8 
LAND & WATER 
March i, 1917 
valley would automatically compel the rctuemont west- 
ward of such Turkish forces as have passed up eastward 
into tlic Persian mountains. 
Where the enemy will stand up river remains to be 
seen, but it is worthy of remark that just before Baghala 
is reached a defensive position exists which is tenable 
if a certain marsh be at this season of the year impassable. 
Whether it be so or not I know nothing, but such a 
(litticult district does stand (difficult at least in the spring, 
and possibly in winter too) just north of the big bend 
below Baghala, and. opposite the little post called Sheik 
Jaad. about 15 to 17 miles away on the line of retreat 
(see Map Y.) Here there is a defile between the marsh 
and the left bank of the Tigris. On the right bank 
there is territory subject to inundation at certain seasons 
but now dry. The line of the river itself here runs in a 
bend far south, and if the enemy had sufficient troops he 
might extend entrenchments for some distance beyond. 
Numbers of the Last Enemy Effort 
1 1 is a curious thing that in the one study which, after 
the mathematical sciences, most demands precision— 
ihat is, the study of war — there should still be, after 
2 ' years of e.\perience, a positive appetite for the opposite 
>.)£ "precision. I cannot believe that this appetite is in 
the public, but it is certainly fiercely present in many of 
those who feed the public with its printed matter. And 
the results on opinion are chaotic. Nothing is more 
opposed to the spirit of precision, for instance, than the 
spirit of sensation. The man who prophesies without 
telling you why and who always prophesies something 
sensational , one way or the other is the . enemy 
Df all calculation. >Jothing is more against the spirit 
of precision than tlu' use of vague but vivid quantitative 
adjectives — " vast," " enormous," etc. 
Even now, after more than a year and a half of exact 
information, one suffers from a whole atmosphere of this 
sort of thing. The " new German armies " are " on a 
portentous scale," the enemy is " stronger than ever he 
was before " — and so forth — and meanwhile the known 
facts are there for anyone who can read and figure to 
follow and to base his judgment upon. 
Let me repeat those main facts for perhaps the tenth- 
time since the beginning of last autumn. 
In round figures, the enemy as a whole has 6| millions 
deployed. In round figures, the German Empire furnishes 
one-half of that number. In round figures, the enemy had 
" in siglit " between the beginning of last autumn and the 
late middle of next summer — say, August — about two 
milhon men, over and above those deployed in the 
fighting area. 
In round figures, one-half of those two million men 
represent the German recruitment. 
Of this German million " in sight " in round figures, 
one-half were in depots, trained or training this winter, and 
the other half would come in from the remainder of the 
younger classes hitherto postponed and from the con- 
valescents during the winter, spring and early summer. 
These figures were not the result of guess work, still 
less of any desire to provide violent emotion with its 
speculative element, financial and otlier. On the con- 
trary, they make, like all figures, pretty dull reading. 
But you can no more judge of the present shuation with- 
out knowing those figures — without having them by 
heart and at your fingers' ends — than you can judge of a 
financial operation without some knowledge of the 
capital behind it, and of the rate of expenditure and of 
revenue upon which it proceeds. 
There are, indeed, two sources from which this known 
condition of the German recruitment might be increased. 
One is the Polish recruitment, including Lithuania and 
Courland ; the other is the last sweepings of valid m(n 
squeezed out of what has hitherto been thought indis- 
pensable employment behind the armies. 
We have not, upon either of these, the same sort of 
precision that we have with regard to the German regular 
numbers estimated by classes, but we do know how 
small a proportion they bear to the whole. Whether 
the invaded provinces on the east can provide 100,000 
valid men or 200,000, or even 250,000, makes a very 
great difference to the total of PoJish recruitment. The 
smallest figure would be a comparative failure, the larger 
one an unexpected success. But it makes a small 
difference to the total of the German armed forces. Even 
if a quarter of a million men could be raised, with their 
cadres and properly organised, from occupied ]M()\inces 
in the East, they would add less than one-thirteenth tu 
the total German armies in the field. 
The general judgment based, it is true, upon nothing 
more than statements of eye-witnesses, without docu- 
ments (I bclie\e) at their back ])uts tlie total of this 
recruitment to date at much less than 200,000. 
What of the combing out of the indispensables ? 
Upon no part of the field of calculation has .tlicre 
been wider misjudgment than upon this. People have 
talked as though the (ierman authorities, at the last 
moment, and by a sort of after-thought, suddenly deter- 
mined (after i' muddling through ") to organise on 
November 13th last, transformed a society hitherto 
haphazard into one of mechanical perfection and pro- 
duced thereby 200,000 or so of valid men who had hitherto 
been wasted on auxiliary service thereby. It is the 
most pitiable nonsense. 
Not only the German Empire, but every fully con- 
scripted country, and none more than the l-'rench, has 
envisaged, tabulated for, calculated, the last unit of 
ax'ailabie manhood long before the outbreak of war. 
The reason that the number of men you have to leave 
behind as indispensables gets smaller and smaller as a 
campaign proceeds in a conscript country, is most 
emphatically not that you think more clearly as the war 
-presses you more severely, or that you wake up tardily to 
the necessity of saving your life. It is simply that it does 
not pay to interfere with the general national life more 
than in a certain degree and at a certain rate. You 
keep a reserve of human material, which you will need 
later to feed your armies. You keep it on the land and 
you keep it in all forms of active work other than directly 
military, and you gradually pass it on into the military 
machine until you have at last only got left your bare 
minimum of indispensables — national indispensables, 
necessary for national work below which you cannot 
possibly go, and which no use of foreign prisoners can 
make up. 
Anyone using his common sense and looking round 
about him in England ought to be able to see that. We 
could use German prisoners in loading and unloading 
trucks, in screening coal, etc., but does anyone out of an 
asylum belie\'e that we could run the London and North 
Western Railway with (ierman prisoners alone, or the 
South Wales Coal Mines ? 
In the calculations of German indispensables which 
the opponents of Germany have niade the numbers 
allowed for ha\'e been the very minimum. Far less 
than the calculators would thetnsclvcs have allowed for in 
their own country. 
The truth is that the so-called civilian mobilisation of 
last autumn was mainly directed against strikes that 
were becoming both numerous and formidable, and by 
no conceivable process could it add any considerable 
numbers to the (jerman effectives. 
These, I repeat, depended for their recruitment upon 
about one million " in sight " spread over a ]X'riod of 
eight or nine months. Of that million about half a 
million already in uniform, and of that half-million 
already in uniform, some unknown proportion — perhaps 
half again or a little more^readj' for use by the end of 
January. Perhaps two-thirds ready for immediate use 
by tlie end of February and so forth. 
The remainder would be available at a fairly regular 
rate as convalescents came in, and as young men were 
trained through March, April, May, June and July. 
Add to this the not precisely knowTi numbers of the 
Eastern alien recruitment, and you have all the available 
resources of that half of the enemy governed directly 
by the German autliorities. 
Now it is perfectly clear that with any particular 
nvmibcr of men " in siglit " for a ccrtani number of months 
to come, and with a certain proportion of these actually 
jn hand, <mc can add to one's existing numbers in the 
