LAND AND WATER 
October 23, 1915. 
tlderly men hitherto kept back as instructors or 
upon communications or in bureaux, and by arm- 
ing even older men hitherto exempted from all 
military service. The moment you begin to take in 
bad material you can increase your nominal effec- 
tives pretty well indefinitely, but you do so at the 
expense of your real strength. A hnndred men, of 
ivhoin 25 are inefficient, is a much weaker body 
than 75 efficients. This is a practical point on 
which one can appeal to any man who has had 
practical experience. The 25 ineflicients cannot 
be merely eliminated, leaving you with 75 
efficients. On the contrary, they break down in 
batches, hamper your mobility, and confuse every 
arrangement. Every student of military history 
knows that the commander in straits for effectives 
is tempted to have recourse to inefficients. Pretty 
well every campaign of exhaustion shows these in 
the field in increasing numbers before the end 
comes, but it is true to say that their very pre.sence 
in the field hastens instead of delays tlie break- 
down of the force which is suffering from the last 
stages of attrition. 
Whether the enemy's decline in effectives 
were to come towards the end of November or 
towards the end of January really mattered very 
little. His whole plans would have to change in 
view of the fact that his decline was coining 
within a brief delay and almost certainly now 
before a decision should have been obtained. 
Compare the position of a speculator in some 
financial affair. He has the money to do his work 
up to a certain date. He is confident that he will 
bring off his adventure before that date. He fails 
to do so and he finds the rate of his present ex- 
penditure will exhaust his funds in two months, 
or three, or four, and with no prospect of his 
original scheme coming off in that interval. It 
does not matter to such a man wJiether the moment 
of exhaustion is as a fact exactly two months off, 
or three, or even four. It is coming quickly, it is 
within measurable distance, and on the old lines 
the position cannot be retrieved within that in- 
terval. He is compelled to change his plan radi- 
cally, and that is precisely what the enemy did 
some time back when he decided that he had failed 
on the Russian front and prepared a new move. 
What the enemy's new move, due to approach- 
ing exhaustion of his effectives, has been, we know. 
It has been the essentially political stroke of the 
Balkans. Political rather than strategic for 
reasons described at length last week; because it 
necessarily introduces divergent aims in the alli- 
ance; because it in particular disturbs opinion in 
this country (just as it is hoped to do by the 
Zeppelin raids, Avhich are absolutely useless in a 
military sense and are uniqiieli/ designed to dis- 
order civilian opinion). It reintroduces the 
quarrels and jealousies of the Balkan States. 
What the situation is in mere numbers can, 
I think, best be appreciated by looking at such a 
sketch as the following, upon which the relative 
numbers upon the various fronts and the approxi- 
mate resei'ves of man-power, trained or training, 
and waiting or provided witli equipment, is indi- 
cated. The enemy by white circles for units of 
100,000, the Allies by corresponding black 
squares. 
The numbers which Germany and Austria 
can put upon this new front, and have at great 
risk managed to put upon this new front iu the 
south-east (where an arrow indicates the Allied 
