September 4, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER. 
lion and two-thirds more or less of the nomi- 
nal efficients. So surely the 121 millions of 
the Central Empires \vill enable them, with the 
fullest efficiency in organisation, to put a maxi- 
mum of just over twelve millions into the field. 
Strain the figures as you will, add to them e^ery 
conceivable detail, and you will not have a margin 
of five per cent. ; nor does the prolongation of the 
war into next year mar our conclusions, for we 
have allowed for the calling of the very youngest 
classes available. The number of a callable boys 
of sixteen in 1915 who grew to be seventeen in 
1916 and can really be used as soldiers is 
negligible. 
We are dealing throughout with that figure 
12 as a basis, and though the official figures will 
not be before us for many years to come, we need 
have no fear that the total of mobilised enemy 
forces, when they are exactly reckoned, will appre- 
ciably exceed this figure. 
We conclude, then, this first part of the 
examination by retaining the figure 
12,000,000 as the maximum potential 
manpower, armed, equipped, organised, and 
available for actual fighting, which the enemy, 
as a whole, can present. 
II. 
THE ENEMY LOSSES. 
It is evident that our calculation of the 
enemy's numerical j)osition at any moment 
depends not only on our estimate of his original 
total potential man-power, but also on our 
estimate of his total losses to date. It is clear 
that accuracy in the one branch would be rendered 
valueless by inaccuracy in the otlier, since the 
whole object of our analysis is the difference 
between the two estimates. 
Now it will be seen in what follows that we 
can arrive by different and independent lines of 
argument at various estimates of tlie total enemy 
losses. Each line reaches its own results. Those 
results differ. But it is remarkable to observe 
within what narrow limits all the separate results 
lie and, therefore, how the average of them gives 
us^a sound conunon solution of the problem. 
DEFINITION OF " LOSSES." 
Let us begin by defining what is meant by 
" losses." There is no definition in which 
accuracy is more important. 
The losses sustained by an armed force are of 
two kinds — permanent and temporary. By per- 
manent loss is meant the loss of men who can 
never reappear in any form of military service 
before the conclusion of the war, and the four 
great divisions of this kind of loss are the dead, 
the prisoners, the maimed, and the stricken down 
by disease. 
Temporary losses signify losses of men who, 
for a greater or less space of time, are so dis- 
abled tnat they cannot perform military duties, 
but who can, at some date, return to service. 
But there lurk in this term " temporary " 
two ambiguities, which are fatal to exact discus- 
sion, and which we must resolve at the outset. 
The first consists in this : that the period of 
absence from military duties of men counted in 
the " temporary " losses varies very greatly. 
Thus, if we say that the " temporary " losses 
of such and such an enemy are a million, and that, 
as the million will return to the field some time 
or other, we cannot strike them off the list of the 
enemy's power indefinitely, we are expressing 
ourselves accurately. But if we say that these 
losses, being temporary, should not be counted in 
diminution of the enemy's power at all, we are 
expressing ourselves most inaccurately, and this 
is especially true towards the end of a campaign 
of exhaustion. 
Suppose of two forces, A and B, struggling 
against one another for a couple of years, the one, 
A, has reached at the end of that period a con- 
dition of manifest inferiority to the other. Its 
hospitals are choked with wounded and sick. Its 
remaining forces in the field can no longer hold 
positions vital to the national security. It is, then, 
of no advantage to the commanders of A that they 
can say to themselves " In another eight months 
most of the men now in hospital will be dis- 
charged." The men are, as a fact, absent from the 
field, and will long so remain, and their absence 
has helped to determine the defeat of A. He will 
have to accept terms long before the eight months 
are over. 
In other words, there is a sort of current 
account, or current balance, of temporary losses 
perpetually kept up by the hospitals receiving 
sick and wounded as fast, or faster, than they dis- 
charge them, and towards the end of a campaign 
of exhaustion these losses, hitherto reckoned as 
temporary, enter the total of permanent losses, 
because it is manifest that the campaign will be 
decided before they can return. 
It is not possible to give an exact coefficient, 
and to say what proportion of temporary losses 
at any moment should thus be counted as ultimate 
permanent losses. It depends upon the length of 
the war (on which no one can prophesy) and on the 
increase or decrease of wastage during its future 
phases. But a rough statement of the rates at 
which men return is essential to our judgment, as 
is also a rough statement of the proportion of 
temporary to total losses at any moment in the 
present campaign. 
The proportion of temporary losses in the 
present campaign is, one force with another, about 
one-third of the total casualty lists. Of that 
third, about one-fifth (or one-fifteenth of the 
whole) are cases of sickness or wounds so sliglit 
that the sufferers have returned to active service 
within two months. About another fifth, presum- 
ably (it is a matter on which it is impossible to 
have exact statistics), do not return to active 
service within any useful period, most of them not 
at all, and the best of them not within the year. 
The remaining three-fifths return to various 
forms of military service at irregular periods 
varying from two months to twelve. But perhaps 
half of them are free within so siiort a period as 
four months. To recapitulate : Of 15 as a total 
casualty list 5 are " temporary " losses. Of 
these 5, 1 comes back in two months or less; 
1 never reallv comes back, though still kept on 
the list; theVemainng 3 come back in varying 
delays from 2 months to 4, 6, or even 8, but 2 of 
then'i probably in the shorter periods. 
The second ambiguity in the use of the term 
" temporary losses " lies in the fact that men 
receiving their discharge as " cured " are very 
often unable to perform full active service in their 
old capacitv. 
This is an exceedingly important point, and 
one which falls within tl'.e daily experience ot all 
of u'3. We have all of us come across cases in our 
