May 29, 1915. 
LAND AND ,\^rATEE. 
THE WAR BY LAND. 
By HILAIRE BELLOC. 
NOTE This article has been submitted to the Press Bureau, which does not object to the publication as censored, and takes n« 
responsibility for the correctness of the statements. 
la accordance with the requirements of the Press Bureau, the positions of troops on Plans illustrating this Article must only be 
regarded as approximate, and no definite strength at any point is indicated. 
ITALY. 
THE intervention of Italy will bring into 
the actual lighting, within a few weeks, 
perhaps 800,000 additional men. That 
is, we shall have equipped and present 
in any area of operations that may be chosen, and 
near enough to the front for immediate opera- 
tions or the immediate reinforcement of the same, 
twenty new army corps on the side of the Allies. 
Curiosity is eager to suggest the many ways 
in which this newly arrived force might operate. 
There is a form of vanity which is satisfied by 
attempting to forecast future events, to profit by 
the accuracy of such a forecast, and to be silent 
upon its errors. 
All this spirit is quite valueless in the forma- 
tion of a sound judgment with regard to the cam- 
paign as a whole, which sound judgment is the 
sole legitimate object of such notes as these. 
We can only bring to the formation of such 
a judgment certain known truths and show what 
conclusions m.ay be built upon them. Of alterna- 
tive plans or results built on such conclusions one 
can say no more than that any one of them is 
possible, none of them certain. 
Now, what are the known facts connected 
with the intervention of Italy? 
The great, the salient fact, is connected with 
that point upon which I have insisted so con- 
tinually in these columns — the question of 
numbers. 
The tide had already turned against the 
enemy, but it had turned in an unequal way. 
There was a superiority in the numbers of men 
against him upon the west. There was already 
a slight superiority in weapons and in muni- 
tions, and particularly in those heavy guns 
which are the determinant factors of the pre- 
sent campaign. But while the total of the 
Allies was already superior to the total that the 
enemy could put into the field, even with his last 
reserves, the inequality of distribution gravely 
affected the situation. For in the East it had not 
been possible to equip a sufficient number of 
weapons to make the opposed numbers in men 
there more than equal, while in munitions, especi- 
ally for artillery, and particularly heavy artillery, 
the enemy enormously outweighed our Ally upon 
that front. 
Now, the entry of Italy into the field throws 
a new weight into the scale in this mere point of 
numbers, and that weight is of the very highest 
strategic importance. 
Theorists may discuss, and the future will 
prove, the respective values of the new fighting 
force and its enemy, but what is absolutely cer- 
tain is that it accounts for and displaces great 
numbers of that enemy. 
The situation may be compared to the case 
of ten men trying to break out of a corridor 
against twelve. They could not break out if all 
twelve were opposed to them at one end of the 
corridor, which should be the only issue; but if 
there are two issues, and if you have eight oppo- 
nents at one and only four at the other, it might 
well be that, by a proper distribution of force, the 
ten men, leaving only just enough at one end to 
contain the eight against them there, could, with 
the remainder of their force break through the 
four at the weaker issue of the corridor. 
But supposing while you were making this 
attempt a door opened in the side wall of the cor- 
ridor and three new opponents appeared! It is 
obvious that such an appearance would heavily 
weight the chances against the ten men breaking 
out. It is probable that it would turn the scale. 
They might affect to despise the new oppo- 
nent; they might be his superior in experience of 
the fighting; they might in any number of ways 
boast of real advantage over him; but the un- 
doubted fact would remain that they would have 
to detach some part of their strength to deal with 
him at a moment when that strength was 
whittled down to an already dangerous inferiority 
against their original enemy as a whole. 
Now, if we try to put the thing numerically 
we discover that the advent of the Italian 
mobilised army into the field would at once fix 
at least ten enemy army corps. It cannot possibly 
do less than that. Allowing the maximum of 
natural advantage and of war experience to the 
enemy, an offensive strength of 800,000 cannot 
conceivably be contained by less than 400,000 men 
under even the best geographical conditions. The 
French — under worse geographical conditions, it 
is true — could only just meet an offensive in the 
proportion of sixteen to ten last August, and ten 
corps on the Austrian-Italian frontier would be 
sixteen to eight. As a fact, the intervention of 
Italy will cost the enemy more than that. I 
deliberately put the minimum number conceivable. 
The next elementary truth we must notice in 
this connection is that this fixing of so much 
enemy strength is quite independent of the first 
chances in the field. In the clash of armies before 
a decision is arrived at, or before the establish- 
ment of a prolonged defensive, delaying a 
decision, is achieved, everything is at a venture. 
iWe do not know, until the action develops, even 
the trend of the war; but the essential thing from 
the point of view of the Allies as a whole is the 
effect upon that numerical estimate which has 
been continually insisted upon in these pages 
because it is fundamental frc any sound judgment 
upon the war. Ten army corps must come from 
somewhere. They will not come from the West, 
for they are not present in the West; they will 
not come from some great reserve, for there is no 
such great reserve in the hands of the enemy. 
He is now in the very act of using his great 
winter-trained reserve, his third batch, and, save 
for the frills and the boys growing up to man- 
hood, his last. They must come from the East 
