November 2, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
LAND & WATER 
EMPIRE HOUSE, KINGSWAY, LONDON, W.C 
Telephone: HOLBORN 282S 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1916 
CONTENTS 
PAGI 
The Struggle for Humanity, by Louis Raemaekers i 
German Man-Power (Leading Article) 3 
Analysis of German Reserves, by Hilaire Belloc 4 
The "Channel Raid, by Arthur Pollen 10 
" Pusillanimous Neutrality " by John C. van der Veer 12 
The White Road to Verdun (IV) , by Kathleen Burke 14 
Property and the State, by Arthur Kitson 16 
Books to Read, by Lucian Oldershaw 18 
Reviews of Books 20 
Greenmantle, by John Buchan ' 22 
The West End xvi 
Kit and Equipment xix 
GERMAN MAN-POWER 
WE would draw particular attention to the 
special article upon the present reserve of 
man-power within the (ierman Empire which 
Mr. Belloc has been able to compile from 
statistics submitted to him during a recent visit to the 
Continent. Although the sources of this information 
cannot be fully described, they are of a character which 
gives them the fullest authority. 
Of all elements affecting public opinion during the 
course of the war, none perhaps have had such varied 
fortunes with the ci^dlian public at home as this question 
of the enemy's numbers, and particularly of the numbers 
of men available within the German Empire at various 
stages in the struggle. This, like so many other novel 
phenomena of the campaign, has undoubtedly been due 
to the reaction following upon estimates made at the 
beginning of the war too favourable for the Allied cause. 
In the first month's campaign, the losses, being upon a 
scale quite novel in warfare, were, paradoxically enough, 
exaggerated for that very cause. It was as though men, 
seeing the tremendous effect of modern defensive upon 
the German close formation, had lost their sense of pro- 
portion, and faced with something double or treble what 
had been expected in time of peace, were led to imagine 
an e\-en gi-eater slaughter than this. 
^^'hen the period of trench warfare set in with the 
autumn of 1914, conditions were so novel that no one, 
however exp( rt in strategy und-r the old conditions of 
war, was competent to draw a just conclusion. For 
instance, the proportion of deaths to total casualties proved 
to be far liiglier than had been the case with open warfare, 
yet the best observers fell for some time into the error of 
multiplying deaths by 7 or 8 in order to get the 
total number of casualties, while the real multiple should 
have been 4 or 5. There was also this obstacle to a 
right calculation, that for some time the sources on which 
it had been based — intelligence supplied from enemy 
observation, interrogation of prisoners, captured docu- 
ments, etc., were not received in sufficient numbers 
to provide a basis for judgment. But about February 
1915, these difficulties had largely disappeared. From 
that date onwards, say, during the last eighteen months, 
calculations upon which all military judgment must be 
based, had continually increased in exactitude and the 
power to foresee the rate of enemy wastage, etc., had' 
proportionately increased. 
No better example of this can be found than the 
stucUes which have appeared from time to time in the 
columns of L.'Vxd & Water, and which from about the 
date just mentioned, have been verified. The date for 
the re-examination of rejected men in the early autumn 
of the same year was foreseen to be within a few days of 
the exact moment chosen by the German authorities for 
that operation. The same is true of the date for the 
calling out of class 1917 and for its probable appearance 
in the held. The study presented to our readers in the 
present issue of this journal is of another sort, comple- 
mentary to the study of losses by the calling up of younger 
classes. It deals with the total existing reserve of man- 
power behind the<ierman armies in the field, the strength 
and constitution of which is also described. It is 
physically impossible for the enemy to make any useful 
call upon boys younger than class 1918, the greater part 
of whom are at present at school. Such boys might be 
summoned, but they could not be of service until at least 
the late summer of next year, and even if they were put 
under the strain of modern war so early as I hat, the 
effect of such a policy upon the general constitution of the 
enemy's units would be such as to make the game not 
worth the candle. 
There is a complementary study to this analysis of the 
enemy's reserve which every reader naturally has in 
mind, which unfortunately cannot be stated in the same 
exact terms. While we know the progress of the enemy's 
exhaustion, we are, of course, aware of a similar process 
affecting the AUies, and since, for these obvious reasons, 
statistical analysis of the same sort cannot be given upon 
the other side of the account, those who have not yet 
fully considered the nature of the problem sometimes 
regard the enemy's exhaustion and that of the Allies 
as proceeding at a similar rate and with similar conse- 
quences. This is an error which nothing but publication 
of the full facts can confute. Thus we have in the 
Austro-Hungarian Empire class 1918 long ago incor- 
porated and even present in the field, and in the German 
Empire class 1918 for the greater part already in depots 
under training, while prisoners from 1917 class began to 
be taken as early as June and July in this year. The 
French who suffered more severely from their prolonged 
defensive upon their front than any other of the Allies, 
have not even summoned igi8, and though they have 
called up 1917 some months ago, have not yet had to 
put a single man from that class into the field. The 
other conscript belligerents, the Italians and the Russians, 
have a reserve of man-power, which is far greater than 
their existing field armies. The British position is 
somewhat anomalous, because the system of recruitment 
does not follow that of an old-established conscript 
army. There are no classes in the strict sense. But men 
are called up by the actual date of birth and not by the 
vear in which the birth takes place. 
These calculations, and the conclusions that are drawn 
from them, affect not only the strength of armies in 
the field, and their future rate of recruitment, but also — ■ 
and this should not be forgotten — the all-important 
question of munitionmcnt and supply. If Germany and 
Austria-Hungary are now surpassed in the rate of such 
production by the Western Powers, it is only because 
the numbers of men available for all purposes are more 
and more limited. There is a strict proportion between 
the younger able-bodied men used in such work as mining 
and metallurgy, and the replacing of these by inferior 
classes of labour can never be successful. Nor is 
there much in the argument one often hears that a 
large number of prisoners in the hands of the enemy re- 
lieves the strain upon their capacity in any special method. 
The number of prisoners in the hands of the Allies, east 
and west, is approximately the same, or very little less, 
than the corresponding number in the hands of the enemy. 
There was a long period in the earlier part of the. war when 
this was not the case, but it is the case to-day. 
