ro 
LAND & WATER 
Maixh I, 1917 
enemy is increasing his real numerical strength in the 
field. Apart from direct means of information, such 
as the capture of d(xaments or the interrogation of 
j)risoners or .information provided by spies, common sense 
and ])ast exjjerience afl'ord a f:;uide. 
It is t>b\ ions, for instance, that the enemy will be able 
to provide new Runs more easily than he will be able to 
])rovide new men, the rate at which he can produce 
new guns is very much faster than the rate at which his 
annual group of men grows. It is to be presumed, 
therefore, that the new divisions will have almost entirely 
new artillery. But though not all the men serving the 
guns or driving them will be new, that is, taken directly 
from the depots, yet much the greater part of them will 
be so. When he is forming a new- division he takes 
experienced gunners from existing divisions to leaven 
liis new batteries and fills their places in the old 
divisions with raw material, carefully nii.xcd in small 
doses. Cavalry for the moment we may neglect. The 
Staffs he forms necessarily of experienced of^ticers, whom 
he gradually withdraws from older divisions, supplying 
fheir places by newly promoted subordinates in those 
older divisions and by others newly commissioned. It 
is in the matter of the infantry— which form sixty per 
cent, of the whole body — that his policy will be most 
clearly apparent. 
If it is his object to increase his field army as much 
as possible he will cut down the number of older troops 
necessary to leaven the new divisions to a minimum, 
and we know in i)oint of fact that when the enemy 
lias strained himself to increase his field army he has some- 
times cut down this leavening to no more than a quarter 
of the whole. It would be much more nonnal to allow 
one-third, especially as among the men in the depots he has 
not a few men discharged from hospital and already 
possessed of mihtary experience. In other words, his 
so-called " new men " are not all of them entirely new, 
though they come straight from the depots. For in- 
stance, some of the new divisions which appeared 
upon the Somme were created entirely or almost entirely 
out of 0I4 material. But when he is making an effort to 
increase his total striking force for any reason he must 
put a great deal of new material into the ne\y formation 
lor his new units. 
Early Decision 
\^'o know, as a matter of fact, that for the" purposes 
of the coming shock the enemy has drawn very largely 
indeed upon such new material, and we know that he has 
correspondingly mortgaged any future revenue in men. 
If you have so many men available to repair w^astage 
within a given time, and you take out of them such and 
such a proportion to help form new units, you cut down 
in tliat proportion the time during which you will be able 
to rejiair wastage. It is clear and a matter now of 
common knowledge throughout Europe that the enemy 
lias decided upon this policy. He proposes to appear in 
the immediate future with considerably increased forces 
on tli'p chance of doing something decisive with that 
increased mass, but at the risk of an earlier and more 
certain defeat if he fails. 
The reason for forming new units is not always the mere 
desire to increase numerical strength ; one may desire, 
lor instance, to deceive one's opponent as to one's real 
strength, or to impress neutrals. To increase greatly the 
number of one's battalions or the number of one's 
divisions, even though it be entirely at the expense of 
other existing battalions and divisions, may have a 
certain effect of this kind, at any rate for a short time. 
It may deceive an opponent or impress an ignorant 
third party. Indeed, 1 have my.self often heard, during 
the latter stages of this war, men arguing that the enemy 
wa$ doing something, miraculous in the mere increase of 
divisions. They were evidently impressed by it. But 
tliis is the weakest of the causes which lead a military 
authority to increase the number of his units ; a much 
stronger and more valid reason is that mentioned above, 
the rapid ])roduction of artillery. A larger number of 
divisions can use a larger number of guns ; it is a more 
handy way of exploiting your increase of guns than Hie 
mere piling up of pieces under the command of the old 
existing divisions. Again, as the division is the highest 
unit of the organism -we call an army, to increase the 
number of divisions (within reason) is to increase the 
elasticity of an amiy and its handiness. And this is 
probably one of the chief causes which have led the 
("lernian command in the last few months to increase the 
number of their divisions at the expense of lowering the 
strength of each. The full (ierman division counted 
twelve battalions. Very many of these new ones count 
only nine, nor are these battalions commonly at full 
strength. . 
Therefore, the German policy of making new divisions 
has had in view, not only the actual increase of the normal 
strength of the army, "but at least as much or perhaps 
more the obtaining of greater elasticity in use. 
Reinforcement of Allies 
The Tiermans have been lighting on two fronts for the 
better part of three years. In the latter half of this 
period they have been suddenly called upon to reinforce 
their Ally, Austria, often at unexpected places, as when 
they had to pour down more than half a million men to 
stop the gap created by Brussiloff's offensive last summer 
in Volhynia. They have even had to lend, it is said, a few 
units against the Italian front, and they have certainly 
had to lend several against the Salonika front. 
In such circumstances, a multiplicity of smaller units 
is more serviceable than fewer larger units. It is much 
easier to move a complete division from one place to 
another than to move portions of divisions. A division 
moving as a whole guarantees the translation of all arms 
and of a complete organism. If you try to move by 
patch-work you have, over and above the calculation 
necessaiy to the mere movement, a further set of calcu- 
lations and arrangements necessary to the fitting in of 
the odd details. But it is clear that if you are dealing 
with small organisms, you have a greater choice, both in 
the places from which you shall withdraw men and in 
the time in which you shall withdraw them, than if you 
are dealing with the larger organisms. And most of this 
work of moving new divisions hitherto on the enemy's 
side has been undertaken with the object of conferring 
elasticity upon an army which has to fight upon so many 
and such distant sectors, and which is sometimes unex- 
pectedly called upon to appear in regions which it had 
hitherto been able to leave to its Allies. 
This last effort, however, of the Germans, mainly 
undertaken during the lull of the past month, and certainly 
in progress before that, has been directed mor^ than were 
the earlier re-shufflings to an actual increase of the 
numerical strength of the army. It does not seem that 
the new divisions are any smaller than the restricted 
units which preceded them, while their number has in- 
creased by something like 30 — say, round about 27. 
The meaning of this is that Germany intends to strike 
somewhere with a considerable force of new infantn,', and 
with a much greater proportionate force of new artillery, 
and that sfie has produced tliis hammer head or bolt at 
the expense of her future resources in men. It does not 
mean, as has been repeatedly pointed out in these columns, 
that the total number of men she has " in sight " between 
this and the late summer is larger than was calculated 
by her opponents. All it means is that she is gambling 
upon the possible success of an early blow, believing that 
a mere holding out by relying on drafts to a later date 
would not serve her purpose. H. Bellog 
The latest volume in Messrs. T. Fisher Unwin's South 
American series, Paraguay (los. 6d. net) has been compiled by 
VV. H. Koebel, an authority on Argentina and matters South 
American. The compiler's task has been one of compression, 
from which all the volumes of this scries suffer ; a wealth of 
narrative has been omitted in the accounts of the original 
settlement of the country, though the doings of Irala and of 
Anvar Nunez are concisely related. But Hernandez's dra- 
matic account of Nunez and his fortunes and misfortunes 
was well worth reproduction at greater length, just as the 
suicidal struggle in which the younger Lopez involved the 
country was worthy of more attention. The author, how- 
ever, has made good use of his space, and has summarised 
the history, the natural features, and the commercial re- 
sources of the inland rebublic ably and concisely — it is not 
his fault that tiie history of J^araguay deserves a volume to 
itself, and this book has the merit of being tlioronghly in- 
teresting from first page to last, as well as being of consider- 
able value as a work of reference. 
