December 7, igi6 
LAND & WATER 
transport and for the common processes of production. 
The third is the highly skilled specialised labour avail- 
able, the indispensable but very similar group of trained 
mechanics without whom the whole process halts. This 
must, in practice, be considered separately from the 
whole of that more subsidiary though necessary production 
wiiich feeds and clothes, mines, smelts, stokes, rivets, drives 
and the rest of it. There is no fundamental difference 
between the last two categories. Each is the product of 
special training, the miner just as much as the instrument 
maker. But the kind of man who can become the latter 
and the time it takes to train him are not the same. 
.\nd that difference is, as we shall see in a moment, of 
great effect upon the fortunes of the war. 
To these three factors in the power of production some 
would add a fourth — the provision of plant for the making 
of special instruments, ft is no good, they would say, 
having raw material and the labour to make it up, or 
even the highly skilled artisans necessary to the final 
process until you have the plant sufficient for the pro- 
duction of such speciahsed machines and that plant on a 
sufficient scale for your needs. 
In the earlier phases of the struggle this fourth category 
would have had to be specially considered, and was 
specially considered in all calculations ; but we have 
reached, or are rapidly rcacliing, a stage, in the west at 
least, where the plant is well on a level with the supply ot 
labour and where the variable element subject to calcula- 
tion is the latter alone. 
Now when we proceed to estimate the present situation 
of the main belligerents in this struggle we perceive the 
following division. 
The Central Empires when they challenged the 
ci\ilisation of Europe as a whole and proposed to impose 
their will upon it (or rather the will of Prussia, which 
was their master) already enjoyed an advantage over the 
Western Allies in every one of the factors of production ; 
while towards the east their superiority was overwhelming. 
Iheir production of raw material, the skilled labour they 
liad a\ailable, gave them an even more remarkable pre- 
ponderance than their great superiority in militarv 
numbers. 
By the time that the new conditions of the war were 
clearly established, that trench warfare had become the 
rule, and that the unexpected demand for production a 
hundredfold and more than a hundredfold of what had 
been foreseen, was fully grasped upon all sides, the advan- 
tage of the Central Empires — though they had already 
potentially lost the war at the Battle of the Marne— was 
actually increased. 
The Turning Point 
If we take as a turning point the end of the winter 
1914-1915, the months just before the great Austro- 
German offensive against the Russian lines, Prussia com- 
manded at that moment over and above the German 
and Austrian factories, the services of industrial Belgium, 
most of what was industrial in France and, with the 
exception of Warsaw, all that was industrial in Poland. 
The Alhes had not had time in the West to develop their 
plant. Russia was almost entirely dependent upon stock 
accumulated for no such ordeal, and upon the produce 
beginning to arrive (over what distances) from the American- 
Continent and from Japan. 
Prussia thus commanded, not only the vast majority 
of the skilled artisans in Europe, and perhaps five-sixths 
of the plant available to all the belligerent areas com- 
bined, but she also commanded much the greater re- 
sources in raw material, particularly in coal and iron. The 
blockade was not yet severely felt. She still actually 
imported directly the sub-tropical products such as cotton, 
which were among the necessities of war. Even so 
Prussia failed (and history wiU think it a marvel !) to 
make good in the west. The extraordinary blunders on 
the one side, the military genius upon the other, which 
had permitted her to lose the Marne, were continued in her 
failure to prevent herself being pinned before reaching 
the sea-gate and concluded by the moral contrast be- 
tween the defence of and the attack on the Ypres sector. 
This is not the place in which to return to that defensive 
maintained under every disadvantage, and is trium- 
phantly decided. It is enough to state the magnitude 
and decisive character of the British success and pass on. 
These advantages Prussia possessed, then, at the 
outbreak of the war. They actually increased after 
her first defeats because, as the character of the war 
changed during its first winter she found herself supplied 
with the means of providing the new equipment and 
munitionment, while her opponents were still lacking. 
But from that moment there appeared a tri-partite 
division among the beUigerents which has been more and 
more emphasised as time has proceeded. 
West, Centre, and East 
Upon the east you had a civilisation not industrialised 
and cut off by geographical accident from its Western 
Allies. In the centre you had a vast polity united for 
purposes of war, highly industriahsed, possessing the 
greater part of the coal and iron of Europe and con- 
trolling of the skilled artisans of Europe. 
Upon the west you had the alliance of the French and 
Enghsh. The English indeed highly industrialised, but 
not for the purposes of war ; the French far less in- 
dustrialised, and that part of their country upon which 
they chiefly rely in the hands of the enemy. 
On the other hand, the Western Alhes were of a more 
ancient, more complex and higher civilisation than the 
Central Powers and would, if they could hold through the 
interval, inevitably surpass their rivals in any field of 
human effort whatsoever to which they might be chal- 
lenged, for they are intellectually the chiefs of the world. 
Further tKe Western AUies had open to them the in- 
dustrial power and the materials mined in the American 
Continent, and the same opportunities from their Ally, 
Japan, and this ad\antage was due to the strength of the 
British Fleet. 
So the race began. How do the competitors stand 
to-day ? 
The Western Allies have been joined by Italy, a nation 
rivalling the two others in engineering skill and possessed 
of considerable plant. All three have so vastly increased 
their power of production for war that they are now 
definitely and permanently the superiors of the Central 
Powers. They can replace guns more quickly, add to them 
more quickly ; produce shell and construct aircraft, at a 
greater rate than can the German or Austrian factories: 
And the difference is increasing. They not only produce 
at a greater rate, but produce better. 
In the eastern field, which cannot munition or equip 
itself sufficiently, the Central Powers ha\e had to supply 
their successive alhes, the Turks and the Bulgars. 'I'he 
Western Powers and the factories of America and of 
Japan have had to supplement the production of Russia, 
and latterly that of Roumania as well. The Central 
Powers have had the advantage where their Eastern 
Alhes were concerned of rapid and direct communications 
by land. The eastern members of our alhance, upon the 
contrary, must be supplied precariously by sea, and that 
sea, the Arctic, closed for many months every year until 
the new railway with the Mourman coast shall be opened. 
Upon the balance, then, the general situation is this : 
A central body fighting two others, one east, one west. 
To the east this central body possesses a permanent 
advantage in munitionment and a permanent power of 
exercising pressure corresponding. On the west it is the 
other way about. The pressure is now exercised by the 
three Western Allies possessed of superior munitionment 
and increasing their preponderance. 
In this one factor of munitionment (eliminating all the 
rest) you have an ascending scale as you go westward, 
and the grave weakness of the east is only reheved, as it 
were, spasmodically. A great head of shcU and a pro- 
vision of weapons accumulating at intervals and suffering 
at intervals dissipation. 
With the west one must count, as its last limb, the army 
of Macedonia. There, and wherever the superiority of 
the Western civilisation is felt, the potential of force is 
against the enemy. Elsewhere it is in his favour. 
So much for the present. It is when we consider the 
future that the relation of munitionment to man-power 
weighs not only upon one-half of the siege front, but 
everywhere against the enemy. To appreciate this truth 
which, with the corresponding truth concerning effecti\ es 
in the field, is the determining force of the whole war, 
let us return to what the power of munitionment means. 
It means, as we have said, three things : The material. 
