May 25, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
^7 
Britain's Military Effort 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THE picture which everyone should have before 
him in writing of a contemporary event, is the 
aspect this event will have for posterity. He 
must attempt to see the thing with that detach- 
ment and in that proportion normal to a man separated 
by long spaces of time from the affections and bias of the 
moment. 
If we approach the military effort of Britain in this 
spirit we shall find that effort to be a far stronger and 
greater thing than opinion has yet conceived. 
The war has been in progress less than two years. 
We have not yet ended its twenty-second month. In 
that brief period of time (it will be but a flash in the eyes 
of history) Great Britain has produced, upon the Military 
side of the State, an orgamsalion almost entirely novel, 
and constructed under conditions which render it unique 
in all the history of war. 
Unless we recognise not only the magnitude but the 
individuality of the effort, not only its scale but its 
cjuality, we shall miss (to our disadvantage to-day) what 
posterity will certainly grasp. 
When the war broke out Great Britain was able to 
put into the field not quite four divisions. 
The full four divisions of what we called " the E.\- 
peditionary Force " were only constituted in the very 
progress of the fighting. Their last complementary 
units did not exceed the losses already suffered in the 
first shock, and only reached the field while the third 
heavy day of action was in doubt. 
Even this original body, of less than four divisions, 
was not in line until the war had been in progress 
upon the Continent for more than a fortnight. It 
.was a force of professional regulars. It represented 
very nearly the maximum effort which (ireat Britain 
was pledged to or had hitherto thought possible in case of a 
continental campaign.' 
From Six to Seventy^ 
When, in the counter-offensive which began a fortnight , 
to three weeks later, these four divisions increased to a 
nominal six (" nominal," because the losses of the previous 
fighting had so grievously depleted the units engaged) 
the very maximum was reached of all that had been 
envisaged before this war. 
So matters stood when the British army in France, 
representing not a tenth at that moment — indeed not 
very much more than a twentieth — of the total AlHed 
forces in the west, came to the Aisne river and entered 
that second phase of the campaign to which we are still 
condemned : the war of trenches. 
In the middle of May 1916, exactly twenty months 
later, tho army in the field numbers seventy divisions, 
so far as the effort of these islands alone is concerned. 
Not only are those seventy divisions kept at full 
strength during a campaign of unprecedented wastage, 
but they have behind them such masses of men already 
trained and equipped as permit the maintenance of those 
units — not indefinitely, indeed, for the wastage of all 
armies in this war is more rapid than their possible 
recruitment, but, at any rate, for quite as long a time as 
the struggle in its present form can possibly last. 
Not only have the numbers thus increased by more 
than tenfold, but the total mobilised man-power of the 
nation has increased at the same time in a far larger 
proportion ; and when the third year of the war is 
entered it will be found — for reasons which we are about 
to examine — -that Great Britain will have turned to the 
purposes of war, direct or indirect, a larger proportion 
of her population than any belligerent country, with the 
possible exception of France. 
The statement when it is thus first made sounds 
extravagant. It is true, as will soon be apparent. 
This State has multiplied its field army by more than 
ten in the course of less than two years, and has multiplied 
its total armed force by a multiple nearer 18 and lo. 
Now let us consider (without as yet mentioning the 
peculiar difficulties involved) the equipment of this 
force. 
To raise and train a body of men is one thing, to provide 
it with its necessary equipment is another. Under 
modern conditions it is the second of the two tasks that 
is the more serious, and the more likely to involve delay. 
By equipment in this sense we mean not only the accoutre- 
ment of the soldier but the provision of the armies with 
all their parts in due proportion. We mean the provision 
of field guns, of a new and exceptional number of heavy 
pieces for the longest task. We mean the provision of 
everything needed for the sanitary formations and the 
provision of everything required for supply ; we mean 
the provision of all technical instruments, and, in general, 
the organisation of an army in its fullest development. 
The immensely increassed armed forces of Great Britain 
are now in that position. Nothing is lacking, save here 
and there in such things as have been invented during, 
or have been suggested by, the course of the war itself. 
In these every belligerent is, according to his situation, 
still making good his position. We have not yet, for 
instance, the same full output of steel helmets as the 
French, for the French were here the pioneers, but we are 
advanced beyond the Germans and Austrians in this 
respect. On the other hand, there are certain forms of 
trench weapons in which both the armies of the western 
Allies were only lately, and may still be, catching up with 
the enemy. Against this again set the fact that there is 
at least one trench weapon in which we are altogether the 
pioneers, in which our Allies are to follow us when it 
appears, and in which our enemies will be behind us so 
heavily as hardly to be able to catch up before the end 
of the campaign. With the exception, however, of these 
varying details of things developed during the course of 
the war, the army is fully equipped, and has not been 
presented during its rapid increase at any moment subject 
to any lack of equipment. I might add that it is equipped 
with a solidity and thoroughness of material in the true 
national tradition. 
This feat, the multiplication of one's army in the field 
by more than ten in the course of twenty months, and 
the putting forward of the new formations fully equipped 
in every detail, is a thing which has not been known 
before in the history of war. It has not been known where 
nations already armed and already practised in war were 
concerned. 
It is a feat the more extraordinary when one 
considers that the nation which has performed it was 
one of the great Powers. A nation hitherto ignorant 
of arms, or one which from its small size could 
anticipate permanent neutrality in European conflicts, 
might be compelled to sudden expansion from some very 
low original minimum. But England was a nation of 
the first rank, which had calculated beforehand the pro- 
portion of its various efforts in case of war, naval, military 
and economic, which was suddenly called upon to throw 
the whole of that calculation to the winds and to develojj 
one single field of its energies after a fashion utterly out 
of scale with anything previously conceived or consonant 
with the general arrangement of the national life already 
absorbed in the problem of. defence. The thing had to 
be done in the midst of a highly differentiated industrial 
society, working at full pressure, and it had to be done 
in a society which actually lived — not merely thrived — 
by sea-borne commerce, and which would die if it lost 
the importation of raw materials and food. 
These are the considerations (considerations attaching 
to the nature of the British polity before the war, and, 
indeed, during all the course of the war) which gives to 
the effort Britain has made a quality far more remark- 
able than its mere scale — enormous as that scale is. 
The best way, perhaj:s, in which to put the thing is to 
point out a simple truth which everyone will admit who 
has the imagination to throw his mind back to the early 
summer of 19 14. That truth is this. No one in the 
