8 
LAND & WATER 
1 )r* iIiiIri 
iijlO 
the general labour, and the skilled artisan direi ti\ < un- 
nected with equipment and niuniti<jnment. 
In the first and in the last of these tlu-ec factors the 
enemy will not fail. He still commands much the s^^reater 
part of that skilled lahuiir which only a small propurtit)n of 
men can furnish, and which it takes years to educate. 
He will have, so far as the mere materials for cHjuiiiment 
and nmnitionment are concerned, an ample pro\ ision for 
a long time to come. Unless indiaruhber be reg.irded as 
an absolute necessity, he has a supply of all that he 
requires for the mire purposes of war. It is in the middle 
factor, general laboiu-, that the strain is already being 
feit and will increase,, and that the advantage of the 
Allies will appear. 
GoeflScient of Labour 
There is a certain cuefficicnt <ff labour which, with given 
machinery, is present in any field of (iroduction. 
If you have so many miles of double railway track, 
so much rolling stock, and so much transport work to 
be effected with that machinery in a gi\en time, then you 
will want of labour as a whole so many more men or, in 
the absence of men. so many more women and children 
during all that time. In ordinary conversation we think 
of these things very \aguely and common political judg- 
ments are based u])on these \agiie concej^tions, so is 
the judgment of nearly all contemporary jo\unalism. 
But the men whose business it is to direct these great 
concerns, will tell ycni that they arrive at a hard and 
fast measurement and discowr for labour a certain 
coefficient, exactly measurable in ton-miles. It \;iries 
so hftle after organisation has reached its maximum 
that you can treat it almost as \'ou can treat dead matter. 
If you want to transport a hundred tons o\er a hundred 
miles in a hundred hours you will want during those hours 
a certain constant luuuber of men in good health and 
neither too young nor too old.and you may take for your 
unit of the ton-nule a certain measure of man-power 
wliich you will call M. That figure .M will never greatly 
\ ary. Special effort may diminish it for a time, that is, 
less men workiiig harder maj- haw the same result for 
a time, b\xt there will be a reaction, and the next period 
of time will show a rise in the coefficients. The co- 
efficient is, under a gisen excellence of organisation and 
with a given type of labom" constant, or very nearly con- 
stant. Just as you can work out the cost of the ton- 
mile to several decimal points of a penny, so you can 
work out. though of course with less precision, the co- 
efficient of labour. 
You may replace men by women in some cases, and 
even bj' children, but of course your coefficient will rise 
rapidly whene\er you do so. You may replace the 
trained by the untrained (as jou nearly alwaj's do when 
you use prisoners) but again your coefficient will rise. 
The conclusion is that the work of mimitionnient, 
transport and the rest will only be done at the expense 
of a certain number of men, or men and women who cannot 
wliile they are being used for these things, be used in any 
other fashion. .And there is therefore not a vague and 
general but a strict and calculable relation between the 
number of things produced and of miles over which thej 
are transported, and the number of hunian beings a\ail- 
able for the effort. 
Now if we bear this in mind and ne\er let oursehes 
slip back into the vague and therefore inaccurate view 
of the matter, we shall retain our confidence in the superi- 
ority of the Allies o\er the enemy. 
To test it. let us take the matter negatively and meet 
the sort of arguments which are put forward u])on th( 
other side. I will take them one by one. 
(i) The enemy has the advantage o\er u> because of 
tlie numerous prisoners he holds. 
rhi> is an error. The prisoners held by the Allies 
are not so nunierou- .1^ those held by the enemy in the 
proporiion of perhaps >ixteen to twenty. Some time 
ago the proportion was much more against us. but during 
t tie summer of itjiGwehave been taking far more of his 
men than he of ours. But so far as industrial power 
is comerned, the balance is slightlv against him. We 
hold upon the whole more men from his industrial dis- 
tricts than he does from ours, so far as mere prisoners 
of war are concermd Th" great bulk of his pris niers 
come from the Russian ])easanir\\ Not three pir cent. 
of them come from the industrial parts of England, 
France or Italy. Further, the fact that tlie seas are 
open to us, permits the importation of labour upon a scale 
wliich he cannot command and leaves at our disposal 
a considerable balance of the labour power in neutral 
countrii;s, though it is true tiiat the latter is only avail 
able against some considerable ])n>duce of our own. The 
mere export of gold will not indcfiiiitelj' command 11, 
nor even the sale of foreign securitii-s, nor, what siiould 
theoretical I \' command it if victory were obvious to all, 
credits. On the b.ilance, however, the enemy's slight 
aJ\antage in numbers of prisoners is overwhelmed by 
tlu- counter-advantage uj)oii our side of .sea-power. 
(2) The enemy by superior organisation lowers the 
coefficient of labour, that is, increases its efficiency. 
This is a legend and a stupid legend at that. It is 
believed almost in j)i"oj)ortion to the pro\ incialism of the 
believer. The coefluient of labour is not higher at Essen 
than it is at Creiisot or Shefiield. (iet the statistics of 
production and the figures are decisive. The same is 
true of the railways. Transport is not effected more 
quickly or with less men within the Central Empires 
than it is in Italy or France. The troops swung benind 
the battle line of the Marne by rail against Von Kluck, 
the transference of the Hritish contingent from the Aisne 
to Ypres, the feat perfornu'd by the Italian General Staff 
when they moved that great mass from the Isonzo to tin- 
Trentino last June, are conclusive jHoof of this on a large 
scale. The' co-efficient of labour in handhng petrol 
engines is certainly not superior upon the enemy's side. 
He has done iu)tliing better thaji nor equal to the 
munitioning of the \ erdmi sector by j)etrol. He shows 
no superiority over the West in the tiandling of petrol 
engines in air or on sea, and the Italian i.id tmitjon i'^ 
perhaps best of all. 
Road-Making 
The same is true of road-making. Fhe rapidity and 
the thoroughness with which tne new roads necessary 
to a progressi\'e offensive or to intensive defensive action 
aie laid down isequal orsujierior in the West to the enemy's 
rapidity and thoroughness. For instance, compare the 
number of pieces massed upon the Somme, upon the 
.Mlies side, and the extent of their mo\ement with the 
corresponding factors u})on the (icrman side in front ol 
Yerdun. The Somme effort is superior. In no department 
of energy yet observable has the enemy's co-efficient 
ol labour appeared superior to that of the British, tl.e 
!■ rench or the Italians. 
It may be urged that the enemy has none the less an 
advantage of organisation in that he has put more women 
to woik than havi' the Western Allies. He maj' liavi' 
been constrained to do so. There are no statistics 
available and no instances from which we can deduce tin 
truth, as we can deduce it in the matter of railway trans 
port or road making. But there is here no particular 
question of organisation, but simply a choice. The 
work of women where it can be usefully emploved is 
available to us as it is to him, with perhaps only one 
exception in the whole Alliance, which is that national 
tradition greatly diminishes in Britain the agricultuml 
labour usefully open to women. 
Lastly, it is pointed out that the actual numbers of 
total i>o])ulation at thealispo.sal of the enemy is superior 
to that at the disposal of the Western Powers, including, 
of course, the oppressed occujiied territorv. That is a 
-iiious argument and must be seriously con^ideixd. 
rile total number of human beings nominally con- 
trolled by the enemy is over 150,000.000 : That is. 
including the occujMed territories and the Allies upon the 
south-east. The total number of human beings controlled 
in luirope by the Governments of the Western Allies 
is not more than i.io,ooo,ooo. The thing so stated is 
\ery crude, but still the balance has t(t be considered. 
I have called this argument a serious argument becausi 
it is serious compared with the two others. The bogev 
of superior enemy " efficiency ' is only a bogey, and a 
provincial bogev at that. The difference in the 
number of prisoners and in the work to which tluy 
can be j)Ut is lu'gligible compared with the advantage of 
