August 10, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
to the action as a whole. This attack was struck upon 
a front of 6 to 7I miles. It penetrated far into the 
German defences, and at one point it reached Hill 70, 
cutting the La Bassee and the Lens road, but it did not 
shift the German line as a whole, still less permanently 
pierce it, while to the south the French just north of 
Arras had a similar imperfect success. They approached 
to and in places reached the heights dominating the 
Plains of Lens, but could go no further. 
The true cause of this halt and of the failure of the 
Allies in the West to pierce or even considerably shift 
the enemy's line was that the head of shell accumulated 
was insufficient for the task. After the striking of the 
first blow an intensive bombardment was no longer 
possible. All that could be done was to press on ex- 
pensively with infantry for several days, to resist counter- 
attacks from the counter-concentration the enemy had 
brought up, and then to put an end to the operation. 
This double offensive in the West, though it failed to 
achieve its main object, had three considerable conse- 
quences. It compelled the enemy to increase the number 
of effectives he was keeping upon the Western line ; much 
more important, it showed that the deep digging and the 
whole system of the enemy's defensive was useless against 
intensive fire, and that with that advantage one found 
him surrendering readily, and if anything less fit for the 
strain than his opponents. Thirdly, and much the most 
important of all, the failure taught both sides lessons, 
which the enemy was to apply later at Verdun, and the 
Allies in a far more developed form in the great attack 
delivered upon the Somme nine months later. 
Roughly speaking, these lessons were as follows : 
It had been proved that one great hammer blow against 
a line thoroughly held and indefinitely munitioned would 
not succeed in breaking that line. The method for the 
future against equal armament must be a method of con- 
tinued application ; bombardment succeeding upon 
bombardment and advance upon advance. In other 
words, there would have to be prepared before any such 
offensive in the future, a vastly greater quantity of shell 
than had hitherto been thought necessary. 
Nor was it probable that the actual breaking of the 
line would follow even the success of such new methods. 
The front might be broken, but the fine would re-form 
behind. To pierce at one or two narrow points, such as 
had actually been done at Champagne and at Loos was 
useless. The enemy's artillery upon either flank would 
render the gap untenable for the offensive. The object, 
therefore, of a great offensive in the future as against 
equally armed forces would be by successive stages to 
wear down the opponent, create as it were a great sore 
in his lines and either there or in some second selected 
place, whence he had been compelled to draw troops, to 
compel his retirement. Once that retirement should 
begin it was hoped that it could be so vigorously pressed 
as to make it unstable, and ultimately ruinous. 
We shall see how these lessons were applied at Verdun 
and how, having been insufficiently learnt by the enemy, 
he was defeated before Verdun under circumstances 
necessarily disastrous to his cause. 
ENEMY RESERVES 
With this month of October is reache d a turning point 
in the story of the year, the nature of which turning point 
should be closely examined. 
The Centred Empires had, during the whole of the 
summer of IQ15, ample reserve in every sense of that term. 
A reserve of man-power which permitted drafts to be 
continually reaching the depots ; a strategic reserve, 
that is, units equipped, trained, munitioned and ready 
for the field, but kept back from it to be thrown in when 
occasion should offer. And they had, until the middle 
of the summer, fallen back upon no abnormal methods 
of recruitment. They had, in other words, convinced 
themselves that the forces they had detached for merely 
holding the Itahan and the French fronts were sufficient, 
and that a decision could be obtained against the Russians 
with their ample forces set in motion towards the East 
and backed by ample reserves in the depots behmd. 
In the first of these surmises they were justified In 
the second they were not. They had indeed, as we have 
seen, successfully held the Italian and the French fronts. 
But they had used up great masses of men in the attempt 
to compel Russia to a separate peace and they found 
themselves in this month of October, 1915, with their 
advance at an end and a separate peace with Russia no 
nearer than before. What was to be their future policy ? 
By what efforts could they now postpone or anticipate 
the inevitable growth of the British army, and the in- 
evitable growth of the Allies' power of munitionment, 
the slower rate of which had alone given them in the 
particular case of Russia their recent opportunities ? 
In order to answer this question we must appreciate 
how the Central Powers stood for men. We can test 
this point by what we now know of the German recruit- 
ment. For Austria-Hungary being somewhat more ex- 
hausted all along than the German Empire on account of 
her great initial losses against the Russians at the begin- 
ning of the war, whatever phase of exhaustion we find in 
the German Empire we may be certain is to be found 
accentuated in Austria-Hungary at the same time. 
German recruitment then, to take that test, stood 
as follows : 
Up to about the period when the line of the Vistula 
was reached and Warsaw occupied, German recruitment 
had depended upon nothing but normal sources of supply, 
and so long as a field force is dependent upon normal 
sources of supply for its recruitment, one cannot say that 
even the first stages of exhaustion had begun. 
What do we mean by normal sources of supply ? A 
conscript nation going to war has at its disposal all able 
bodied men. It counts as mature and able to give a 
maximum percentage for the field the lads who are in 
their 21st year. From that year up to about 40 it 
" mobilises " ; that is, turns yearly to purposes of war 
its male population. 
In conscript countries each yearly relay of young men 
called to arms is named a Class, and each such Class is 
designated by the year in which the men composing 
it attain their 20th birthday. The later in the year we 
call out the Class the larger the proportion who will be 
over 20, and the earlier in the year the smaller the 
proportion. It is generally allowed that calhng out these 
young men, all of them well over 19 and many of them 
over 20, is part of the normal recruitment of a conscript 
force. 
As a matter of fact, in time of peace men do not start 
their training until a year later. The Germans who 
marched into France, for instance, in 1914, were, the 
youngest of them (excluding the Volunteers), not 20 but 
21 years of age. 
Well, in the first year of the war the Germans had 
called up Class 1914 during November and December. 
And during May and June of 1915 they had called up Class 
1915. While the advance through Poland was in progress 
the first abnormal recruitment began and the German 
Empire " borrowed " as it were the young men who 
were normally only due next year. They called up 
1 916 Class during August and September. The various 
portions of this Class belonging to various States of the 
German Empire were called up at different times, but all 
were under training by the entry into October which 
I have called the first critical point in the second year. 
It should, of course, be clearly understood that the 
losses in a war of this sort — enormously heavier than 
anyone had dreamt of when the old calculations were made 
in time of peace — far exceed the recruiting power of a 
nation. The rate of absolute loss of an army in the field 
has proved in the course of the war to fluctuate between 
4 per cent, and 6 per cent, per month. The conscript 
recruiting power of the same army is, even in the mature 
classes, under i per cent, per month. Roughly speaking 
the rate of wastage has proved to be four to five times 
as rapid as the maximum possible rate of recruitment. 
But there is another abnormal source of recruitment 
to which a conscript nation can turn when the phase of 
exhaustion begins to appear, and that second abnormal 
source is the calling up of men hitherto rejected for 
physical reasons. It is an even better proof of the need 
for men than the calling up of immature classes, and it 
is remarkable that in this same month of October the 
German Empire first began " combing out " as the 
phrase goes, all those who had been previously classed as 
unfit. 
From the above we discover that this moment, the 
entry into the month October, 1915, marked in every 
way a change in the enemy's situation. 
