LAND AND WATER. 
October 23, 1915. 
under the 
ss belli ml the 
vho in tlio incnntime may be called " the nation's 
it'^orve of man power." 
Ill the old davs when nations fought \Mtl 
luvlVssional armies it was not the lull national 
m-sorve of man power whieh was considered, hut 
lli(> pn»lvihle nuinlier of reeruits obtainable and 
trainable and e;'.pable of equipment 
BYsUMU of tlu>sc times. To elay this ina 
fii,ditinu- niiits is equivalent to all that young man- 
brHul »>f the nation whieh can be spared Irom 
work necessjirv to the munitioninj:; and equipment 
of tlie iirmv and to the eeonomie maintenance of 
the Slate. ' When we talk of • a decline in the 
elTeetives '■ of any army, what we niean is not 
that the enemv is reaching the end of his men but 
that Ixvauso for one reason or another the reserve 
of man p»>wer bt^hiiid the armies is giving out. 
Kither the units have gi>t to l)e put on to a lower 
establishment — o.g., luittalions once of a thou- 
sand men aiv to be ivgjuded in future as counting 
only 750 men -or whole units are eliminated in 
order to keep up the standard of others, 
e.g.. the effci^ives of the 10th corps are dis- 
tribute*! between the 8th and the 9th to 
bring the latter up to full strength, while 
the 10th as a unit disappeai-s. The latter 
i\\|HHlieut is obviously the more clumsy and much 
the nu-er. The former course is commonly fol- 
lowetl. And after a certain jwint when the re- 
serves of men are exhausted an enemy's effectives 
begin to deeliue. 
Fivm these elementAry considerations it fol- 
the wastage from sickness (an amoimt we can only 
estimate and on which we have no exact figures) 
is less than it used to be, or, to be more accurate, 
the permanent wastage from grievous sickness is 
less. 
We know from ample intelligence supplied to 
the bureaux of the Allies what the rate of wastage 
is. The enemy has to find about a million new 
nien every two months. There is no doubt a 
certain discrepancy between the drafts he is find- 
ing and the totarpt'i'"!''!"^^^^ losses, the latter 
beiii" the smaller figure than the former, but 
amoimts to about four-fifths. While the enemy 
has to find half a million a month somehow he 
need not write down his absolute permanent 
losses as more than 400,000 a month, and the dif- 
ference between the two figures is represented 
partly bv the extension of his effort, partly by the 
somewhat increasing permanent margin of tem- 
porary losses. Tiike it at the lower figure and 
consider only the men whom he has to replace for 
good and all and you have not less than 400,000 a 
month. This figure is arrived at by all sorts of 
ways and invariably comes out— within a very 
little margin of error— at the end of the statement 
or calculation, and it tallies with the corresix)nd- 
ing rate of wastage of the other armies of which 
these same bureaux have private information. 
We need not waste time over the sort of 
people who, in their vagiie dread of the enemy, 
endow him with supernatural powers, expect his 
wastage to be incredibly less than that of the 
exactly u|x>n the military task it has undertaken 
— that is, the numbtn' o^ units it is proposed to 
put into the field auipleil with the rate of wast;vge 
MX thtvse units; and the number of imits it is pro- 
jHwed to put into the field depends either upon 
the task im|>oseii upon it by othei-s or imix^seil by 
u task it has ambitiously chosen of its own accord. 
For instamv. Gi-eat Britain in the South 
Aft 
emit 
•lows that the limits of a nations i-eserves depend Allies, and his opportunities of recruitment to be 
in some miraculous way indennitely superior to 
that of the i-est of mankind. He is fighting the 
same kind of war as are the Allies, in much the 
same fashion. He has about the same numbers per 
million of men who can be equipped and trained 
usefully, and he is losing about the same numbers 
per million. Further, the general reader must 
^ _ specially remember that the figures thus arrived 
i-icau War was iUnHmdenruixm' voluntary re- at by very numerous independent authorities, 
itment. but it had from this souree reserves working akmg eyer^ possible line of evidence, are 
virtually indefinite in men wmpared with the the only serious basis for a judgment. General 
numbers of the enemy. The rate of wastage w;as opinion relies in the matter upon evidence 
8ueh and such, and could not only be repaired but infinitely worse.* 
the numlvr of units in the field constantly in- Those who in their wonder at the enemv s 
ortNistHl. Trussia and her vassal states in the war p?Pg»^^ >" the East and continued stand in the 
of 1870 had only to put against the greativ in- West doabt such figures, can only doubt them 
ferior numlxM-s of the French so many imits as, ^ ^ refosin^to accept all known existing statistics. 
the rate of wastage then suffei^eil. could be amply 
supplied with men for a much longer time than 
the war lj»ste*l. and Pnissia at the end of the war 
was stranger in traineil and eouipped men than 
she had been at the beginning oi it. 
Now. in the present war the enemy has, partly 
of his own choice and j^rtlv from the necessity 
of rej^lling the threat of mvasitm in certain 
quarters, mainly because of the political results 
be expects from the prosecution of such an aadbi- 
tion. undwtaken the holding and e\"en the exten- 
sion of certain fronts which involve him in a vMy 
heav)- ex{ienditure of men. He has over 500 xailes 
to hold in the West. He has a line to hoM in the 
East which is generally put down at 800, bat 
which, in all its conwlutions, is nearer 900. 'He 
has just oiHMievi a new line in the South-East of 
about 200. He is, at any rate, actually holdii^ 
well over 1.500 miles, and the number of units he 
retjuires for this is correspondingly great. His 
rate of wastage is quite out of prt^portion to the 
csi^rience of past wars, with this exception, that 
due says, fw instance, that Germany has had 
mobiliaible at least eight million men. or very 
little more. If a fool rushes in and says. " Ob ! no, 
^le has mobilisable twelve million men/' then the 
aBSwer is that France, at that rate, cculd have 
mobilised over seven million men — which is 
If another rash enthusiast proposes that the 
German losses have bem not three millions, but 
only twOk, die answer is that in that case our own 
casualties in prt^XNttion to the number of wssk 
engaged should be diminished by at least a third, 
or that we must regard the ceasdess Geman 
fifcnnim on tbe West or East, or both combiaed, 
tie Aj— L Gernan fomatioDs, the eK»noos 
saoifices made over and over again, Bonth after 
^Serenl coneHpeadeiits ham cslkd bt atteatiaa to 
a paWe -f lUirt. tkai Uttn are " tam» or tot ■ilKn^ 
«r ■bEUzt ^b kfk" It is ^Btm ix wt t . 
WMiritiwi.; tw m mrimtA mr JMifiMilii Ij ilU 
Keacfy aD the i«st are tkaee icjecud by the dodOK a« 
forcrafiaa vock. 
