December 13, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
are nearly central to tlieir effort ; tiicir three great centres ot 
IJroduction (Westphalia, Silesia and Bohemia^to which 
may still be added the Belgian field) are secure from inter- 
ruption. The centre of production of the Western Allies on 
the other hand is, so far as coal is concerned, almost entirely 
placed in this island, to which much of the iron ore must be 
imported, and from which supplies must go out to the other 
Allies, both under the modern risks of maritime communica- 
tions. 
Next, the Western European Allies arc dependent upon 
maritime communications for mere subsistence. Coal for 
warming and transit must come from Britain ; most of her 
food and raw material must be got into Britain from be^-ond 
the sea. 
Lastly, the Central Powers have this advantage, that they 
are all the appanage of Prussia, whereas their opponents are 
a coalition of equals. Hence the complete unity of command 
with them, the impossibility of realising it with ourselves. 
One might digress here to show why the nearest approach to 
unity of command with the Allies must be of a federative 
character, and why complete direction under one centre is not 
only impossible to them, but is a misleading ideal — but the 
digression would divert attention from the main thesis of this 
argument. 
Such are the elements in favour of tlie enomv- They are 
ver\- formidable. That they should be everywhere appre-' 
dated is essential to our future conduct of the war. 
Enemy Handicaps 
N'ow let us look at the other side. The enemy is blockaded 
so far as goods from oversea, and especially from the tropics 
and sub-tropics, is concerned. He is and' will long remain 
grievously handicapped in the matter of lubricants for his' 
machinery, of fats for his food and of such material as india- 
rubber and of such articles of ordinary consumption as tea 
;ind coffee and rice and cotton. He is very short of eveiT- 
thing. He lacks wool. He is rationed far more strictly 
and suffers in daily life far more heavily than his opponents. 
The statistics of sickness and death among his civilian popula- 
tion are beginning to cause him grave anxiety. He is there- 
fore both on the civilian and on the mili-tarv' side under an 
exceedingly severe strain which cannot be relieved, and that 
only in some few departments, for a vcn' long time to come. 
Next, he has suffered in men after a "fashion comparable to 
none of the Western Allies, except the French, and even the 
French losses are not quite as heavy in proportion as his own. 
The effect of this point is both moral and material. It has 
compelled the enemy to draw upon his very youngest lads 
and to put into the fields boys from a year to a year and a half 
younger than those used by his oppoii ?nts. It means that in 
one way and another there are still great reserves of human 
material among his opponents which he^ does not possess, and 
It means tliat the moral strain is great er with him than with 
most of those whom he still has to mee."-.. Great Britain, for 
instance, has lost in proportion to her n.nmbers, perhaps one 
third of what the German Empire has 1 ost in proportion to 
their numbers. For one woman widowed' or orphaned in this 
country there are under the Hohen7.oll> ?rns population for 
population three— in actual numbers over five. The strain is 
of a sort which has never been properly set forth in this 
country, and the importance of which it is essential to recog- 
nise. With equal tenacitv and equal will, the margin is here 
most heavily against theenemy. 
_ Lastly, the enemy has the worst before him or, to put 
It in another way, the chances of the ne ar future mean for him 
not an alternati\o between victory and a difficult defensive 
—as they do with us— but an alternati vc between victoiy and 
complete disaster. That is a point t vhich the length of the 
war with its consequent dulling of ".nitiative has obscured. 
People forget that an invasion of Gei man soil, even a serious 
disturbance through aerial work of see urity behind the German 
lines, would be something novel and productive of an intense 
strain upon the enemy. The Allies have known such things 
and have known them if not at their u.orst, at anv rate, as now 
familiar trials. We have no gauge of the wav'in which the 
enemy s social organism would staji'cl similar trials, save our 
general knowledge of its psycho'iog; y and the little object- 
lessons we have had of his panic du ring the temporary- and 
slight invasion of Eastern Prussia, a nd of what we know to 
be the conditions of the few extneme Western towns which 
have as yet alone suffered from our bon ibs. The civilians of the 
Allies have been murdered by scorps in their beds and in tlic 
"oursc of their peaceable labour. W( )men and children have 
been wantonly destroved by land and drowned at sea. Their 
civilian sailors have suffered the same fate. Sections of their 
people have been carried off as slave S and their l)ui!dings, 
including their most cherished monum< -nts of antiquity, have 
l)een wrecked. There haw been organ iscd massacres staged 
in certain dexoted spots and innumerable outrages ol every 
-sort less than — if they be less than— murder itself. 
Nothing of all this has happened to the enemy, but there 
stands between him and a just punishment nothing but the 
strength of his Western line. Put yourself in the shoes of his 
authorities and ask yourself whether he does not fear the risk 
of such experiences after a fashion which we, who have passed 
through them, no longer do. 
This .summary of the points that are against him at this 
moment does, it is true, not counter-balance the points imme- 
diately in his favour. These weigh heavih- upon our regard 
for the future ; we should be foolish to undervalue them, but 
the trutli is that our present tendency is rather, if anything, 
to over-value them. The great factor remaining in our favour 
is tlie advent of America. Let us see what it means. 
Of the main numerical proposition no one is ignorant. There 
is n tendency, precisely because it is so well known, to ipisread 
it altogether precisely, though for very different reasons, as 
the Russian position was misread for a full year after the 
outbreak of the war. America has a reserve of men which 
quite overshadows the exhausted forces of Europe. She 
can certainly take part in this war for two years without 
approaching the exhaustion even of those specially selected 
drafts whicli form so comparatively a small proportion of her 
total mobilisable power. On the material side she has re- 
sources in fuel and minerals and in skilled labour far superior 
to that of the whole enemy combination, while in the not 
measurable factor of meclianical inventive capacity and 
mechanical development, she is the superior of us all. 
Further, and perhaps most important of all, she enters 
the lists quite fresh, for even those of the belligerents who have 
not lost menuponlthe scale of the originally rriobilised Powers, 
have suffered the terrible strain of more than three years. 
What, then, are the limitations to so formidable an asset 
upon our side ? They are almost entirely contained in the one 
word " Communications." There was indeed for some months, 
ancl will continue for a few months more, the limitation of 
training — the building up of an army out of very small be- 
ginnings—but the more formidable and permanent limitation 
is the limitation of supply. And supply is a function of 
communication. 
The limitations of an American force to be maintained 
in Western Europe upon the present line of fighting, proceed 
from these three things : First, that all the supply whatsoever 
niust be found from the Home base. Not only strictly mili- 
tary supply, but food and indeed everything. Next, that the 
main communications are maritime ; and lastly, that both the 
main communications and the last stages by land are' each in 
their own kind of great length. The former vary between 
2^ and three thousand miles, the latter between 200 and 
300 miles. To these general and chief considerations we must 
add the facts that the Ports of Disembarkation are few and 
will also require a very considerable expansion of quav- 
room ; that the communications bv land after transhipment 
will also require expansion ; that the length of a sea voyage, 
apart from the numerical disabilities affecting it, weakens 
men and horses in more than a proportion to its duration, 
and that the tonnage it requires is also greater in proportion 
to its duration. 
There may be set down in this calculation certain rough 
rules of thumb which, if they arc not strictly accurate, serve 
well enough for an approximate judgment. Everj- man 
rnaintained by the United States upon French soil means some 
six tons of shipping to maintain him— this calculated, of 
course, in gross tonnage, not in tonnage of displacement. 
Further, of two men thus supported upon the European side, 
we must not count upon more than one being present in an 
organised fighting unit upon the immediate front. These 
two rules of thumb, in our judgment of the position, show 
us at once how severe are the limitations imposed. Ex- 
perts differ, and published estimates will differ also as to 
the number of months in which could be provided — quite 
apart from the making good of losses— a tonnage sufficient 
for the maintenance of one million men. It is enough to 
say that such a force cannot l)e aimed at until very far into 
the fighting season of igiS and more probably towards 
its close ; while in this calculation— which would mean but 
half a million men organised in fighting units, or say not 
more than double the German troops actually engaged 
the other day in front of Cambrai — we are eliminating an un- 
known factor of loss at sea. We must strictly bind ourselves 
by these limiting conditions under pain of letting our judg- 
ment go wildly astray. 
On the other hand, there are factors in our favour which 
a calculation of this sort does not cover. 
The first of these factors is the continual power of replace- 
ment enjoyed by our new ally. 
Suppose, for the sake of argument, six million tons of ship- 
ping available, a corresponding million of men ]>resent in 
Europe with liaK that number engaged upon the fighting line. 
