January 9, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
the beginning of our inquiry we must first set down 
those certain official statistics. 
It will be seen then, that if a, nation could put 
under arms and train and use for the purposes of 
war the whole of its adult male population from 
the ages of twenty to forty-five inclusive, and if 
all the men thus trained and put under arms were 
of equal value and formed equal units in perfectly 
constructed and proportioned armies, and if all 
this could be done at the very outset of war (an 
absurd hypothesis, but one necessary to the de- 
velopment of this argument) the Germanic Allies 
would have begun the fight with a preponderance 
of 21, as against 15 in the West ; and with a handi- 
cap of 21, as against 26 in the East. 
If compelled to fight both such hypothetical 
enemies at once, Germany and Austria would 
have been at a disadvantage of almost 1 to 2 : 
21 to 41. 
Let me put it in tabular form : — 
Allies. 
Enemy. 
England ... 
8 
Germany . . . 
12 
France 
7 
Austria 
9 
Russia 
26 
41 
21 
There is the first — and most misleading — step 
in the whole aftair. 
II. -THE POTENTIALS. 
Now, let us consider how these resources 
shrink when- we consider, not the mere totals 
of adult males, but the " Potentials," That is the 
most that, under existing conditions of military 
organisation and expectation in each country, each 
could bring forward in a year, supposing there 
were no such things as delay in equipment, ineffi- 
cients, necessary civilian employment, etc. 
In other words, supposing that the five Great 
Powers had been able to put under arms at the 
outset of the war the total numbers which their 
military organisation proposed as theoretically 
available for the field, apart from all deductions 
necessary for civilian work, for physical ineffi- 
ciency, etc., how would the figures stand then? 
The British conception of total possible mili- 
tary resources envisaged an Expeditionary Force 
of fewer than 200,000 — but with reserves behind 
them. Behind these again a militia (whether to be 
used at home or abroad does not affect the argu- 
ment, for Britain is part of the European Belli- 
gerent area) of, say, roughly, half a million men. 
That half million was not, of course, fully trained 
for war, but we are considering, for the moment, 
only the hypothesis of total potential forces. 
Again, the total armed forces of the Crown in this 
country were very much larger, of course, than the 
Expeditionary Force envisaged. But for the pur- 
poses of the European (and decisive) campaign, 
the Expeditionary Force and the Territorials at 
home or on the Continent should alone be con- 
sidered. For the forces used in the Dependencies, 
etc., do not count in the active total of the field of 
European operations. 
Beyond these existing figures Great Britain 
might hope for voluntary or compulsory levies, 
which we may put for the purposes of this calcula- 
tion at a maximum of two million volunteers avail- 
able within the time that the Great Continental 
Powers could bring in and train the total of their 
disposable men. We may set down Great Britain, 
then, with the figures .2 (of a million) for an Ex- 
peditionary Force, . for her Militia' (" Terri- 
torials "), and obtain the total figure .7. The 
figure 2 stands for the 2 millions of maximum 
available reserve of volunteers, making a grand 
total of .2.7. Seeing that the Expeditionary Force 
had its own reserves for filling gaps and making 
up the full strength, we are not exaggerating if we 
make of this figure 2.7 the round figure 3. 
Let us set dowTi Great Britain, then, the first 
upon the list, with the figure 3 3 
The French figure 7 allows for no modifica- 
tion. Not that all this 7 are, or will be, in the 
field, of course, or could be. But that the French 
military organisation covers the whole of the male 
population : it is the maximum French Potential. 
So, without further analysis we may briefly 
set down the French figure beneath the British 
one: 7 ••• 7, 
The same rule applies to the Germanic Allies.: 
The German Empire trains only half its men in 
time of peace ; but it has an organisation for call- 
ing up in batches and using all the rest, and 
though in Austria- Hungary the proportion trained 
is even smaller and the machinery at once looser 
and more complex, yet under the conditions of 
war every single man is available as much in that 
service as in the German. We may, therefore, set 
down the two original figures unmodified in the 
case of these two Powers, which again gives us 
for Germany the figure 12 12 
In the same way with the forces of Austria- 
Hungary, we are justified in maintaining the 
original figure which, as we have seen, should be 
set down at 9 9 
Russia presents a problem totally different 
from that of any other European Power in this 
respect. 
Though a heterogeneous Empire and un^ 
able to supply more than a fraction, she differs 
from Great Britain. She differs still more, 
though she has conscription, from France and 
Germany or Austria. 
The first thing to appreciate is that the 26 
million subjects of the Czar who are of military 
age are not available for one united army at all. 
It is not, of course, as ridiculous to talk of them 
under one military heading as it would be to talk 
so of the subjects of the British Crown ; for these 
are even more diverse. And the nucleus of Russia 
proper is much larger in proportion to the out- 
lyers and dependent peoples than the nucleus of 
Britain is in proportion to the British Empire. 
Still, to think of the Russian co-efiicient as 26 
compared with the German co-efficient 12, is ta 
think in terms of nonsense. The true Russian 
number even potentially available for action 
against the Germanic Allies is but a fraction of 
those 26 : what fraction it is roughly, we will next 
proceed to examine. 
Lest all this part of my argument should be 
misunderstood, the reader may note the diversity 
of the Russian Empire and its consequent limita- 
tions for the formation of a homogeneous army 
in the following official statistics published upon 
the authority of the Russian Government itself 
and checked in proportion to the numbers given 
in the census. From these statistics we find that, 
of the 26 million adult males of military age, only 
just over 15 are Aryans, and of these the Slavs 
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