September 5, 1914 L AN D A N D W A T E R 
by furtlier English contingents, by perpetual wearing down of tbe enemy, by compelling liim to 
expend men on his communications, to make the proportion 4 to 4 at last — and then to take the 
counter offensive. 
These things being so, it is obvious that the one outstanding thing in the present situation is the 
l)Ower of the defending line to hold. It may fall back. In falling back it may expose to every kind 
of suffering the French districts that are abandoned. It cannot but, in so falling back, affect in some 
degree the state of mind of the defenders. But it remains mathematically true that so long as that 
Hue holds, and so long as it is neither pierced nor tm-ned, (1) there has been no decision, (2) every day 
that passes is in favour of the Allies. 
2. THE SUCCESS OF GERMAN THEORY. 
The second outstanding fact which the progress of the war has hithei'to revealed is the success of 
certain peculiarly German theories now that they have been pnt to the test of practice, tliough it is 
important for us to measure the exact amount of that success, and not to exaggerate it. 
Among the theories characteristically Gennan, and propounded without actual warfare to prove 
or disprove them during the last generation, were, in particular, the three theories — 
(1) That modern fortification would fall at once to a combination of heavy bombardment by siege 
artillery and determined rushes thrown upon it, at great expense of life, by the infantr}^ of the enemy. 
(2) That men very slightly trained, or even untrained, coidd be incorporated into and digested by 
a trained force in large proportions, and rapidly, during the course of a campaign. 
(3) That attacks in masses, and in fairly close formation, could be earned out with all 
the ad\'antage of weight and numbers they connote, and could be carried out because discipline 
coidd be pushed to such a point that even the enormous losses involved would not check the 
advance. 
Now, in regard to these three main points of Gennan theory, we must clearly seize this fact : 
The war has proved them to be, upon the whole, sound. Or put it this Avay : if you were a determined 
opponent of all these theories (and I have written against them strongly myself) then the war, so far, 
will have proved a disappointment to you, and you will be constrained by intellectual candour to 
admit error. 
But if you put yourself at the other standpoint, and stand in the shoes of the man who believed 
in those theories whole-heartedly, and who based his certitude of final victoiy upon then- complete 
reliability, then it is quite another stor}'. For while the German theories produced diu-ing peace, and 
as yet untested by experience, have been vindicated against their opponents, they have not been 
completely vindicated by any means ; and the extent to which their full success was necessary to the 
German scheme is essential to our estimate of the chances of victoiy or defeat. 
For instance, it is perfectly true that modem fortification has yielded to heavy siege artillery, and 
perhaps to a combination of that with rushes of infantry ; but it has not been the sudden affair that 
was expected by the Germans, save in the case of Namur. The forts of Liege held out apparently for 
4 or 5 days after the heavy siege artillery was trained upon them j the fort of ManonviUiers, an isolated 
work upon the eastern frontier, resisted for ten days at the least, and perhaps twelve. It is as Avell, 
by the -way, in this connection, not to take too seriously the stories of some mysterioiTS Gemian 
howitzer which nobody knew to exist. All wars produce marvellous rumours of that kind, and nearly 
ail such rumoui-s are nonsense. There is no limit to the size of your siege gun or shell, save the limit 
of mobility, in every sense of that word, including rapidity of fire. But it is possible that the numbers 
and the mobility of the large Gennan howitzers were underestimated. 
We find then that, in this department of German theoiy the Germans were much more right than 
their critics, but were not altogether right, and the whole question is how thoroughly they had to be 
right for their general plan to be successful. 
As to the second theory, we have not yet been able to test it. The use of large proportions of 
untrained or half trained reserves broke down badly in East Prussia at the beginning of the Eussian 
advance, but there is no sign of any breakdown in the "West, where perhaps a more moderate 
proportion of the untrained reserve was incorporated. It is probable that we shall find, Avhen the 
detailed history of the war comes to be written, that the incorporation of these untrained ma.sses was, 
as in the case of the other theories, more successful than the critics of the Germans had imagined, but 
less successful than the Germans themselves believed it would be. It is probable, for instance, that 
checks (as that before Antwei"p the other day) occur wherever the proportion of untrained men is more 
than a certain minimum, and it is probable that the effect of these elements would be felt in any 
retirement undertaken, at least in the earlier days of the war. For instance, you will find the rout 
after Gurabinnen probably explained by this featui-e. 
Finally, in the matter of close fonnation and the weight of numbers in advancing against an 
enemy's position, the results have far exceeded what the critics of the German theory put fon^"ard, 
diif, by all accounts, the effort is exceptional, unique, and incapable of repetition. It is not a normal 
process of war, such as the Germans expected to establish to their o^vn ad\'antage. It is not, as was 
the charge of the column under Napoleon, an operation to be repeated by veterans indefinitely ; it is 
a thing subject to peculiar strain, the men having passed througli which cannot be used in such a 
strain repeatedly. 
Tlus last point, if it be established, is of the first importance to the future fortunes of the 
campaign, for it must mean that the losses in the effort to break the Allied line, which efforts have 
filled the last ten days, have been altogether out of proportion to the masses emplojed. 
It is impossible to guess at those losses, but it is possible to establish a minimum and a maximum. 
They may have been over 200,000 ; they can hai-dly have been under 150,000, counting every form o£ 
loss from death to lameness. 
