September 4, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
It would not be rash, it would be wise, to say 
that the real number, counting a hundred acces- 
sory units drawing rations upon the very front, 
top the 5,000,000. But it is as certain as arith- 
metic and common sense can make it that they are 
not less than the 4,800,000. 
Well, if the enemy at this moment, the open- 
ing of September, 1915, has lost in permanent 
losses 5,250,000 — with a great margin of tem- 
porary losses still in hospital or removed from 
the fighting line; if his total potential cannot be, 
as we have proved that it cannot be, much over 
the 12,000,000, and if his front originally demand 
close on the 5,000,000 — what remains ? 
What remains as a theoretical maximum is 
easily computable — it is a trifle less than 2,000,000 
reserve man-power, and I have no doubt that some 
people would, up to this point in my argument, 
draw, from my own figures (though not acknow- 
ledging their source), tlie conclusion that the 
enemy had 2,000,000 fresh and hearty young men 
ready to fall upon us and eat us up, unless we 
speedily accept a shameful peace. 
To begin with, beliind the men on the absolute 
fronts are at least a million occupied upon com- 
riiunications in the strict sense of that term, and 
excluding the bureaux. Next, let it be remarked 
that of set purpose the enemy has expended in his 
attempt to attain victor)^, in spite of failure, his 
best human material. The margins he can now 
call up are, for the most part, those rejected for 
physical reasons — those too young or those too old. 
Lastly, if I may be excused a homely meta- 
phor, the provision of the last reserves of an army 
cannot be compared to drawing water from a tap ; 
it must rather be compared to the pouring of 
treacle out of a jxig. 
When a Government is at its last stretch for 
men, as was Napoleon in 1815, or as were the 
Southern States in the last year of the American 
Civil War, numerical calculation upon paper 
begins to fail. The very last hundred thousands 
are not what the first hundred thousands were. 
The proportion of auxiliaries to the fighting line 
increases alarmingly. Transport chokes, provi- 
sion wavers; the end of any effort is never exact 
and clean ; it peters out. 
The enemy has still many hundred thousand 
in reserve. Millions be has not. And with the 
appixDach of autumn and winter he approaches 
actually declining numbers in the field. 
We must never lose grasp of the converse and 
less pleasing truth that a decision reached by the 
enemy in his favour would altogether upset this 
balance. Supposing one of the Allies to make 
peace, or supposing one of the Allied forces to be 
virtually put out of action, it is manifest that the 
fronts here examined would no longer be the same, 
and that the balance the enemy woi.ld have in 
hand for action in a then reduced field would be 
immensely increased; but upon the hypothesis that 
no such decision is achieved, and that no such 
release of enwny forces takes place, then matters 
are with the enemy's numbers certainly, and at 
the least, what we have followed in detail and 
from proof to proof in the pages I here conclude. 
THE SITUATION IN POLAND. 
The space which we have given this week to 
an examination of numbere and the lull (up to 
the moment of writing) in connection with the 
13 
whole Eastern front together leave neither space 
nor opportunity for much discussion this week of 
the Russian retirement, but as that movement is 
now entering on its fourth phase we shall do well 
to appreciate the main elements of the ground 
over which the next development will take place. 
The Russian retirement, reaching now lines 
of greater and gi'eater divergence, can no longer 
take the form of a line or chain of positions. 
It must take the form of groups of armies, and, 
further, these groups of armies, as they fall back, 
will necessarily fall back along divergent lines 
which will separate them further the one from 
the other. Such a movement cannot in safety be 
continued beyond a certain point because each 
group must be prepared to oo-operate at a 
moment's notice with the others. But geographical 
conditions impose as a necessity this separation of 
the whole force into groups now that the Brest — 
Kovno line has proved untenable and has been 
abandoned. 
Next let us remember that the German move- 
ment must necessarily now be political. The 
summer is drawing to an end. Four months have 
pased at an expense of from a million and a 
quarter to a million and a half men without 
the reaching of any decision. Heavy losses 
have been inflicted upon the Russians by 
the enemy, but losses no heavier than those 
suffered by the Austro- German advance. The 
number of field guns captured — the test of 
pressure and disaster — has been quite insignifi- 
cant. The pieces taken in the fortresses formed a 
considerable booty, though destroyed, ahd are 
handicapping Russia's future action. But apart 
from this loss and the fact that the Russian 
wounded are often captured by the advancing 
enemy, whereas the enemy's wounded remain 
within his own lines, the balance between the two 
forces has not been gravely affected. The whole 
summer has gone without a definite military deci- 
sion as yet l^ing attained. Under those circum- 
stances, I say, it is more and more necessary for 
tlie enemy to emphasise the political side, and 
this means that he will attempt to threaten some 
directly Russian, not Polish, interest in such a 
way as to bring the Russians to terms. 
It may take the form of harrying the country- 
side as he advances. It is more likely to take the 
form of advance upon some one of the national 
centres. 
The elements of such an advance upon one 
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