LAND AND WATER 
September 4, 1915. 
basis of eighty per cent. 12,000,090. 
the total for the enemy 27,000,000. 
And birtliday is the year which, in all conscript 
countries, is chosen for the revision of the con- 
sci'ipts anil the segregation of them into classes of 
tit and unfit. The projxirtion necessarily rejected 
in later life increases rapidly, especially after the 
thirtieth \eai-, and very rapidly indeed after the 
thirty-seventh. The proportion which must be 
similarly rejected among the boys below twenty^ 
is also very large, and increases rapidly as the age 
declines. Not a quarter, for instance, of the boys 
between 17 and 18 are really available, nor half 
the boys between 18 and 19. 
If, then, we can find how the figures stand in 
these best years, we have a ratio certainly too 
high to be applied to all ages, and if we were to 
apply that ratio all round we should get far too 
large a total. 
The various conscript countries have different 
methods of sifting their recruits. In Germany 
there are five categories : the fit, the much less fit, 
the very much less fit, the utterly unfit, and a fifth 
tiny category, quite negligible, between one and 
two thousandths of the total, exempted as " un- 
NOTE ON THE NUMBER OFIM FF1CIENIS. 
These \ev\ large round figures are, of course, 
enormously in excess of the men really available, 
as will j)resciitly appear. But they must be 
grasf)et! beioi-e we pi-tx^ed to a further analysis. 
Of the adult u'.ales between seventeen and 
forty-five present in any State a very laige luunber 
are unfit for military service. A\'hat projiortion 
this is we will examine in a moment. But first let 
us remai'k that the extent of this inelHcient pro- 
portion is almost always missed liy those who make 
their calculation lacking a sufficient acquaintance 
with the statistics .)f conscript c<:mnt]'ies. It is, 
|>erhaps. the cliief element in the misjudgment to 
which estimates of the enemy s }X)wer are due. 
Men are rejected as unfit for servic* for a \ ast 
number of defects which would appear trivial in 
ordinary ci\ilian avocations, but which would be 
fatal U) the use of the men aflected in prolonged 
operations in the field. 
It is often suggested that the men so rejected """orthy.' 
can still be used in the auxiliaiy services of an Now, however the sifting be performed, in 
army. In point of fact, this is liot the case save practice you always get to much the same result. 
for a very small proportion. An army must be fit U^ere ai-e always rather more than three- 
to act as a whole. Most of its auxiliarj- services Quarters of the young men who can at a pinch 
are continuously arduous in character. Those ''^}'^^ '^^ a maximum be written down " efficient " 
that are not continuously arduous are at times — (including many not really fit, and in practice ex- 
aiid those times cannot Ije calculated beforehand eluded) and rather more than one-quarter 
^subject to \ery severe .strain. Were you to put, ^^'^^o cannot possibly be used at all. 
for instance, upon communications in sVich a cam- In Germany, for the last years of which we 
paign as that which the enemy is now prosecuting have the figures before us, just under 74 per cent. 
in Poland, men unfit for active sen-ice in large '^^'^re written down as ultimately available for ser- 
numbers. you would find yourself quickly ham- vice (to be accurate 73.82 per cent.), but of these 
pered with a vast mass of sick, whose presence o^^J just one half — not 54 per cent. (53.2 per 
would be a dra-wback quite out of jiroportion to cent.) — were passed as fit, and even by adding the 
the advantage their original numbers might have next class of " less fit " they did not reach 70 per 
given you. A comparatively small proportion of cent. (68.7 per cent.). The three-quarters, or just 
such men can be employed in the bureaux at home, imder, of nominal " efficients," was only arrived 
in plaees from which it is certain they will never at by including everyone whom they could reason 
be called. But take an army as a whole, there is ably set down on paper as available. 
such a perpetual coming and going, so continual 
a call for a man emplo'.ed here to be suddenlv sent 
there, and such a str. ia imposed upon the whole 
oi^anism, that no ;; :.;ed organisation would act 
efficiently which :.:.ompted to solve the daily 
problem of shiftin • inefficient men every few 
hours from places where there was a strain to 
places where there was not. In general, there is 
universally admitted and universallv carried out 
in practice— nowhere more than in 'the elaborate 
machinery of the Prussians— the principle that 
the army as a whole must consist of military 
efficients, and that the presence of inefficients in 
any considerable numbers is a heaw ne^^ative 
factor. '' *= 
It is exceedingly important to grasp this 
truth, because if one is at all doubtful upon it 
one s whole view of the forces opposed to one in 
paper as available. They 
actually took for training only just over half these 
theoretical numbers. 
But if the proportion necessarily rejected 
during the best military period of life 'is so high, 
it is, as we have seen, very much higher among the 
elder men approaching the limits of the military 
age and in the case of boys below twenty. There 
are, for instance, in the case of the three years 
below twenty in the German Empire, very nearly 
two million boys present and alive, but nothing 
like one million can be taken for the service. 
The proportion of inefficients later on in life 
is not upon this scale, but it is still a great deal 
higher than the proportion of one-quarter which 
we find in the best military year. It approaches 
one-third wdth men who have passed their thirty- 
fifth year, and it falls to close on one-half as the 
a national war and of one's' own" fo:^; Tvanable ^^'^'f '^ J^ ^f P'^^^i^^- , , , 
to meet the enemy becomes worth'e^s • , ^^ '''^ *^^'® ^^^ ^^^^ '^^^^^ "^^^^^ ^o^ ^^^^ twenty- 
Let us next determine the maximum reallv ^^«f >^^^^' hei,xeen seventeenth and forty-fifth 
available out of this 27 OOO OOO ^ birthdays, and deduct one -third (admitting 
101' the moment tliat the elder men thus summoned 
NEXT NUMBER OF EFFICIENTS: DEDUC 
TION FOR PHYSICAL INEFFICIENCY. 
best Itillf'f '" ^ '"^"'^ ¥^ ^^"^'^"g ^"hi^h he is 
year jn which a man has^passed his twentieth 
are really efficient, which they are not), you have a 
figure W'hich is certainly beyond the mark. 
I know that this is the most difficult part of 
my argument to present to a general audience, 
but as I also know that it is the soundest part and 
the one invariably proved in practice in every 
conscript system, whether under the conditions of 
