Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



453 



ARMS AND THE MEN. 



HUGE ARMIES. 



A Source of Weakness or of Strength? 



A WHITER on the Armies of France and Ger- 

 many in the September issue of Lectures pour 

 Tous entitles his article " Does the Strength of 

 Armies Consist in Numbers? " 



WHAT GERMANY'S NEW LAW MEANS. 



He shows how Germany added 11,000 men 

 to her Army last year, making 610,000 soldiers 

 in round numbers, and explains that a further 

 effort is now to be made, so that the Army may 

 count 653,000 soldiers and 30,000 officers. 

 There are to be two new corps, numbered 24 

 and 25, one for the Russian frontier, with head- 

 quarters at AUenstein, and the other for the 

 French frontier, with headquarters at Sarreburg 

 or Mulhouse. In addition, there is the enor- 

 mous increase of the fleet. Such great things 

 naturally mean corresponding expenditure, and 

 herein lies the first difficulty. In 1889 the Ger- 

 man War Budget amounted to something like 

 twenty-eight millions sterling; in 1902 it had 

 attained to thirty-four millions ; and now in 

 1912 it is to exceed forty millions. In other 

 words, one-fourth of the total Budget will be 

 absorbed by military expenditure. In addition 

 to the financial difficulty, there are others 

 scarcely less serious. The larger the .'Krmy the 

 more the barracks which will be required, and 

 these are not built in a day. There must also 



be more officers, and already the number is 

 insufificient. The military career for some rea- 

 son is not so much sought after as it used to be. 

 With the multiplication of soldiers more war 

 materials — guns, munitions, provisions, horses, 

 wagons, railways, etc. — must all be supplied. 



FATE of XERXES. 



Is there any general living who would dare to 

 boast that he could mobilise such formidable 

 legions as Germany proposes to establish? 

 Three hundred resolute Spartans under Leonidas 

 sufficed to bring Xerxes and his immense army 

 to a stand at Thermopyla, while the small 

 Athenian squadron exterminated the Persian 

 fleet of 1,200 ships; and just a century ago we' 

 had the example of Napoleon. There must be 

 some limit to the number of effectives, even 

 though the battlefields of the future may be 

 more extensive than those of the past. For 

 political, social, and economic reasons the wars 

 of the future will of necessity be short, so that if 

 dense armies are massed behind the battlefield 

 they will seldom be called upon to intervene, and 

 then only in small detachments. 



WHY FRANCE LOST IN 187O. 



The teaching of history is that in war mere 

 numbers have never been the essential factor of 

 success. Much more important is the character 

 of the soldier — the moral force of the com- 

 mander and his men. Frnnre would have been 



Interior of Krupp's Works nt lisscn : I he HiK (Jun linisliinR Mall. 



