January 9, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
able for discussion in these columns. But it is 
worth pointing out that this country is the one and 
only belligerent country in Europe which can still 
manufacture freely, that its industry is largely 
supplying the Alliance, and that a voluntary 
system fits in an exact and elastic manner the 
demand for labour. Under the alternative system 
of compulsion you would have to arrange arbi- 
trarily and mechanically what men were to be 
drawn for service, and what were to be left behind 
for industry— let alone for shipbuilding and for 
communications, for mining and for agriculture, 
and for commerce and for seamanship, mercantile 
and naval; and you would probably get worse 
material, too. 
At any rate, it is the peculiar condition of 
the English co-efficient, which we have set at 3, 
that it is a potential quite able to become an 
actuality. We have no necessary reason to scale it 
down. 
There is another point about the British con- 
tingent attached to this last point, which is that 
all the men it concerns are so far (or for much the 
greater part) first-class material. We have no 
deductions to make for age, inefficiency, or civi- 
lian employment, for the volunteers are recruited, 
by definition, only between the ages where men are 
best suited for the field, and only from men who 
have passed the doctor. 
Let us set down our English maximum 
"actual figure," then, at 3. 
FRANCE. 
The French potential co-efficient of 7 is in a 
very different situation. It is a situation neces- 
sarily imposed upon every conscript nation, to wit, 
that you must deduct from its " potential " maxi- 
mum all those who are not efiicient for military 
service, and all those who must be kept back for 
the absolutely necessary civilian employment con- 
nected with communications and supply. In point 
of fact, this French co-efficient of 7 shrinks under 
such a test to something a little less than 4. The 
inefficients even among the young men in any 
nation are more than a fifth, and it is with diffi- 
culty they can be kept much below a quarter. To 
those inexperienced in the figures of a recruiting 
system, such a proportion will seem extremely 
high, but it is the unavoidable conclusion of prac- 
tice. It must be remembered that the word " in- 
efficient " does not mean broken dovm in health, 
or superficially and obviously weak, or diseased, or 
malformed. The inefficients are these, and very 
much more than these. They are the young re- 
cruits who, for a quantity of other less apparent 
reasons, for such trifles as varicose veins, or a weak 
heart, or twenty other things which would be in- 
significant in civilian life, are not apt for service. 
If this is true of the first and youngest batches of 
recruits, it is, of course, more and more true of the 
Reserves as their age increases, and when we get 
towards the last batches of the so-called " military 
age," to the men approaching forty and past forty, 
the proportion who would be only a weakness to 
an army if called up from their ordinary civilian 
occupations becomes very large indeed. To these 
we add the men who must, as a matter of prime 
necessity, be kept back for the furnishing of com- 
munications and supply of every kind, and, as I 
have said, we scale down our 7 to 4. And, indeed, 
•4 is an outside limit 4 
GERMANY. 
Exactly the same thing applies lo a conscript 
country such as Germany. I shall deal particu- 
larly with Germany in a moment, because round 
the possible German reserves of strength a great 
discussion is raging at this moment. But we are 
quite safe in saying that if Germany had trained 
every one of her adult males, her proportion would 
be at least what the French is, and for her 12 mil- 
lion we must Avi-ite down 7. The number has been 
given in these very colimms as high as 7^ by 
making every allowance in favour of the enemy 
and deliberately over-estimating his strength. But 
in practice, and as an actuality, it is as certain as 
anything can be that the German 12 becomes 7, 
just as the French 7 became 4. We write down, 
then, for Germany the actual figure 7 7 
AUSTRIA. 
Upon exactly the same calculation we may 
decide, without fear of putting too small a number, 
to write down Austria at 5| instead of 9. 
RUSSIA. 
With Bussia we approach the only indeter- 
minate factor in this calculation of actualities. 
We know that Russia after five months of war has 
not in the Polish field anything like her total 
number of men who have received training, let alone 
any additions from her untrained reserve. To some 
extent this is due to slowness of equipment, from 
the fact that the supply for these very large numbers 
was not stored in time of peace, and can only 
(precisely as in our own case, and to some extent, 
that of the French) be provided after anxious delay 
in time of war. 
It must always be remembered in this con- 
nection that a nation desiring to make aggressive 
war upon its neighbours, and planning to force war 
at a particular time, will always have an immense 
advantage in equipment and supply. If you do not 
want to make war : if, still more, you had never 
planned war for a particular moment of your own 
choosing, it would be folly to lock up, or rather to 
waste, economic energy in vast useless stores, most 
of which deteriorate or are superseded in a few 
years. As a fact, no civilised nation has dreamt of 
doing such a thing except Germany. Germany did 
not begin to do it till about three years ago, and 
Germany was only able to do so because she 
intended to make war at one chosen and particular 
moment to which this vast accumulation of 
equipment corresponded.* The argument is an 
obvious one, but it wants insisting upon because 
foolish people usually talk of the alternate policy as 
" unpreparedness." It is nothing of the kind. It is 
simply normal living. If indeed the other nations 
had known that Germany would really push calcula- 
tions so far as to force a universal war at her own 
moment, then they might have provided against 
that moment ; but no one did this because every- 
one — except Germany — knew that to force war 
simply at your moment and without grave reason 
save the desire for aggression means, in the European 
comity of nations, ultimate crippling and decay, and 
therefore no one thought that Germany would be so 
foolish. 
At any rate the matter stands thus : that even 
of possible trained men fi:om the Russian dominions 
• It is si;:nilicaiit tlmt tvei Austrh, her oI039 ally, baa fouDd herself 
short of equipment an 1 has had to borrow it from German/, a milUoa 
rides among other thing*. 
