LAND AND WATER 
Juae 12, 1915. 
MACHINES AND MEN. 
By JOHN BUCHAN. 
riAVE been asked by the Editor to set down 
ray impressions of the character of the pre- 
sent stage of the War in the West. Let it 
be understood that they are my own personal 
impressions. They have no kind of official sanc- 
tion, and I do not know whether any soldier of 
authority agrees with them. But they are first- 
hand, and I give them for what they are worth. 
I'.very v/ar is a contest of two factors — men 
plus machines. The one without the other is 
.valueless. An unarmed soldier and an unmanned 
gun arc things of equal futility. As matters 
stand at present the Germans are our superiors in 
one thing only. They have the better and stronger 
machine, and they use it to keep our man-power at 
arm's length. We believe, and we have cause to 
believe, that the quality of our fighting manhood 
is, on the whole, better than theirs. They seem to 
realise this, for they are striving to make it a long- 
range war. Our business is to devise as quickly as 
possible a counter-machine of at least equal 
Btrength which will give us a chance of " in-fight- 
ing." On that depends our success, for it is close- 
quarter fighting that alone will give us the 
complete victory, which is the only kind that can 
be contemplated. The German machine is so good 
that it is unlikely that we shall be able to better it , 
at the most we can create something equally 
strong. But our fighting stuff is so good that even 
in the most desperate war a outrance when the 
Germans were fighting in direct defence of their 
homes, I do not think they could equal it. There 
•lies our hope of superiority. Our business is to 
fend some way of giving our manhood its chance. 
QL'ALITY V QUANTITY. 
To put it in another way, we are equal or 
iBuperior in quality, but inferior in quantity. Our 
guns and our gunnery are as good as the German, 
our field guns better. Perhaps they are more 
skilful in the tactical use of machine guns, for 
they have made a speciality of them and have five 
to our one. But in air work, in intelligence, in 
Heading, we are certainly their superiors. We are 
clearly superior, too, in the quality of our Armies. 
I do not mean that there are not thousands of 
Germa,n soldiers as brave, as well-trained, and as 
.well-disciplined as any in our own ranks. But 
their armies are no longer homogeneous. The 
terrible gaps have been filled up with very raw 
material which has not been absorbed and cannot 
be absorbed. You have only to talk to a German 
prisoner of the first line to learn the quality of 
many of the new drafts. The most notable fact, 
on the other hand, a1x)ut our present front is its 
high quality all round. The famous old regi- 
ments that have been in the field since Mons are 
now largely made up from reserves, but it would 
be rash to say that the Guards Brigade, for 
texample, is less good now than it was on the 
'Aisne. The Territorials and Yeomanry have 
been lately fighting alongside our best in- 
fantry and cavalry, and doing marvels. The 
New Army, to anyone who has watched its 
growth, is not less efficient. The result is that 
our new troops do not make an ugly patchwork, 
but seem part of the old pattern, and the same is 
true of the French. Again, as to officers, we are 
better supplied with the right kind. The mor- 
tality in the German officer class has been terrible, 
and since that class is a caste the losses are hard 
to replace without a violent breach of the whole 
service tradition. We are far better off in this 
respect than most people at home realise. There 
is a type of man in England whom the Germans 
overlooked in their calculations — the man who 
spends a few years in the Army and then leaves 
it to take the hounds somewhere or travel abroad. 
Nearly all that class is available now. Besides, 
in a peculiar degree the war in its present phase 
is a subalterns' war. Young men with half a 
year's service are as efficient for trench warfare 
as veterans of several wars. They have all the 
knowledge that is relevant, and are young and 
keen and cheerful to boot. One hears people com- 
plain that boys fresh from Sandhurst or Oxford 
are being " sacrificed." But they are not sacri- 
ficed, for, if they only learn a little caution, they 
are precisely the men wanted for the work. 1 have 
in mind a famous battalion which won great glcry 
at the first Battle of Ypres and in many recent 
actions. After the colonel the next senior officer 
has eighteen months' commissioned service, and 
none of the others more than a year. Yet the 
battalion is in as good fighting trim as in October. 
THE NEED OF QUANTITY. 
These reflections make for optimism. But 
the time for optimism will not arrive till we have 
got our quantity to a level with our quality. 
There is a long road to be travelled before we can 
make certain of a decisive victory. Our quantity 
needs to be increased, largely increased, under 
two heads — men and mechanism. 
1. Men. — Probably at this moment the 
Allies outnumber their opponents on the 
Western front. To estimate the British number 
might give information to the Germans, who, I 
understand, are sedulous students of Land and 
Water and Mr. Belloc's articles. But it may 
safely be said that for the thirty miles of 
line which we are holding our numbers are 
ample. Why, then, the need of more men? For 
two reasons, one particular and one general. 
The French Army since August has been under- 
going a strain which only those who have 
seen these splendid troops at close quarters can 
realise. British officers have had leave; the 
French have had little or none. The whole of 
France has been stretched taut in one mighty; 
effort. Now it seems pretty certain that we must 
look forward to a second winter of trench war- 
fare — I hope on a different and much more 
easterly line of trenches. If that happens it is im- 
perative that the British should hold an adequate 
share of the front. We have a greater population 
than France, but we are at present holding less 
than a tenth of the line. No doubt it is a very 
critical part, and we have had some of the hardest' 
fighting of the war. 
In the second place, it is men — the human 
factor — by which a campaign is ultimately won, 
A machine does the preparation, but the soldier 
completes the job. Our business is to get a 
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