LAND AND WATER 
December ib, 1915. 
more than a stretched elastic can recover if it is 
worn through at some point of tension. 
He knows that the two great fronts. Eastern 
and Western, are the only theatres of War in which 
a decision can appear. No losses, threats, or 
anxieties anywhere else can determine the War 
positively as a piece of strategy. Politically the 
moral effect of movement elsewhere may be 
sufficient to disgust, weary or throw into panic 
some one member of the alliance. Doubtless he 
hopes for such a consummation. But in mere 
strategy the thing is physically impossible. The 
enemy cannot — it is not an opinion, it is mathe- 
matics — hold, still less win through, unless he 
keeps upon those lines quite four-fifths of his 
present a\'ailable forces and quite four-fifths of 
anything he could possibly gather by the adhesion 
of forces hitherto neutral. 
Now what is his position upon these two 
lines, the Eastern and the \\'estern ? What are 
the numbers actually a\ailable to him ? \Miat 
elements dangerous to him upon them does the 
future hold ? WTiat remaining reserve of power 
has he to use upon those lines ? 
\\'e all know the answer to those questions. 
The enemy knows them and we know them. But 
because he is wisely silent upon them while our 
press never presents them to the public, they must 
again be repeated here. 
The enemy, as a whole (that is the Germans, 
Austrians, Turks and Bulgarians) cannot act as 
a whole upon the two main lines. Only the two 
central Empires can deal with them. And the 
two central Empires must keep upon the Western 
line (counting the Italian front) close upon two 
and a quarter milhon men. They must keep 
something more than this upon their Eastern 
front ; and they must allow, say, a million and a 
half men for their combined communications and 
au.xiliary services. 
That is their permanent and absolutely neces- 
sary establishment in numbers, maintaining which 
they hope to hold, with less than which they 
cannot hold, the two great fronts. 
For how long and in what fashion can they 
stand, or even later perhaps attempt an offensive 
upon these two lines ? 
We know within a very close margin how the 
German Contingent stands with regard to this 
problem. The calculation for the Austro-Hun- 
garian Contingents is less certain, but it is a fair 
assumption to regard them as in a state corre- 
sponding to that of their powerful neighbour. 
The German position is simply this : that, 
with the end of this year 1915, they have ex- 
hausted their efficient reserves. They are beginning 
to draw upon their first categories of inefficients, 
and they keep in reserve what remains of their 
younger class 1916, while preparing to call up at 
any moment the still younger class 1917. These 
two between them yield at a maximum 800,000 
of new material, at a minimum 600,000. 
The situation is not a compUcated one, nor 
one difficult for anyone to follow within Germany 
or without. It is a gamble upon the power to hold 
out with a gradual increasing proportion of in- 
ef ci Its until accident shall give them the use of 
arnues hitherto neutral, or until they can use their 
younger classes. 
Sum it up and it is clearly apparent that the 
effort as a whole is one which ]jermils of no inde- 
linitc prolongation. It permits of a few months, 
espcciall}' if wastage can be kept down through 
the winter. It even permits of some renewed local 
offensive which is not without chance of local 
success (though that is improbable) either late 
in the winter or with the spring. But it is not a 
situation which permits the Higher Command to 
look forward to a prolonged strain of War. It 
is a situation not relieved at all by a risky exten- 
sion of front in the Balkans, and not materially 
relieved by any tardv enlistment, equipment and 
training of tlie insufficient Turkish reserve of 
man-power. But it 1 ; a situation which the 
addition of Greece, and much more the addition 
of Roumania, would temporarily reUeve. No one 
in writing a miUtary history would call such a 
situation " victory," or even see in it a tendency 
towards victory. " It is a condition of siege ; but 
of a siege that can be well maintained for some 
time longer and which the enemy hopes to raise. 
THE ALLIED FORCES. 
What of the forces opposing, that is of the 
forces of the Allies which pin the great mass of the 
enemy to these lines ? 
. Numerically, the German General Staff survey- 
ing the situation knows, just as we know, that the 
situation of the Allies is one permitting an almost 
indefinite ])rolongation of hostilities. The reserve 
of man-power in France is, in proportion to its 
population, not very much greater than the 
reserve of man-power of the enemy. It is a- little 
greater because the F'rench have been more 
economical of men — and the enemy would give a 
great deal to know exactly what France has 
lost. But it is not much greater. But in Italy, 
in Great Britain and in Russia there is a reserve 
which is simply overwhelming. 
On the other hand, this numerical calculation 
alone is not everything. It is upon other factors 
that the German Higher Command is speculating 
for its chances of maintaining its position until 
(as it hopes) the great Alliance shall either dissolve 
or grow weary. 
These factors on which the enemy relies are 
four. 
First, the Italian forces (which came late 
into the campaign) are directed to special objects 
not exactly consonant with those of the rest of the 
Alliance. 
Next, there is the delay unavoidable in the 
re-armament of the Russian numbers. 
Thirdly, there is the difficulty of officering 
those numbers (a difficulty felt by all services in 
this stage of the War, but supposed to be par- 
ticularly heavy in Russia). 
Lastly, there is the fact that the British forces 
are, in very great proportion new and also some- 
what handicapped by the necessity for rapid and 
novel organisation. 
These moral elements cannot be measured 
with the same measure as the numerical ones; no 
one can give an exact calculation of them. 
But a sober judgment will lean against any 
exaggeration of them, and it is probable that the 
enemy's Higher Command, in its private calcula- 
tions, gives them very much less weight than is 
given to them in public pronouncements, such as 
the recent military speech of Hindenburg and the 
same general and less valuable parliamentary 
remarks of the Chancellor. 
Thus, the necessary slowness of Russian 
re-equii)ment is really a more serious matter than 
the difficulty lu officering', and it is a matter which 
