LAND & WATER 
January ii, 191 7 
shortening of a line is often a factor of victoiv. and is 
always designjed for victory. The C'arthaginian effort 
against Rome perished of exhaustion .because the task it 
had assigned to itsolf was no less than the occupation and 
raising of Ital}-. Bat before it began to perish of ex- 
haustion it came within a hair's breadth of succeeding. 
Paris capitulated m 1S71 through exhaustion. The 
wastage of her armed forces, material and food was going 
on at a rate, and liad reachx'd a point which made the 
further support of a population of known and irreducible 
size and the further anihtary defence of a line necessarily 
extended to a certain periinker, impossible. 
Now what does " exhaustion " mean in tHe light of this' 
definition as applied to the present stage of the present 
great ^ries of camjiaigns ? What is the " given task " 
which lies before eitner combatant ? 
The definition of that task is very sirriple. On the part 
of the enemy it is a ta^ k of holding certain extended fronts: 
on the part of the .\lUcs of provoking a rupture in those 
fronts. The enemy <:annot provoke a rupture in the 
fronts opposed to him- because he is out-matched in the 
West, and in the East he is working against indefinitely 
large spaces over which indefinite retreat can (normally) 
be effected. The war is. -therefore, and will continue to 
be, what it has been for now more than two years, a siege. 
Let us repeat, then, the conditions of the problem. 
The enemy must maintain his fron.ts. that is his task. 
The AUies must provoke a rupture in those fronts. That 
is their task. And the word " exhaaistion " relating to 
either side has no meaning save with these tasks implies. 
There is one modification that will occur to everyone, 
which is that the enemy has a theoretical alternative to 
holding Iris existing fronts, and that alternative is a 
retirement to shorter fronts. But I have not included 
this modification because the time for it is past. 
There are a number of converging ref.sons against such 
a shortening of fronts, which make it improbable in the 
extreme on certain sectors, and impossible on others. I 
will lav these reasons before the reader that he may judge, 
(i) Retirement does not shorten the front in the East. 
Given Roumanian belligerency the enemy stretched along 
the line of the Sereth and the Pruth and so northward past 
the Bukovina, through Galicia and Volhynia, the Pripet 
Marshes and the line of the Dvina, is on pretty well the 
shortest front he can hold — and it is a front nearly 50 
per cent, longer (by the way) than it would have been 
had not Roumania come in. 
On the Southern Balkan front retirement north of the 
few valley gates increases his liabilities instead of diminish- 
ing them, and the same is true of the Itahan front. * 
(2) Upon the Western front he has a choice of shorter 
lines upon which he could retire, but he would have to 
do so now after the terrible punishments his forces have 
received —the two great battles of 1916, Verdun and the 
Somme —with the mass of his forces much lower in 
average now than they were ever before, and therefore 
less fitted for the strain and complexity of a retirement. 
Such a retirement would necessarily involve enormous 
loss in material and particularly in heavy artillery — 
which is life and death in the present war. 
Even were it successful in the ordinary military sense 
of that term —that is, even did it result in the new and 
shorter line being taken up and held, the losses in men 
suffered during such an operation could hardly fail to 
cancel the saving in men effected by the taking up of the 
shorter line. Further, this operation would be under- 
taken in the face of an opponent now superior in con- 
dition and arms, and possessed of far greater fresh reserve 
numerical power. It is true that tliis Western sector 
is the one point on which such an operation is conceivable, 
but I think it is admittedly highly improbable. More 
than that^ne cannot say. 
(3) Any drastic retirement in the East cuts the com- 
munications through Constantinople with the Turkish 
army, and therefore dooms it. For that army lives by 
its supplies from the Central Powers. 
(4) The fourth point is, under present circumstances, 
the one of most practical importance. The enemy, even 
if he had immediate and obvious strategical advantages 
offered him by retirement, has every political motive for 
avoiding it. .\nd towards the end of a losing war, 
especially of a losing war which follows on previous 
advance, which is being fought on invaded alien soil, and 
which is accompanied by tactical successes, and the 
occupation of fresh territory, retirement is something 
which hardly any military command has ever been per- 
mitted by its government to effect —even when the mili- 
tary command and the Government were in the hands 
of the same man. Witness Napoleon. In the particular 
case of our present enemies there are a host of political 
considerations all working the safne way. They dare 
not abandon Bulgaria and Turkey and they cannot take 
the Bulgarian and Turkish armies with them. They 
dare not give to their domestic opinion what would look 
like the military j)roof of defeat— it is the price they 
ha\e to pay for having so long called out victory when 
their Command knew that it was losing every day. They 
have deliberately chosen to .stretch their fronts and to 
enjoy the \ery great political asset of an untouclied 
home territory. They cannot reverse such a plan at will. 
Their naval strategy compels them to retain to the end all 
they can of the coast of the North Sea. Their economic 
basis demands the retention of Belgian machinery and 
coal and of Lorraine coal and iron. 
Let us return, then, without fear of modification, to the 
fundamental formula. It is the enemy's given task at 
least to hold his existing fronts. It is the task of the 
Allies to provoke a rupture therein. For those who 
object to the too simple phrase " the breaking of a line " 
(and there is a great deal to be said for their objection) 
we will define as the rupture of one of their fronts, the 
creation by the Allies of two new fianks, or, alternatively, 
local infiltration at several points, where each success 
would mean very large captures in men and materials — 
e\en though after each such success and for some time 
to come the enemy organisation should remain intact. • 
Now if these two tasks be what we have defined them 
to be, how does the word " exhaustion " apply to them ? 
Men and Material 
The point of exhaustion may be reached in men or in 
material, or both. 
In men the situation has been exposed and analysed 
on all sides by all those competent to expose and analyse 
it, until I am sure the readers are as weary of the task as 
the writers — which is saying a good deal ! 
We all know by this time what the enemy's command 
has known in the most precise detail for many months : 
That, failing political changes in the situation, the effec- 
tives required for the holding of the present fronts in men 
are within sight of exhaustion upon the enemy's side. 
He had, imless he could get a Polish army, at the most, 
at the end of last autumn, 20 men for drafts \rith which 
to fill coming gaps in every 65 men actively engaged. 
Supposing Polish recruitment (which has hitherto failed) to 
give him its very maximum, he would still have onty 27 men 
for drafts. That was the draft power he had in .sight for the 
whole of the actions of next spring and of most of next 
summer. It is a proportion obviously insufficient, and 
every one of the Allied Powers has a larger margin. 
France has a somewhat larger margin, England, Italy 
and Russia a very much larger margin. 
We may take this limb of the problem as constant and, 
as we shall see in a moment, it is the determining point. 
What of material ? In material we include finance, 
which is only material under another name ? You may 
borrow your material at interest, and that is sound or 
traditional finance to the advantage of the owners. Or 
you may take it without promising to give back the 
equivalent, let alone to give back interest as well, and 
that is revolutionary finance. But by whatever names 
you call it, if you are determined to win, finance merely 
means material. 
Material for the pmposes of this campaign — where 
. whole nations are mobilist^d, and where inexitably one 
group or the other will, in the political sense, be destroyed, 
and must therefore consider absolutely all available 
resources (.ynce each is fighting for its life)— may be 
divided into subsistence and arms. The division is not a 
logical one and it is rough. There is obvious overlapping 
and obvious broad debateablc ground in which much is at 
the same time arms and subsistence. But the peculiar 
circumstances of the war in its present i)hase do justify 
this division. For the strain upon the population as a 
whole in each belligerent country — that is the strain upon 
mere subsistence — is coming to be a more and more pro- 
minent factor of \ictory or defeat. In this category of 
