LAND & WATER 
February 8, 1917 
How the Enemy Stands 
By Hilairc Belloc 
AT our entry into the last phase of tlie war, in 
/% the midst of the ominous hill and silence which 
/ % precedes it upon both sides, let us take stock. 
JL JL. The one prime element in the calculation — 
wliich more and more rapidly is deciding;: all the rest — is the 
respecti\e weiiL^ht of numbers and material hv land. It 
is moditicd, but only modilied, b3- the enemy's last efforts 
upon our len!,lhly and perilous communications at sea. 
AS to the land, the general situation is now famihar. In 
the West the enemy is mastered. On the East he has 
a permanent and hea\v superiority in material countered 
only, by supply to our Allies by o\ersea routes. 
Ihe West is not only superior but is growing in 
superiority, ll has more guns, more shells, more rail- 
ways, more rolling stock, more men, more food. 
'ihough these calculable ad\antages are modified 
liy difficulties of conmumication which will be dealt 
with in a moment, there ought in fairness to be added 
a certain incalculable element without which judgment 
will always be at fault. The Western Powers are 
morally and intellectually superior to the enemy. They 
ha\e developed better tactical methods. They have 
shown themselves to be better strategists. Tlicy have 
handled their raihvays better and they have concealed their 
moiemenfs better. It is, after all, only what one would 
e.\pect of the heart of civilisation in action against 
outer men who have only acquired their culture as the 
pupils of the South and West and who have never been 
able to do more than imitate. 
It is \-ery important that we should grasp this in- 
calculable but ver\' real factor in the Western situation, 
because foolish writing and still more foolish speaking 
has produced in this countr\' an impression the con- 
trary of the truth. There has long been a general but 
false impression here that the enemy, and particularly 
the North Germans, had some advantage in tempera- 
ment over the Italians, the French and the British in 
mechanical affairs. The more ignorant kind of Mriting 
in the Press supported this error, and of course political 
speaking followed suit. Anyone who will take the trouble 
to consult e\-idence instead of \ielding to a mood will 
discover how false such a conception is. The enemy 
has ne\er produced or maintained for long a superiority 
in the machinery of the air. He has ne\-er moved troops 
by railwaj- with the same secrecy and the same rapidity as, 
in critical moments, the Western Allies ha\e proved them- 
selves capable of moving them. 
The Battle of the Marnc was won by the swinging of a 
great body of troops right behind the line of battle from 
east to west by train with a rapidity and secrecy of which 
the enemy has never been capable. This happened at 
the very beginning of the war in early September 1914. 
The whole of the British Expeditionary Force was moved 
with equal secrecy and rapidity from the Aisne a few- 
weeks later to the sector of Ypres. The enemy might, 
if lie had been able to do it, have moved his troops first, 
he might have done ■Ao more quickly, he had far greater 
numbers at his disposal. He had all the rolling stock and 
lines he wanted. If he had been prompt he would have 
turned our line. But he is by nature slow compared 
with us, and this rapid handling of railways in the early 
])art of the war closed the northern or sea gate against 
him, and completed the effect of the Marni;. We were 
still grossly inferior to him in numbers, but a better 
handling of railways saved us. 
The Italians moved an immense inass of men from the 
Isonzo to the \'icenza-Verona front ; they did it deftly, 
nicely, most rapidly, at a calculated moment, and ruined 
the enemy's Trentino offensive. The thing was done 
so secretly and so quickly, it went so smoothlj-, that it 
may justly be called the best of all the examples of 
railway work in any time or place of the great war. 1 
was mvself a witness of the end of this great operation. 
1 snw with my own eyes its astonishing success and the 
waj- in which those interior lines were used almost with- 
out disturbing the normal civilian life and movement 
upon the roads and railways. It was an unforgettable 
experience. 
\\'hat is true of mechanical power in railway traction 
and road traction is true of weapons. The French and 
Italian lield piece is altogether the .superior of the enemy's. 
In the heavy pieces he had long and enormous advantage 
in number ; he has to-day, though in general our inferior 
here, some particular types which rival those of the 
Western AUies. But he has never been superior in the 
handling of the heavy piece or in the rapidity of delivery 
from it, after the supply of shell was sufficient. 
The enemy's superiority over the Western Allies con- 
sisted /irst in a very much more developed system of 
j)roduction (and far greater opportunities for further 
production) in the earlier part of the campaign. This 
could only be .slowly caught up by the transformation of 
civil life among his western opponents. Secondly, he 
had, to begin with, a great superiority in equipped 
numbers. Thirdly, he was the first in the field and for 
long mechanically superior to us in the digging of trenches 
and in the use of trench weapons and of the machine 
gun. In this we copied from him, and he was our 
superior. The same is true of the observation balloon, 
and of the various forms of nocturnal observation. 
Finally, he was, and he will remain, our superior in mere 
supply of coal and metal. So that with all our own 
superiority in mechanical power and general intelligence, 
aptitude and rapidity of work (Sheffield has a better 
co-efficient of labour "than Creusot, and Creusot a better 
co-efticient than Essen), we simply have not the stuff 
sufficient to meet him unless we can add to it from over- 
seas. The area tiow under control of the enemy produced 
before the war five tons of steel to the Allied three. 
So much, then, for the Western situation in its general 
lines. Subject to the enemy's superiority in steel, which 
niakes us partly dependent on neutral markets, we 
master him. We master him in men, in moral, in gun- 
power and gun handling, in tactical method. 
The Eastern situation we also know. There the enemy 
enjoys a superiority in every department except the 
ultimate supply of men. He can, within a given time, 
produce far more equipment and therefore arm, on a given 
sector (so long as he has them) more men. He has 
a railway system and an experience of railways wholly 
superior to that which faces him. He has a much larger 
body of instructed men on whom to draw for the wastage 
in the commissioned ranks ; lastly, he has a perfectly 
overwhelming superiority in material. He can make 
aircraft, guns and shells at a rate compared with whicli 
his opponents are simply out of the field. Those oppo- 
nents have, upon the zone of the aimies, a better supply 
of mere food— taken as a whole — but in other depart- 
ments of material they are so handicapped as to be in 
another category as it were, from their enemy. They 
have had one strategic factor Mith which to play at will, 
and that was the factor of .space. Given a proper 
handling of retreat and they could " play " the superior 
strength of the enemy up to the point of exhaustion. 
In this proper handling of a retreat they have in the 
main succeeded, and neither in the very great business of 
the Polish retreat, when the enemy was at the height of his 
power, nor in the pett}' business of the Wallachian 
retreat, were the Central Powers able to envelop^ any- 
where. The great enemy concentration failed. The 
armies retiring before them remained in being, and 
reached, in the first case, after a great advance, in the 
second case after a small one, the point of exhaustion. 
It is perfectly clear how such a situation can be sum- 
marised. The enemy's fronts for some 2,000 miles are a 
ring kept at Irigh tension, a ring which is perpetually 
wasting away. The matter by which the wastage is 
replaced, that is, the reserve of man-power within the 
ring, grows only at about a third or a fourth of the rate 
at which the wastatre proceeds. In the race between 
