8 
LAND & WATER 
December 14, 1916 
really in reserve and practicall\' ootauuibie in tlie course 
of the coming j-ear up to the 'middle of next summer ^ 
No one I beheve has been able to answer that question 
within a very wide margin of error indeed. It is fairly 
well known that actually in the depots the numbers are 
small— perhaps 100,000. On the other hand, the Turkish 
losses have not been exceptional in any way. Forces of 
this size from a population the total of which is supposed 
to be (the statistics are very inexact, of course) over 
twenty millions in Asia alone— that is more than half 
the population of France — are very inadequate. 
' But we must remember that ever>'thing militates 
against a thorough recruitment of this tield. You are 
deahng, in the first place, with a very slightly organised 
civilisation ; next with a very heterogeneous one. There 
are regions in which any recruitment at all is impossible. 
Most of the Armenian field has been lost, and exemption 
from military service has hitherto been granted to 
well-to-do people against money payment. This last 
feature in the chaotic system the Germans have done 
much to modify. Tliey have brought pressure to bear 
and have gathered a certain recruitment thereby from the 
wealthier classes hitherto exempted, but it is a very 
small factor in any case, ^\'hat Turkey may produce in 
tlic course of the next year it is therefore impossible to 
say, but it is significant that part of Class '18 was called 
this autumn. In other words, small as the Turkish effort 
has been, numerically stated, the available sources of 
recruitment were approaching exhaustion. If \ou add' 
to the existing organised Turkish forces a quarter of a 
million men you are stating the maximum of the potential 
reserve for the Umits of time with which \\e are dealing. 
Summary 
We are now in a position to sum up the apparent 
rescr%"es of man-power between this and say .\ugust for 
the enemy as a whole — the human material a\ailablc to 
him for replacing wastage in his existing fighting units, 
or for creating (if he chooses to gamble upon that rapidly 
exhausting policy) new units. 
Postulating that the number of men he still has left 
exempt for necessary services have been reduced to the 
strict minimum, you have, for the whole enemy com- 
bination a total possible theoretical maximum of some 
two millions, less by a good deal if Austria cannot pass 
her estimated 600,000 and Turkey cannot largely add 
to her existing reserve ; more, if Austria can add some- 
thing however bad from her very youngest class and if 
Turkey surprises us by more than doubling her present 
reserve. But the round figure is the two millions. 
• VVhat proportion this will bear to wastage depends 
entirely of course upon the nature and the severity of the 
fighting between this and the late summer of next year. 
But if we judge by the past, it is quite insufficient to 
repair the probable wastage. The drafts in sight for 
the next eight months are heavily — or hopelessly — 
inferior to the estimated rate of wastage. Tlic human 
material available is. as everybody knows, far 'inferior to 
the corresponding reserve of man-power in sight behind 
the entente armies. But I am not for the moment 
concerned with that, but only with the detailed statistics 
.which I liave just tabulated. 
I have not touched in this article problems such as 
the possible recruitment from Poland and Courland or 
possible pohtical changes such as the future belligerency 
of nations now neutral. 
Enemy Losses on the Somme 
The rate of wastage, and what it means in a field of 
special severity may be well judged by the estimate we lu-e 
about to make of the enemy losses upon the Somme sector 
during the course of the present offensive, and up to the 
first of the present month, that is, during the five months 
from the ist of July to the ist of December. 
The Allied offensi\-e upon the Somme has compelled 
the enemy, though he declared a policy of the strictest 
defensive and boasted that he could maintain it with 
a minimum of men, to put into that furnace the 
equivalent of 135 divisions. Of the lot divisions which, 
from their classes, were capable of the effort (that j>, 
excluding the inferior formations of older men wiio could 
not be used) all but six Iku at one time or another bene 
compelled to appear upon the Somme. These six — up to 
the 1st of December at any rate — still remained upon the 
Verdun sector. All the other 05 at one time or another 
have had to come under the Allied fire between Gomme- 
coiu-t and Chaulnes. 
Of these 95, 32 ha\-e appeared twice. Wiien one says 
"appeared twice " one does not count a reappearance 
after a few daj-s for repose and recruitment, but a re- 
appearance after at least three weeks of absence arfd 
complete re-establishment upon some quiet sector. 
I'our di\isions ha\'e even appeared three times. 
Now from a number of methods, the chief of which is 
a comparison between known identified units and the 
published casualty lists — after gi\ing the latter some 
months for correction — those engaged in this work ha\'e 
arri\-ed for the five months in ciuestion to a total of some- 
thing o\er 700,000 men. We know that the divisions 
were thus maintained to the extreme limit of defensive 
power and that a division was not withdrawn until it 
had lost upon an average something like half its effectives 
and much more than half its original complement of 
infantry, lost, that is, by death, wounds or capture alone, 
apart from sickness. Here are some examples (and we 
must bear in mind that the German division now should 
be regarded as of nine battalions so far as infantry is 
concerned, and these not quite at full strength) : 
The 26th di\ision of Reserve retired upon the 6th of 
October had lost over 8,000 men. The 38th division, 
active, retired on the 7th September, after very heavy 
lighting, afforded a casualty list of 8,443. The nth 
division, present from the 6th of September to the qth of 
October, showed losses of 8,498. 
The analysis of casualties published for 330 battalions . 
against one-half of the line showed upon an average for a 
first appearance a loss of at least 45 per cent. F'ourteen 
divisions were found to have lost 50 per cent, and four 
divisions actually 60 per cent. 
Upon the other half of the line you get almost exactly 
the same results : \zb battalions losing some 45 per 
cent. ; ten divisions lo.sing 50 per cent. Three divisions 
losing 60 per cent. And all this without mention of 
sickness. It is elementary, oi course, and should be 
perfectly clear to everyone who follows such sta.tistics, 
the word " casualties " does not mean absolute lo.^s. 
Roughly speaking, of five casualties, one only is a death, 
and of the remaining four three will ultimately appear as 
discharged from hospital, and fit for some kind of duty. 
(Jf the 700,000 or slightly more appearing as casualties 
among the Germans in this sector, for the five months, 
some small proportion of slightly wounded in the early 
jjart have reappeared before the end. 
The two great fields of Verdun and the Somme, which 
between them account for quite a million and a quarter 
German casualties apart from sickness, do not mean more, 
perhaps they do not mean quite as much as, a quarter of a 
million dead, fhcy mean as we know, and ha\'e been 
told, less than 100,000 prisoners, and of the remainder 
three-quarters will be passed ultimately for duty of some 
sort, and not far short of half for the active service which 
they left. But the figures give one. some idea of what 
the rate of wastage is, and why e\en these enormous 
figures which I ha\e been quoting and which show for 
the whole enemy combination a potential reserve up to 
-August next of some two millions, are in no way adequate 
to the wastage of the Central Powers or their Allies. 
The main principle go\'erning the whole affair is simple 
in the extreme. It is, I repeat, this : The Great War 
can only be expressed as a function of two factors : 
^Munitionment and Effectives. 
In munitionmcnt the West has already passed the rate of 
tlic enemy and we increase the dilfereiice every day. The 
East is far inferior to the enemy and must be supplied 
by the West, and from those neutral sources of production 
which British supremacy at sea has kept available. 
In effectives the enemy, var^'ing in exhaustion with 
\arious districts, is everywhere suffering arate of wastage 
far superior to his power of recruitment, and the latter 
inferior by a very large margin indeed to the corre- 
sponding power of the Allies. 
That is the war and that is the whole of the war, and 
that is wliy Prussia has asked for peace : privately since 
three months ago —now publiclw She is defeated. 
II. Hkli.oc 
