September 4, 1915. 
LAND AND .WATER 
THE NUMBERS OF THE ENEMY. 
By HILAIRE BELLOC. 
MOTE. — This article bas been submitted to tbe Press Bureau, nblch does not object to tbe publication as censored, and takes no 
responsibility for tbe correctness o( tbe statements. 
[Several estimates of the enemy's total mtmbers 
and losses to date have appeared in these 
columns from time to time. They have been 
as detailed as was possible with the informa- 
tion available to me at each stage, and the 
methods by which the results were arrived at 
I'xid before the reader. The estimates 
obtained at successive dates in the war have, 
upon the whole, confirmed the accuracy of the 
methods employed. I have recently, however, 
had the opportunity of hearing more evidence 
and of seeing more detailed statistics. I pro- 
pose, therefore, in this number, to give a 
revised estimate in its most detailed form.'] 
IN the present situation of the war, after a 
full year of large active operations, no 
decision has been arrived at or even 
approached by either party. 
There has been in that period of time an 
expenditure of men and munitions on a scale 
utterly out of keeping with all previous warfare. 
At the same time the political objects of either 
party to the struggle remain as clear as ever, and 
ttie determination upon either side to attain those 
objects by ultimate victory is still unshaken. 
It may, therefore, be presumed without rash- 
ness that the main element in our judgment of the 
future course of the war must be the numerical 
element. In other words, our estimate of the 
struggle should turn not upon a view of territory 
occupied or abandoned, but upon a comparison of 
the actual numerical strength, rate of wastage, 
and probable recruitment of all parties to the 
war and upon a comparison of their rates of pro- 
duction in equi{)ment and munitionment. 
Only a portion of this problem will be 
attacked in what follows: The matter we shall 
examine this week is no more than the numerical 
position of the two Germanic Empires at this 
moment. It is far from covering the whole field 
of a numerical estimate, but to be fixed upon this 
is at least to grasp the most important of all the 
elements upon which our judgment of tlie cam- 
paign reposes. 
I propose to analyse the present nmnerical 
strength of the enemy upon the following j)]p.n : 
I. To find approximately the maximum 
numbers available to the enemy for his fully 
armed and organised forces, as present in his ser- 
vice from the outbreak of the war to the end of 
the second year of war. 
II. To find what are the least permanent 
loses which the enemy must already have sus- 
tained to the date the end of Augu.st, 1915. 
III. To strike the difference between the 
first set of figures, his total man-power, and the 
second, his minimum permanent lo.s.ses, and, bv 
comparing this remainder with the forces he must 
maintain upon his {>re.sent fronts, to discover 
what reserve of man-power for continuing his 
present effort, at the ver^ most, he can now have. 
I. 
THE ENEMY'S MAXIMUM MAN- 
POWER. 
The total population of the great Central 
Empires which, under the direction of Berlin, 
challenged France and Russia last year after a 
preparation of some thirty-six months, was, 
according to the last official census, made in both 
Empires in the year 1910, 116,035,764. 
The rate of increase (slightly growing in 
Austria, declining rather rapidly in Hungary, 
and declining still more rapidly in the German 
Empire) averages about one per cent, a year. 
If we say, then, that we were dealing at the 
outset of the war with a total enemy population 
four per cent, greater than that of the census of 
1910, we are weighting the scales slightly in 
favour of the enemy, and we write down the round 
figure 121,000,000 as the mass of the popula- 
tion with which to deal at the outbreak of war. 
Of that 121,000,000 the Austro-Hun- 
garian portion stood in 1914 to the portion of 
the German Empire almost exactly as 80 to 100. 
This last figure is also important for the 
reader to retain, for wherever we have German 
military numbers to go upon, an addition of 
SO'/o to them is a sure approximation to the 
total Austro-German figures, the two Empires 
straining as they do to utilise their full resources. 
Such being the most general statement of 
total population, we next turn to the adult males 
of military age. 
GROSS NUMBERS OF MILITARY AG:-. 
For this purpose I take the limits of the 
seventeenth birthday, below which age the 
numbers available are quite insignificant, and of 
the forty-fifth birthday, after which age a certain 
number of men are available, indeed, notably pro- 
fessional soldiers in the commissioned and even 
non-commissioned ranks, but that in .so small a 
number as to be negligible when one is dealing 
with many millions. I will not for the moment 
delay the reader with the obvious truth that the 
proportion of men really available for active ser- 
vice below their twentieth year and above their 
thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth is very much lower 
than the proportion available between those years. 
This consideration (which is of capital import- 
ance) will be dealt with later. 
The number, then, of such men from .seventeei 
to forty-five present and alive in the German 
Empire at the outbreak of war was, upon the 
basis of the census of 1910, and allowing for font 
years' increase, almost exactly 15,000,000. 
The corresponding number between the same ages 
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was, on the 
\Cot>\ngh\ in .America by "The Neiv York American."] 
