as some take longer to collect than others, and 
there is a most complicated series of deductions 
to be made of men off the strength for one reason 
or another. At the same time there is perpetually 
going on a wastage of men and a recruitment of 
men, while at anv gi\'en moment there is a v.ide 
margin of men being trained and equipped, in 
which category it is very difficult to draw the line 
between those who shall count as part of the 
mobilisable force and thos^e who cannot yet be 
counted as part of it. 
From all these causes, but particularly because 
tiie matter is specialh- kept secret, our estimate 
of tlte mobilisable strength of the enemy is only 
a guess. 
But it is a great error to imagine that because 
it is a guess it is therefore fantastic and. unreliable. 
The guess or estimate is made within a certain 
margin of error, which can be fi.xed with complete 
confidence. 
An illustration will show what I mean. If 
one were asked to estimate the average height of 
the men in some particular battalion, one might 
:,'uess at 5 ft. Sin. or 5 ft. 10 in. Both guesses 
might be quite wrong. The real average might 
be 5 ft. 9 in. One might make a really bad shot 
such as 5 ft. 4 in. or 5 ft. 5 in. from relying upon 
some bit of false information such as a vague 
statement seen somewhere that they were all 
-ather short men. No guess of this sort can be 
precise, therefore, and there will be a necessary 
margin of error. 
But if one said : " Such and such an estimate 
makes them 5 ft. 7 in., and such and such an 
estimate makes them 5 ft. 10 in., but at any rate 
it is somewhere between 5 and 6 feet," one would 
in that last phrase be saying something certainly 
accurate ancl tnie. If some chance person with 
an a.xe to grind or blind from birth and ignorant 
of human affairs were to chance the statement that 
the average height was 9 feet, we should know 
that he was making a fool of himself. We should 
know this quite certainly, even though we had not 
seen a single member of the battalion or heard the 
height of any man in it. We should tell him 
that we did not accept his statement of the 
miraculous. 
An illustration of this kind is exactly parallel 
to most questions in the estimate of mobilisable 
numbers. We know from all historicaV experience 
that the fundamental or basic figure is 10 per cent. 
We admit that under exceptional circumstances 
12 per cent, is conceivable — that i;, for the first 
year and before the lads who are growing up come 
into the calculation with the extension of time. 
Even if we had no other methods of obtaining 
our results, we should be pretty safe within that 
margin of error. We could say of the German 
Empire, for instance, with its 68 millions of popula- 
tion for 1914 that it might mobilise something 
over 6J million, but would not mobilise much over 
8 millions. But we have very many data besides 
this general method of past experience. We know, 
for instance, that in the present war the French 
barelv mobilised 12 per cent, in the first year. 
We know that in the Balkan Wars the Balkan 
States did not reach 10 per cent. We know from 
the exjierience of our own country that long before 
10 per cent, was reached by vohmtary enlistment 
society began to feel a \'ery hea\'\' strain, and that 
with the mere approach to 10 per cent, the strain 
had reached a limit bevond which it could hardlv 
proceed. (It is true that we have to maintain 
an export trade and a naval armament out of 
proportion to the enemy's). 
We further know from the analysis of enemy 
casualties, especially prisoners, but also dead and 
wounded that fall into our hands, and from the 
calling up of people hitherto rejected by the 
doctors, that the estimated casualties and the 
estimated mobilisable force roughly tally. It seems 
that only at the expense of perpetual iteration can 
even so elementary • a principle as this . be 
linally grasped, but until it is grasped all calcula- 
tion upon this campaign of national exhaustion is 
futile. 
A man who tells you — as Colonel Feyler does — 
that the (ierman PZmpire could mobilise only 7I- 
millions in the first year may be wrong bv half a 
million. So may a man wJio gives the figure 
at 8|. But both are right within that limit of 
error. A man who thinks the (ierman Empire 
could so mobilise 14 million men (as some amazing 
fellow did the other day in the panic press) is 
exactly on a par with a person who should tell 
you that the average height of his family was 
9 ft. 6 in. If you are prepared to believe the one 
statement you are fit to believe the other. 
As to the argument that men can be spared 
from the enemies' mines and the railways and the 
munition factories by the enemy's using his 
prisoners, I fear that can only be met by getting the 
objector to try and run a locomotive for a few miles 
by himself, or win a few tons of coal if he has 
never been down a mine, or go through a munition 
factory any day of the week and see what the work 
involves. 
FINANCIAL EFFECT OF THE WAR. 
One of the commonest questions asked with 
regard to the war is : " Can this party or that 
party to the war stand the financial strain ? " 
The question is one of those which can only 
be answered when one knows how the questioner 
is using the words of his question. 
When you say of a private citizen that he 
" cannot stand the financial strain " of such and 
such an operation, you mean that the laws of the 
State do not permit him to dispose at will of 
materials sufiftcient to the carrying through of that 
operation. 
That is what you mean and that is all that 
you mean. 
The private citizen, for instance, has under- 
taken to dig a canal with his capital as a con- 
tractor. That is simply another way of saying 
that he has bargained to find so many shovels and 
wheel barrows and steam engines and rails, so 
many tons of coal, so much wheat for feeding the 
labourers, and meat and clothing and shelter, and 
all that material wealth already accumulated 
which is necessary to keep the men alive who are 
to produce this new wealth. According to the 
laws of the State in which he lives this man has the 
right to dispose of such and such accumulations 
of wheat, coal, etc., and anyone else disputing his 
right and trying to dispose of them instead of him 
is so made to suffer by the State organisation that 
he will forego such interference. 
.'\part from this property of his the contractor 
may also obtain " credit." That is, he can get 
more wheat and more coal lent to him by other 
owners on condition that he gives them back later 
on. with something more in addition. 
Well, when we say that such a man " cannot 
stand the financial strain" of his contract to dig 
