LAND & WATER 
November 2, 19 16 
German Reserves Fully Analysed 
By Hilaire Belioc 
1AM in a position this week to lay before my readers 
a detailed analysis of the existing reserves of men 
ill the German Empire. 
The matter is ^o important that I trust I may 
be excused if I repeat at the beginning of this article a 
number of elementary points, both to the advantage of 
those who have not read my pre\ious articles upon the 
subject, and for the sake of obtaining the greatest possible 
clearness in my exposition. 
Capital Importance of German Reserve 
Man Power 
A just appreciation of the German man power has been 
the foundation of all sound judgment upon the great 
war from the beginning. Great national wars must 
always ultimately turn upon this factor, granted etpiality 
in material, supply and training, discipline and organisa- 
tion between the opposing parties. But the mattt-r has 
obtained a special importance in the course of the last 
few months and will be of increasing importance as 
the war proceeds, for the following reasons : 
First. — The West has recently passed the Central 
Empires in the power of production. It is making more 
guns and larger guns and more munitionment for them 
than the enemy is making. Its rate of increase in this 
productive power is also greater. 
It is true that side by side with this there goes the 
grave handicap suffered by our Eastern Allies in exactly 
the same field and the fact that they depend for this 
heavy munitionment, which has proved vital to modern 
war, principally upon the West, their communications 
with which are long, few, and difficult. Meanwhile, we 
have in our calculations no longer to condition in the 
decisive theatre, which is the Western theatre, our com- 
parison of man power by an adverse comparison of 
material. The second variable, material, is eliminated. 
Man power alone remains to be noted, and its curve to be 
established. 
Skcoxdlv. — In this decisive Western field the German 
army alone is concerned. The great mass of it stands 
there, and the best quality of it stands there. Therefore, 
an appreciation ^of the remaining German reserve of 
men is the chief factor in any judgment concerning that 
front. 
Thirdly. — It is more and more evident with every 
day that passes that the (ierman Empire — not only the 
directing hand of Prussia, but the organised military body 
drawn from German population — is the vital nucleus of all 
the armies opposed to us. We note the use by our enemies 
of their Bulgarian Allies, and of a certain very insufficient 
and precarious Turkish recruitment. But such ex- 
ceptional features in the situation hardly modify the truth 
that German recruitment is the core of the whole matter. 
Austria-Hungary is notoriously exhausted compared 
with her master. The Turkish Empire has proved and 
will further prove capable, or willing, of providing but 
insignificant contingents for Central Europe. There 
is no question of Prussia's using the Bulgarians in any 
field at will. Moreover, the great mass of them will 
necessarily be tied to the Southern front for so long as the 
offensive from Salonika is continued ; that is, indefini tely — 
for no one who counts in the councils of the Allies now 
fails to recognise the wisdom and the necessity of keeping 
that door pressed open upon the Balkans. 
An excellent proof can be given of the way in which 
German recruitment has become essential to our enemy 
as a whole. I would beg my readers to note it carefully, 
for it is convincing. 
Brussiloff attacked, it will be remembered, upon the 
4th of June. There were at that time lietween the 
central Russian marshes of the Pripet and the /Egean 
Sea exactly three German divisions and three only. 
These were the 48th division of reserve on the Strypa, 
under Bothmer : the loist division in Macedonia with 
the Bulgarians: the third and last, the 10.5th division 
was dispersed south of, and upon, the Danube in various 
localities. 
Brussiloff's great and successful offensive accounted 
within a few weeks for about 800,000 Austrian troops, 
of whom roughly, one-half were valid prisoners which 
the Russians took. 
For a moment it seemed as though the south-eastern 
sector of the great siege-ring would break. In the 
event it held — or rather, the rent was mended. 
As we know, that enormous gap was stopped. It was 
partly stopped by draining the Austrians' depots, hiU 
much more by the throwing into the breach one after the 
other of a very rapidly increasing number of wholly German 
divisions. With the entry of Roumania into the cam- 
paign the process was continued, and at the present 
moment in place of the old three (German divisions between 
the central Russian Marshes and the Aegean there are no 
less than forty-one. It was the (ierman Empire which 
prevented a total collapse upon the Eastern front at the 
expense, of course, of largely depleting that reserve of 
man power which it had at the moment when Brussiloff 
attacked. 
In other words, it is the German Empire which, by 
increasing its army in the field for 1916 at the expense of 
its fortunes for 1917, and by gambling upon an incon- 
clusive peace, has propped up for some months further 
the ruined fortunes of its Ally. 
What the German Empire has therefore left to draw 
upon in the last phases of this gamble is the chief 
matter for our consideration to-day. To be accurately 
informed upon it is of supreme importance if we 
are to judge of the war rightly and to grasp its 
nature not in vague terms, but in detail and with 
precision. And our knowledge in this matter of num- 
bers has a further value, because we are dealing with 
conditions of siege, that is with conditions of attrition. 
We have been dealing with such ever since the Marne, 
and we shall be dealing with such until a war of movement 
is inevitably restored by the gradual exhaustion of the 
enemy. For the holding of these immense lines strictly 
depends upon their reposing securely upon either distant 
Hank. They must be held as a whole. So to hold them 
demands a certain minimum of men. Below that 
minimum you have the breaking point. 
New German Formations 
We shall do well to grasp at the outset what the recent 
Germaa effort has been. Germany has now not only a 
larger number of men in the field (and therefore a corre- 
spondingly weaker reserve of luan power), than she has 
ever had before, but she has also organised these men in a 
much larger number of divisions. 
The character of such an effort will be confused or 
missed by those who fail to comprehend what is meant 
by an increase in the number of divisions composing an 
army. It does not necessarily mean an increase in the 
number of men put forward, although it usually does so, 
and in this case certainly docs so. It means rather the 
increase in the number of units with which you are 
working. For the division, whether large or small, at 
full strength or heavily depleted, is the working unit 
of an army. And the motive of an increase in the 
number of divisions is the desire to attain greater elasticity 
in movement and greater power of acting in several 
separate fields. 
It is like changing money. You have a five pound 
note. It will do the work of one purchase to the value of 
five pounds. But if you have a number of smaller pur- 
chases to make you must multiply your units. You do not 
necessarily add to the total amount in your pocket 
before making these purchases, though you may have 
to do so as well. 
Here is another metaphor to explain the policy of 
multiplying divisions : 
Suppose one has to organise a gang of men for the 
