August 14, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER. 
xt was the number of soldiers, guns, and 
munitions actually present against France in the 
first shock of the cam-paign — somewhere in the 
firet four months— that ought, by all reasonable 
calculation, to determine the result. In this con- 
crete piece of calculation, concerned— as potential 
power is not— with real issues, the enemy could 
prove an advantage so overwhelming that, with all 
the facts before him, an impartial observer would 
not have hesitated to prophesy as certain that com- 
plete and swift victory of the Germanic body and 
its dependents over the Allies which the Govern- 
ment of Berlin took for granted, and which its 
commanders had a full and reasonable right to 
expect. 
The advantage the enemv possessed was com- 
posed of the following factors : 
1. In mere numbers the enemy could put 
into the field during the first few weeks 
of the war men equipped, officered, and 
trained, with their due complement of guns 
and munitions, in the ratio of about eight 
to five as against the Allies. This startling 
preponderance the enemy owed to the fact that, 
of his three great opponents, only one had re- 
ffiirded, as he had, the business of a national war. 
i ranee alone was fully conscript and had pos: 
sessed foF a generation the organisation and 
material plant required for the putting into the 
field within a few months her maximum total 
force. But France was in population not nearly a 
third of the enemy; while even of men of military 
age her proportion was less than a third. 
Russia possessed a certain number of troops, 
organised, officered, equipped, gunned, and the 
rest, of equal or superior value, unit for unit, to 
anything the enemy could put forward. But 
those numbers were limited by the difficulty of 
discovering a trained officer class, bv the econo- 
mic situation of the Russian Empire, and by its 
narrow industrial opportunities. It was prob- 
able or certain that during the first months of a 
treat campaign Russia would not put into the 
eld even as many men as would the French 
Republic. Further, her insufficient communica- 
tions would make it impossible to maintain more 
than a certain fixed number at the front. For 
the support in food alone, as in munitions and in 
every other necessity, of a great modern army 
counted by millions of men, requires imperatively 
a good railway system and ample rolling stock. 
As time proceeded (tardilv, no doubt, but 
"'^^^"^ately) the great reserve of man-power avail- 
able to Russia would tell. But it would be very 
many months before forces even approaching her 
potential power would have appeared, and in the 
interval an enduring inferiority in men and 
material promised defeat. 
Great Britain, the third of the Allies, though 
able to exercise increasing economic pressure upon 
the enemy by her naval superiority, had not en- 
visaged the use in a Continental war of more at 
> t «j tlie most than four corps— say, 160,000 men. 
That is. Great Britain proposed to send sixteen 
men where France would put forward of the same 
age and training 250 to 300: Russia, perhaps at 
first but 200 ; the enemy at first 600, soon 800. 
As was the case with Russia, so with Great 
Britain, though in a different fashion, potential 
and ultimate military power on a vastly greater 
tr scale was obtainable. But in the interval there 
was no reason for the enemy to doubt that his 
Sutpument to l^o ikd Watm, AutuH ,4, ,„j. 5» 
existing enormous superiority would have told 
and would have decided the event. 
2 Prussia and those whom Prussia con- 
trolled—a population of 123 millions, with a total 
man-power in the field of at least twelve millions 
in the first year— was forcing the war at her own 
moment after preparation exactly calculated Lor 
that moment. 
The advantage given by this position cannot 
be exaggerated. 
Had the French and English acted in this 
fashion some years ago, tliey would have attacked 
an enemy without such an air service as theirs 
without submarines, without a quick-firing field 
gun, because Prussia was behindhand with all new 
things. Prussia, forcing the war at her own 
moment, fought after providing herself with all 
these. 
It is inevitable that general civilian opinion 
A ir .^^^t^^^se the " unpreparedness " of the 
Allies, because general opinion does not calculate 
closely or consider all the factors of any public 
problem. But the critic who will consider soberly 
and in full the circumstances of such a war, must 
at once appreciate the handicap from which those 
who did not desire it and did not plan it must 
suffer as against those who both desired it and 
planned it for a particular moment. No great 
nation which regards even a war against one rival 
as but a doubtful possibility which may arise at 
some indefinite date in a future rather remote 
than immediate, can possibly compete with 
another State (commanding a whole group of 
States) which has secretly fixed the date for 
action and has therefore, made all ready for that 
action. The former State can only in reason 
spend a certain proportion of its wealth, and 
what IS more important, can only within a cer- 
tain degree reasonably distribute its civilian acti- 
vities for the preparation of war. The latter will 
have provided equipment for every conceivable 
reserve, an accumulation of munitions, and will 
even have established a plan for securing an 
economic advantage at that outbreak of hostili- 
ties, of the date of which it alone has the secret 
J^or example: Apart from the three years' 
preparation of material required, Prussia and 
her dependents had prepared the financial market 
some months in advance of that date, iust after 
the harvest of 1914, upon which Prussia intended 
to destroy her rivals. The selling of foreign 
stock, the creation of a financial situation that 
should leave Great Britain in particular without 
power to recover German debts, and Germany, 
suflering from no corresponding credit upon the 
ijritish side, were acts undertaken months before " ■ 
the war and acts which can bear only one inter- 
pretation. 
1 ah-^^® ^^^^^ advantage which Prussia and 
her Allies possessed may be exaggerated, and haa 
been exaggerated considerably, but should, never- 
theless, be noticed in its due proportion. The 
theories with regard to modern war wliich Ger- 
many held as against those held by her rivala 
were to prove upon the whole superior. The 
guesses which various Services had made as to 
the new uses admitted upon new arms, and the 
new results following upon new methods of com- 
munication and observation varied in correctness, 
bome^ of the French guesses were right, some of 
the German guesses were wrong; but the balance 
of judgment in this department lay with tha 
Germans, 
