes, where the Russian frontier begins to turn west. There the boundary turns west also, and begins to run north again, nearly reaching the Baltic Sea in the neighbourhood of Dantzig. It then turns south by west, goes far west of Thorn and even of Posen, which are Polish towns, and comes round not far east of Frankfort-on-Oder. Then it goes south and east again, coming right through the middle of German Silesia, but, on reaching the mountains that here bound Bohemia, it curls round northwestward again, leaving the mountainous part of the barrier of Bohemia all German, but excluding the Slavonic true Bohemian people in the centre of that isolated region. The Upper Valley of the Elbe is not German. Having thus gone all the way round Bohemia proper, the boundaries of the German type run eastward again, very nearly following the watershed of the Danube until they strike the March River about thirty miles from Vienna. Vienna is thus not a centre, but, like Berlin, an outpost of German speech and civilization. From Vienna the true frontier of the German folk runs south, more or less corresponding to the existing boundary between Austria and Hungary, until it passes the point of Gratz--which counts as German. Thence the boundary turns due west again, taking in the greater part of the Tyrol, and so to the Swiss frontier and on to the Rhine opposite Belfort. Thence it follows the Rhine to a point south of Spiers, and after that follows the existing boundaries (excepting Luxembourg), and is confined by the Dutch and Belgian frontier and the North and Baltic Seas with the exception of the Danish belt north of the Kiel Canal, which is mainly Danish.

Within that curiously twisted line nearly all speech and all feeling is German. There are many States within that line, there is much confusion of historic tradition, a sharp division in religion--roughly Catholic in the south and west, Protestant in the north and east. But the national group is, especially as against the Slav and even as against western and southern Europe, one body; and within that body Prussia, with its capital of Berlin, is the organizing and directing centre.

Are there anomalies to be discovered with regard to this curiously shaped body? There are; but they are of less importance than is often imagined. Thus there are beyond Eastern Prussia and within the Russian boundary the so-called “German” Baltic provinces of Russia. But the term is a misnomer. The leaders of industry are largely German, most of the towns, and the greater landed aristocracy for the most part. But the mass of the population is not German-speaking, and even of the German-speaking minority only a minority again are in any sympathy with the united German feeling to the west.

There are colonies of German speech far eastward of Vienna under the political dominion of Hungary; a particularly large one being discoverable right up in the south-eastern Carpathians next to the Roumanian border. But these colonies could never be included in any united Germany. Nor could the considerable number of similar isolated colonies of Germans in southern and western Russia. Finally, you have on the extreme west the little province of Luxembourg, which is German-speaking, which has its railways and most of its industries controlled by Germans, but which would in any perfectly free system certainly refuse incorporation with any new German unity, for it has an historic tradition of independence which has proved very valuable to it, and may be compared with that of the Swiss German-speaking cantons.

(6) We next have to consider the Slavs, and these fall into two groups, northern and southern, which two groups are thus separated by the great Mongolian invasion of Eastern Europe in the Dark Ages. There is further among the Slavs a cross-section of great importance, that of religion. It separates the Slavs not into northern and southern, but, roughly, into eastern or Greek church, and western or Catholic. With the northern Slavs we count the Bohemians or Czechs, the Poles, and the Russians--using the latter term, of course, for many distinct but connected groups, for it is certain that Russia proper must remain a unity.

There are also just north of the Carpathians two minor northern Slavonic groups, the Slovacs and the Ruthenians. These northern Slavs are divided into Catholic Slavs and Slavs of the Greek Church, or Orthodox, by a vague belt of territory running, roughly, from the town of Vilna down to the borders of the Bukovina; the Poles and Czechs, etc., being in communion with Rome, while the Russians are of the Greek Church.

The southern Slavs are again divided into Catholic and Orthodox by a very sharp and bitter division. The Slovenes and the Croats stand for the Catholic group, the Serbian nation, as a whole, for the Orthodox group; a part of the Serbians and all the Slovenes and Croats are in the Austro-Hungarian dominions, and it is the Serbian element which is in rebellion. The rest of the Serbians are now independent. And so complicated are population and religion in this region that nearly a third of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while Slav in race, are Mohammedan in religion.

(7) Between these two great Slav groups, northern and southern, struck in, during the Dark Ages, a wedge of invading Mongols whose position has been of the greatest importance to the history of Eastern Europe. They were converted to Christianity nearly a thousand years ago, and the Mongol type has entirely disappeared, but the Mongol language remains under the title of _Magyar_, and it is the _Magyar_-speaking _Hungarians_ that are the ruling race over all the eastern part of Austria-Hungary, though they are only half of the total population in their dominion. In any new national grouping this fiercely independent Magyar population must be taken for granted, though its claim to rule alien subjects is another matter.

(8) Finally, there is a curious group of the greatest importance, both because so much of its population is forbidden independence and because the remainder has attained independence. That group is the Roumanian group.

Racially, the Roumanians are probably Slavs for the most part, but their tongue is a Latin tongue; they are proud of Latin descent, and they are just as much a wedge between the Slavs of the north and south as the Magyars themselves. They everywhere overlap their nominal political boundaries; three million and a half of them extend far into Hungary, and a portion over the boundaries of Russia. For the most part they are Orthodox, or Greek, in religion. But it must always be remembered, because it is essential to understanding the new Europe, that the Roumanian-speaking people under Hungarian rule are, quite half of them and perhaps the majority, cut off from the Orthodox Church and in union with Rome.

With this summary, which has been expressed in Map I, you have a fair, though of course rough, division of Europe into its real national components.

Now let us ask what Germany and Austria would propose, in case of their victory, to make out of such materials.

1. Luxembourg
2. Belgium
3. Germany
4. Switzerland
5. Italy
6. Mixed Italian and German
7. Russia
8. Bohemia
9. Bosnia
10. Austrian
11. Holland
12. Bukovina
13. Hungary
14. Serbia
15. Roumania
16. Bulgaria
17. Montenegro
18. Albania
19. Greece
20. Turkey

The boundaries of the “German feeling” group in Europe are very roughly suggested by the thick black line. Within that curiously twisted line nearly all speech and all feeling is German.]

In the first place Germany would keep all that she has, indifferent to national anomalies or the unquiet of subject and oppressed peoples. She would keep Alsace-Lorraine; she would keep in subjection the Poles who are already in subjection to her; she would leave the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy under the Hapsburgs with all its present possessions, whether those possessions grossly interfered with national realities or no. Would she annex territory, in spite of the first of the two postulates which I have already mentioned?

The German constitutional system is of its nature federal. There is room in it for many kinds of states, each possessed of a very great measure of independence, and if the inclusion within one commercial system and one military system also, however loose that inclusion, be called annexation, then we may say that Germany would annex in some degree. She would wish to control directly the Mouth of the Scheldt and probably the Teutonic-speaking part of Belgium, that is, the north of that country. She would certainly desire to administrate the Ardennes, which would be her frontier against France, and she would quite certainly take over Luxembourg.

As to Holland, her plan would probably be different there from that pursued in any other case. She would leave it as independent in its own eyes as it was before; she might insist upon an alliance with the Dutch army, she would certainly insist upon commercial terms, and probably rights of using certain ports in certain cases for war. But nothing but inexcusable folly would tempt her to go further. The position of Holland after a German settlement might not uncertainly be compared to the position of Hamburg in the old days, on a larger scale, a free State just as Hamburg was a free city.

This easy and, as it were, mutually arranged compromise with Holland, coupled with dominion over the Scheldt and Antwerp, would give the German peoples what they most desire, the whole littoral of the North Sea. Further, possessing Antwerp, as they would certainly possess it, they would have a commercial lever for keeping Holland in order. They could direct all their trade at will towards Antwerp to the starvation of Rotterdam.

The Scandinavian countries they would regard as naturally German in feeling, and as falling in a vague and general way into their orbit. Possessing the Kiel Canal, they would not strictly need the Sound. But they would so dominate Denmark that they could make what commercial or military terms they chose with regard to the passages of the Baltic; and you would have German firms, German methods, and to some extent the German language holding “civil garrisons” throughout the useful part of Sweden and Norway.

On the East some have imagined they would erect as against Russia a mutilated and dependent Polish State. It is more probable that they would confine themselves to procuring some liberty for Russian Poland, and obtaining some convention as to fortification and commerce. Russia will always be formidable, and to maintain the mutual bond of a subject Poland between Russia and herself would serve in the future, as it has served in the past, the ends of Prussia. It is essential to Prussia that no really independent Poland should re-arise, even mutilated. It is even essential that there should be no one area that the Poles could regard as the nucleus of a really free Polish State.

In the Balkans the Germanic Powers would certainly demand the control over what is now Serbia, and, at the risk of further war, the outlet at Salonika. The remnant of the Turkish Empire in Europe they already regard as being under their protectorate.

As to the West, they would, rightly, treat it merely as a defeated foe. France (they would say) might continue to decline--for the Germans, getting things out of Berlin, always talk of “the decay of the Latin peoples”--her decline accelerated by stringent commercial treaties and a heavy indemnity; England would be envisaged in the same terms. Germany would demand from England certain coaling stations; she would impose on England also certain commercial conditions. But there would be no need to restrict the building of a Fleet, for there a victorious Germany would feel easily able to look after herself.

Boundary of Germanic Allies to-day, with their dependent States.

Small districts which might be actually annexed: the Lower Scheldt, Middle Meuse, Ardennes, Luxembourg, a corner of French Lorraine, a few frontier districts of Russian Poland.

Countries which would be dependent upon the Germanic hegemony, being of kindred blood and speech, and which would in special points admit actual economic or political control by Germans.

Buffer Polish States, which Prussia might erect dependent on herself and as a barrier against Russia.

Holland, a special case. Kindred in speech. Not actually annexed, perhaps, but allowed only a quasi-independent position with German control, veiled, in the two principal ports, and facilities for German Navy. Also included in any economic policy.

Districts in no way kindred to Germanic peoples, but to be annexed, or at any rate directly controlled in order to command the Balkans, to dominate Constantinople, and to get a passage to the Ægean Sea.

District which German Empire might annex, both on account of its German elements in population, and on account of controlling the Baltic.]

One may sum up and say that Germany and Austria expect from victory a Europe in which all that is German-speaking and already within their moral influence shall support their power over the world, that power not coming in the shape of annexations, save at one or two selected points.

Once on the North Sea, and once having broken British maritime supremacy, Central Europe would leave the future to do its work, content in the East with dominating the Balkans and reaching the Ægean Sea, and with permanently holding back the further advance of Russia.

1. To retain their present boundaries: Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, Sweden.

2. The Germanic Peoples: with the Catholic South leaning upon Vienna and a large autonomy to individual States.

3. France: with Alsace-Lorraine.

4. Poland: Quasi-independent, but a holding of Russia.

5. Czechs: Quasi-independent, but probably still a holding of Vienna.

6. Ruthenians (a minor Slavonic group): either annexed to Russia, or closely dependent on her.

7. An independent Magyar State.

8. An independent Catholic Southern Slav or Croat State, probably a holding of Vienna.

9. An orthodox Southern Slav State, Serbia, with access to Adriatic, but not holding Bulgarian territory.

10. Roumania, enlarged by her Transylvanian population.

11. Bulgaria.]

If this is the German programme, what is that of the Allies?

Primarily, it is the maintenance of not only liberties, but powers already acquired. In the economic sphere it is, of course, the maintenance of those international contracts upon which the wealth of England and of France depends. It is the maintenance of English power at sea, the re-establishment of a united France by land, the recovery of Belgium, and the guaranteeing of Holland in her neutrality, whether she wills it or no.

But over and beyond this there is the problem of reconstruction, and here you have two clear principles:

(1) It is to the advantage of the Allies to recognize everywhere, as much as possible, the realities of nationality.

(2) It is a matter of life and death to the Allies to prevent the re-establishment of Prussian power, with its ideal of domination over others.

To some extent these two policies agree, but not entirely. To erect a larger Serbia, to free the Croats and the Slovenes, or perhaps to take from their territory the ports necessary to Serbia on the Adriatic, giving Serbia also the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina; meanwhile, to let Bulgaria occupy the purely Bulgarian districts which Serbia now has, to re-erect a united Poland, to give Roumania her nationals beyond the Carpathians at the expense of Hungary; to make Hungary as far as possible independent of Vienna in administration, and in particular in military affairs--all that is part of universal policy which everyone expects.

But what of Germany from within?

It is evident that the control of the Baltic, which the Kiel Canal involves, means that the Kiel Canal should be neutralized. It is equally evident that, while the Bohemians may not be wholly separated from the Germanic body which nearly encloses them, the largest measure of autonomy for these isolated Slavs fits the case of the Allies. But as for the policy to be pursued for Germany herself in case of a victory on the part of the Allies, that is a much more complex matter.

Roughly, it would seem to depend upon two main principles: First, that the more ancient and the more civilized pole of Germany, the southern pole which is at Vienna, should be in every way favoured at the expense of the northern pole, Berlin, to which we have owed this catastrophe. Secondly, that an economic policy should be imposed which shall leave industrial Germany free to produce and yet compelled to pay.

A policy of that kind means, of course, a carefully framed tariff, so designed that the tribute necessary to paying the cost of this great adventure shall fall upon its authors.

Germany showed the way in 1871 upon what now looks like a modest scale, but was then designed to be ruthless. It is our business to copy that example.

NUMBERS IN WAR

_In which it is explained why, other things being equal, numbers are always the deciding element in warfare, and how the enemy had a superiority throughout the autumn and winter (written late in the winter of 1914-1915)._

NUMBERS IN WAR

The general reader hears continually in these times that _numbers_ are the decisive element in war. That every authority, every student and every soldier is convinced of it, he cannot fail to see from the nature of the orders given and of the appeals made. Numbers in material, and in men, are the one thing urged. The public critique of the war is filled with estimates of enemy and allied numbers, numbers of reserve, numbers of killed, numbers of prisoners. The whole of the recruiting movement in this country is based on this same conception of numbers.

Now the general reader may appreciate the general character of this conception, but he must often be puzzled by the detailed application of it.

If I am told that ten men are going to fight eight, the mere sound of the figures suggests superiority on the part of the ten, but unless I know how they are going to fight, I should be puzzled to say exactly how the extra two would tell. I certainly could not say whether the two would be enough to make a serious difference or not, and I might come to a very wrong conclusion about the chances of the eight or the ten. So it is worth while if one is attempting to form a sound opinion upon the present campaign to see exactly how and why numbers are the deciding factor in war.

In the first place it is evident that numbers only begin to tell when other things are fairly equal. Quite a few men armed with rifles will be a match for multitudes deprived of firearms, and the history of war is full of smaller forces defeating larger forces from Marathon to Ligny. But when war follows upon a long period of peace and takes place between nations of one civilization all closely communicating one with another, and when war has been the principal study of those nations during the period of peace, then all elements except those of numbers do become fairly equal. And that is exactly the condition of the present campaigns.

The enemy have certain advantages in material, or had at the beginning of the struggle, notably in the matter of heavy artillery, but much more in the accurate forecast they had made of the way in which modern fighting would turn. All sorts of their tactical theories turned out to be just.

The Allied forces had advantages--the English in personal equipment, medical and commissariat service; the French, Russians, and Serbians, in the type of field gun. The French in particular in their theory of strategy, which has proved sound.

But there was no conspicuous difference such as would make a smaller number able to defeat a much larger one, and the historical observer at a distance of time that will make him impartial, will certainly regard the war as one fought between forces of nearly the same weaponing and training. The one great differentiating point will be numbers.

Now how is it that these numbers tell?

There are two aspects of the thing which I will call (1) The Effect of _Absolute_ Numbers and (2) The Effect of _Proportionate_ Numbers.

(1) _Absolute Numbers_. I mean by the effect of absolute numbers the fact that a certain minimum is required for any particular operation. For instance, if you were holding a wall a mile long which an enemy upon the other side desired to surmount, it is evident that you could not hold such a wall with one man even though the enemy on the other side consisted only in one man. The opportunities for the success of the enemy would be too great. You could not hold it with ten men against ten. You could hardly hold it with 100 men against 100. But supposing that you have 3000 men to hold it with, and they are using no weapons save their hands, then 3000 men could hold the wall not only against 3000 others, but against any number of thousands of others; for every man would have as his task the pushing of a ladder off no more than a very small section of the wall with which his own hands could deal.

There we see what is meant by the necessity of absolute numbers or a minimum.

Now that is exactly what you have in the case of a great line of trenches. Your defending force does not get weaker and weaker as it diminishes in number until it reaches zero; it is able to hold trenches of a certain length with a certain minimum of men, and when it falls below that minimum _it cannot hold the line at all_. It has to fall back upon a shorter line. Supposing you have, for instance, under such conditions as those of Diagram I, a line of trenches A-B holding the issue between two obstacles X and Y against an enemy who attacks from the direction E. The number of men holding these trenches, A-B, is nine units, and this number is just enough, and only just enough, to prevent an enemy attacking from E getting through. Nine units just prevent any part of the line of trenches, A-B, from being left defenceless.

What does one mean by saying: “Just enough to prevent an enemy getting through?”

One means that if you consider trenches in detail, a certain length of trench needs a certain number of men to hold it, and if that number of men is not present, it must be altogether abandoned. It is evident that a mile of trench, for instance, could not be held by half-a-dozen men, even if the forces opposed to them were only a half-dozen.

You must, first, have enough men to cover the field of fire in front of the trench with the missiles from the weapons of each, and so stop the assault of the enemy. Every man with his rifle may be regarded as accounting for a certain angle of space in front of him as in the angles A B C and the other similar angles in Diagram II. These angles must meet and cover the whole ground, in theory at least, not further from the trench than the most advanced point to which it has been discovered that an enemy’s rush will reach before combined fire stops it. In practice, of course, you need very many more men, but the theory of the thing is that if the extreme point at which you can expect to stop a rush is the line L-L, and if the angle over which a rifle is usefully used is the angle B-A-C, then you cannot hold the trench at all unless you have at least enough men a-a-a just to cover that line L-L with their fire. If you try to do it with less men, as in Diagram III, you would only cover a portion of the front; you would leave a gap in it between X and Y through which the trench would be carried.

It is evident, I repeat, that in practice there are needed to hold trenches a great many more men than this. You must allow for your wastage, for the difference in ability and coolness of different men, for the relieving of the men at regular and fairly short intervals, and in general, it will be found that a line of trenches is not successfully held with less than 3000 men to a mile.

The Germans are now holding in the West a line of trenches 500 miles long with something like 4000 men to a mile; so the best work in the war would seem to have been done by a portion of the British contingent in front of Ypres when, apparently, a body only 1500 men to the mile, and those I understand, dismounted cavalry, successfully held some three miles of trenches for several days.

It is apparent, then, that when you are considering a line of trenches you must consider them as a series of sections, to defend each of which sections a certain minimum is required. Thus we may consider the line A-B in Diagram IV as consisting of nine sections, as numbered, and each section as requiring a certain minimum unit of men, say a thousand. If any section has less than its proper minimum the whole line fails, for that section will be carried and the cord will be broken.

(_See Diagram VII overleaf._)]

Now look back at the first diagram; there you have the line A-B, and there are nine units just able to hold it.

Suppose by killed and prisoners and wounded and disease the nine dwindle to six, then the line A-B can no longer be held. It means in practice that the six remaining would have to be grouped as in Diagram V or as in Diagram VI, and in any case there would be a bad gap, double or single, through which the enemy pressing from E would pierce. What can the general in command of the defence do when his force has thus dwindled?

He has no choice but to _fall back upon shorter lines_. That is, having only six units left he must retire to some such point as the line F-G, Diagram VII, where his remaining six units will be just sufficient to hold the line, and if the six dwindle to four he must again fall back to a yet shorter line, such as C-D.

Note carefully that this does not concern proportionate numbers. We are not here considering the relative strength of the defence and of the offence; we are dealing with absolute numbers, with a minimum below which the defensive _cannot_ hold a certain line at all, but _must_ seek a shorter one.

Now that is precisely the state of affairs upon the French and Belgian frontiers at this moment. The Germans are holding a line, which is roughly that shown in Diagram VIII, between the Swiss mountains and the sea near Nieuport, the line A-B about 400 miles long in all its twists and turns. If their numbers fall below a certain level they cannot hold that line at all, and they must take up a shorter line. How could they do this? Either by abandoning Alsace-Lorraine and substituting C-G for the present C-B, or by abandoning most of Belgium and all northern France, and falling back upon the line Antwerp-Namur-The Ardennes and the Vosges, substituting E-C for A-C. With failing numbers they would have to take up a still shorter line from Liege southwards, just protecting German territory, the line F-B.

As for the line of the Rhine lying immediately behind F-B, the line D-D-D, it is a great deal longer than the shortest line they could take up. F-B, and though heavily fortified at five important points and with slighter fortifications elsewhere, it would need quite as many men to defend it as a corresponding line of trenches. Thus it would be no shortening of the German line to fall back upon the Rhine.

So much for an illustration of what is meant by absolute numbers and of their importance in the present phase of the campaign.

(2) Now what of _Proportionate_ numbers? That is a point upon which even closer attention must be fixed, because upon it will depend the issue of the campaign.

The first thing we have to see clearly is that Austria and Germany began the war with a very great preponderance in numbers of trained and equipped men ready to take the field within the first six weeks. They had here a great advantage over Russia and France combined, and to see what that advantage was look at Diagram IX.

Figure A represents the total number of men Germany and Austria together could put into the field by about the middle of September. B represents the French and the first British contingent in the West; C what the Russians could do in the East.

This original superiority of the enemy is a point very little appreciated because of two things. First, that men tend to think of the thing in nations and not in numbers, and they think of Germany, one unit, attacked by England, France, Russia, a lot of other units, and next because there is a grave misconception as to the numbers Russia could put into the field _early_ in the war.

Russia had a certain force quite ready, that is fully equipped, officered, trained, gunned, and the rest of it. But she had nothing like the numbers in proportion to her population that the enemy had. The proportions of population were between Russia and her enemy as seventeen to thirteen. But Germany and, to a less extent, Austria and Hungary, had organized the whole population ultimately for war. Russia could not do this. Her advantage, only to be obtained after a considerable lapse of time, was the power of perpetually raising new contingents, which, by the time they were trained and equipped could successively enter the field. But at the opening of the war, say by the middle of September, when she had perhaps at the most two-and-a-half million men in Poland, the total forces of the enemy, that is the total number of men Austria and Germany had equipped, trained, and ready for the field since the beginning of the war, was at least eight million.

You have the war, then, beginning with the enemy standing at quite 8, the French nominally at 4, but really nearer 3; Russia at 2½.

Let us see how time was to modify this grave disproportion and how new contingents coupled with the effect of wastage were to affect it.

The armies which were in the field in the early part of the war bear very various relations to the countries from which they come.

Great Britain had upon the Sambre in the first battle of the campaign rather more than one-tenth per cent. of her total population. The French had in the field at the outset of the war 5 per cent. of their total population, the Russians 1 per cent., the Germans perhaps 5 per cent., the Austrians between 3 and 4 per cent., the Serbians quite 10 per cent.--and 10 per cent. is the largest total any nation can possibly put into the field.

Now the chances of growth for each of these contingents were very different in each case.

That of Great Britain was indefinitely large. Given sufficient time, sufficient money, and sufficient incentive, Great Britain might ultimately put into the field two million or even three. She was certain of putting into the field in the first year of the war more than one million; she might hope to put in two. She had further behind her as a recruiting field, the Colonies, and--a matter of discussion--the Indian Army.

The French had nothing to fall back on save the young men who were growing up. Therefore, they were certain not to be able to add to their numbers for at least six months, which is just about the time it takes to train effectively new formations.

The Germans had in reserve about as many men again as they had put under arms at the beginning of the war. If the French could hope for a grand total of four millions wherein somewhat over three might be really effective and of useful age for active service in any shape, then Germany might hope to produce a grand total of somewhat over seven millions and a similar useful body of over five, for the German adult males are to the French as more than five to three.

Austria could in the same way call up a reserve somewhat larger in proportion than the Germans, but as her population was somewhat smaller than Germany, we must write her down for something over four millions instead of something over five, for a grand total of between five and six millions instead of for a grand total of seven.

Serbia, like France, could not increase her contingent save by calling up her younger men; and her army was, like that of the French, a fixed quantity, at any rate for the first six months of the war, and increased by one-tenth or less when the new class was trained.

Russia in her turn presented yet another type of growth. She had by far larger reserves of adult males than any other Power, and was practically equal, in the material of which one can ultimately make trained soldiers, to Germany and Austria combined; theoretically, counting all her various races, she was the superior of Austria and Germany combined. But it was certain that she could not equip more than a certain number in a given time, or train them, or officer them, or govern them.

I think it just to say that she certainly could not put into the 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.

_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.