March i, 19 17 
LAND & WATER 
field. One can put in if one likes all the men whom 
one has actually in liand, trusting (for drafts to replace 
wastage) to the categories that will forae in month by 
month from newly-trained men and from convalescents. 
It is equally clear that, according to the size of one's 
original addition to one's existing forces, will be one's 
power of eking out the drafts remaining. 
There are two extreme policies. 
The first is to put every man one has under one's com- 
mand who is already sufficiently trained in the depots, 
into the new units, and to risk the very early depletion 
of that reserve from which wastage is later made 
good. The other is to increase one's existing army 
hardly at all and to keep all, or nearly all one's men for 
drafts to repair wastage. 
Two Extremes of Policy 
It is self-evident that the first extreme poUcy is a policy 
which gambles upon the chance of an early decision. A 
Ciovernment or soldier pursuing it, says to himself : 
" I will make the largest possible striking force now, be- 
cause, though my chance of winning here may be slight, 
yet mv chance of winning if I delay will be sUghter still. 
r know that it condemns me to an earlier exhaustion, 
but I will risk that." 
In the second case, the Government or soldier con- 
cerned says to himself : " I will husband my men to the 
utmost. I beUeve the war is of a sort which by lingering 
on will with every passing month bring me a better 
chance at the end. I will therefore keep back all the 
men I have in hand and all that come in month by month 
in the future for drafts to repair wastage, and I will 
keep down that wastage as low as possible." 
Somewhere between these* two extremes, and usually 
well towards one or the other, the policy of a nation 
at war will be discovered at any moment. No one 
doubts, upon the evidence available, that the German 
Empire last autumn plumped for the former of these 
two policies. There has been a considerable addition 
to the numerical strength of the army deploN'ed by 
Germany for the purpose of the fighting to be renewed 
shortly with increased strength. .That army is to be used 
very actively and therefore wastefuUy. The drafts kept 
back for repairing this wastage will therefore be in- 
sufficient to repair it throughout the year, but the risk 
involved by this insufficiency is thought worth while, 
because the state of* the enemy cannot be worse and 
may be l?etter after the running of such risk. In other 
words, the German authorities believe that with luck they 
may do something striking. They do not believe that 
merely trying to hold out another few months, subject 
to increasing pressure and perpetual local retirements, 
with ample drafts to replace wastage would pay them in 
the long run. And no one can say that they are wrong. 
Present Strength 
Naturally, this policy means that " the (lerman armies 
are stronger than ever they were." If we use the word 
"stronger" to mean numerically larger for the moment 
within the fighting zone. Naturally, also it means that 
the provision of artillery is superior to what it Jias been 
— that is true of both groups of belligerents. And 
though one must not discuss figures here either of 
weapons or munitions, the Allies have a clear superiority 
in both these, taken as a whole, and a very great 
superiority upon the West. 
Let it further be repeated, for it .seems to be necessary, 
and repeated also for at least the tenth time, that simple 
statements of this sort are no suggestion of victory or 
defeat. They are the basis of human calculation, apart 
from which the study of war has no meaning, and in the 
absence of which the excitement of war tends to the 
wildest alternate exaltation and panic. 
It is worth remarking that in the very few cases writers 
have deigned to descend to actual figures, the numbers 
they estimate are just what one would expect from what 
we know of the German numbers " in sight." 
Thus the most w'idely read of these- writprs, and the 
only one who recently has gi\-en figures at all, talks of 
some 200,000 extra infantry with 300,000 already present 
behind as drafts. Add the proportionate amount of 
new gunners iox the new guns, which new divisions employ, 
and you ha\e a figuit' quite compatible with what we 
kurtw of the numbers in the German. depots towards the 
end of last year. 
The Formation of New Units 
It is important to understand not only what is meant 
by the present numerical position of the enemy, that is 
his power to increase his numerical strength as a whole, 
but also a very different cross category of increase, the 
formation of new units. If we dp not appreciate what 
this term means, if we believe that the formation of new 
units is equivalent to the addition of as many new men as 
these units are composed of, we fall into what is at once 
the simplest, the commonest, and the most absurd of 
errors in calculating an enemy's strength. 
The German Empire in the course of the last few 
months, has not only largel}' added (as we have seen) 
to the actual mmibers in the field, but has also created a 
large number of new units. 
A unit means an3d;hing which may be described as a 
cell of the military organism — a battery of guns is a 
unit, so is a battalion of infantry, so is a squadron of 
cavalry, so is a brigade of infantry, so are several 
battalions of infantry collected in a regiment, so are two 
regiments or more collected in a brigade, so is the col- 
lection of infantry, cavalry, artillery, engineers, medical 
service, staffs and all the rest of it which makes up that 
little model of an army, a division. Now the formation 
of a new unit may niean one of two extremes or anything 
between those two extremes. 
It may be the putting together of wholly new men 
with their newly-trained officers, new guns and newly- 
trained gunners, new and wholly inexperienced staff, etc. 
giving them a new number and sending them forward 
as a new unit, or it may mean the taking of men already 
to be found in old units, old battalions, old regiments, 
old batteries, etc., and grouping them together m a 
separate place and giving them a new number and calling^ 
them a new unit. Or it may mean anything between 
these two extremes. 
Therefore, if for any reason you wish merely to 
multiply the number of your units (and what such reasons 
may be I will come to in a moment) you can do so w'ithout 
having any new material available. In other words, 
you can increase the number of your units without 
increasing in any fashion your total fighting force. 
For instance, if you have four battalions each a thousand 
men strong and each consisting of four companies of 250 
men, you may reduce those companies to a strength of 
200 each, thus withdrawing 200 men from each battalion. 
•Then you can give a new company name to each of these 
groups of 200 and put the four new companies so formed 
into one new battalion unit, to which you also give a new 
number or name. And at the end of the process you 
will have five battalions instead of four, although the num- 
ber of men you have to work with will be exactly the same 
as it was before. The only apparent difference in strength 
even, will be in the body of officers, for you will have to 
appoint four new company commanders and a new 
battalion commander, but you can effect this also, if 
you like, by lessening the proportion of officers present 
in each battalion. 
Somewhere between these two extremes a military 
authority effects its creation of new units and particularly 
its formation of new divisions. A German division at full 
strength might be counted, at the outset of the war, in 
round numbers; a trifle over 20,000 men all told. It was, 
as everybody knows by this time, a little army in itself. 
That is the" whole meaning of a division, that it con- 
tains under ^ne command all arms and auxiharies 
necessary to action, not only infantry but also cavalry, 
engineers, gunners, and the rest of it. 
When a military authority is about to create new 
formations then, it will in part create these new for- 
mations by weakening the old ones, so as to have a 
leavening "of the old service in the new units and it 
will in part depend upon wholly new human and other 
material. It is of the first importance for an opponent 
to discover, if he can, to which extreme the military 
authority which is forming these new divisions may 
be leaning, for only thus can we discover how far the 
