October 23. 1915. 
LAiVD AND WATER. 
month by the Germans, wlienever they have at- 
tempted to obtain their decisions, as illusions. 
If a third tells me that an estimated German 
loss since the offensive began of 200,000 is too high 
to suit his mood of gloom, I ansv.er, " What is five 
times 40,000 ? There are 40,000 de?.d by this 
time." If he says, " One killed in five is too few," 
I answer, " Why is that, then, the ratio in our own 
case? 
It is worth while whenever one hears these 
absurd exaggerations of the enemy's strength or 
under-statements of his rate of wastage to use 
immediately the argument of analogy with 
our own known outside figures. It is a sufficient 
and unanswerable reply. 
Let me give an example of what I mean. 
The other day I read in one of those newspapers 
which are making it their business to break up 
the unity and moral strength of the country, an 
anonymous article from the pen of a " Neutral," 
in which the writer confesses himself impressed 
by the great numbers of young and healthy 
soldiers whom he had seen in the towns of Ger- 
many and Austria. 
Let us make the assumption thv.t the writer 
was really a '" neutral," and was writing in good 
faith of things he had really seen. Does any 
sane m.an suppose that such witnesses, not as 
isolated instances but bv the hundred, h?.ve not 
given their evidence to the Sttiffs and Bureaux of 
the Western Allies? Of course they have, and 
instead of giving it vaguely in the columns of a 
newspaper, where it is used for the purpose of 
frightening the public, they have been most 
clcsely examined, every detail checked, and their 
general impressions reduced to the hardest con- 
crete statement of which they were capable. If 
there were only a million men left in reserve — that 
is, if there were only two mouths more supplies of 
units — that number would still produce a pro- 
digious impression upon any traveller. Think of 
the impression produced in this country upon a 
man who should travel over no more than the part 
south of the Tha!i:!ss and see camps upon camps 
of new soldiers and the country tov^'ns crowded 
with khaki, and then imagine what the impres- 
sion of a full million would make were it deli- 
berately put forward to impress opinion in the 
great centres of population. Moreover, you will 
include in such countries as Germany and Austria 
all the cases of sick and of slightly wounded who 
can get r.bout and be mixed up with the crowds. 
Evidence of that kind, merely generally 
stated, is absolutely worthless, both because a 
rclutitely small reserve (small, that is, in propor- 
tion to the enormous armies at work) is actually 
lai^e and also because general observation, un- 
trained, gives you do sound basis for judg- 
ment. The very numerous trained men who 
are sifting all the evidence available see, 
I say, upon a scale vastly more extended 
than those occasional " neutrals " in the news- 
papers, and they have evidence of infinitely more 
value. They have noted for them, from those 
who see them, the drafts that arrive at the 
front. WHien they are upon the fighting lines 
their own (H^mmandcrs ncte where nev.' contin- 
gents have arrived, and by the interrogation of 
prisoners and by documents found upon the 
wounded and the tiead discover frcf.a what depots 
they have come and in what numbers. To all this 
mass of military intelligence (whic:h the enem.y 
poss<»ss(^R v.ith regard to our own figures just a.s 
we possess it with regard to his) is added the cal- 
culation of common-sense, or rather of the rules 
of arithmetic, difficult things to get over. Tiiere is 
knowledge that the proportion of men mobilised 
out of such and such a population is such and 
such a proportion, and an exact knowledge of 
what the original material was in amount and 
in quality. There is the analysis of the mobilis- 
able population and of its v.astage and twenty 
other ways of estimating the problem, which no 
matter how you approach it always comes down 
to much the same conclusion. 
Now these calculations thus independently 
undertaken by men trained to this kind of evi- 
dence and attaining it in a degree altogether 
out of proportion to the little trickles of in- 
formation that a civilian population pos- 
sesses with regard to the enemy, do not in- 
deed come to an absolutely precise number 
nor fall within a margin of error of a few 
thousands. It would be a miracle if they did. 
They differ between the maximum and the mini- 
mum by something like a million, and that sounds 
like a very large margin of error, and it would be 
in any warbut this;but it means, measured intime, 
two months or a very little more than two months. 
In other words, if you take an estimate of 
that one of the num.erous calculations which 
gives most latitude to the enemy, which most 
believes in his powers of resistance, if you couple 
it v(^ith that one which is most sceptical as to his 
rapid rate of wastage, if you couple them both 
with that one which allows for the very largest 
number to be returned to efficient service 
after being in hospitr.l — if you weio-h 
all the scales against the Allies — you arrive, 
for the date when the enemy's efiectivea 
will decline, at somewhere about the turn 
of the New Year or very little later. Say the end 
of January at the very latest. More reasonable 
estimates, less violently weighting the scales 
against the chances of the Allies, reduce that time 
to the course of December, while estimates which 
h?.ve very great authority behind them, but must 
be admitted to be at the hopeful end of the line, 
place the turn of affairs in the month of Novem-ber 
itself. 
It is quite clear under such circumstances 
that the enemy some little time ago arrived at a 
point where he had to reconsider his whole posi- 
tion. During the summer, while he still expected 
a decision against the Russians and a separate 
peace with them — and while his successes in the 
East were presumably permitting him to negotiate 
secretly with the Kings cf Bulgaria and Greece 
to tie them down to their pre^euL action — he still 
hoped for a conclusion of the war before his effec- 
tives should decline. It is fairly well authenti- 
cated that the head of the enem.y 's governn.ent 
proposed October as the couclusion of the cam- 
paign. Once it v»"as apparent that he would rot 
obtain his decision, then the approaching decline 
in his effectives became as a matter of sheer neces- 
sity the chief matter for his ccnsideration. 
It is hardly nece.ssary. let us hope, to em- 
phasise once more a point which has been m-nde so 
frequently in these columns as that concerning 
the maintenanrc of enVvtivc^ by insuffici?nt 
material. It should be srlf-evidcnt that i\■^y 
power reaching the end of its reserves could ke3;> 
up the numbers of human beings present in tj^e 
field by arming those hitherto rejected by t'-^ 
doctors, hy arming bo\-^, by r.^ing in the field 
