July 4, I 91 8 
Land & Water 
Hungarian Disclosures : By H. Belloc 
THE week has contained no military news of 
importance, though the capture of the summit of 
the Val Bella is not without value, and both the 
disclosures and the scene in the Hungarian 
Parliament at the end of last week were illu- 
minating. 
The capture of the Val Bella summit by the Italians with 
over 800 prisoners restores to our Allies the chief dominating 
ground between the mountains and the plain west of the 
Brenta Valley. This crest overlooks the Asiago Plateau 
entirely from the east, and on the west commands that 
rugged and wild descent called the Frenzella Ravine, which 
is one of the two ways out of the Asiago Plateau to the 
plains. This summit, with its value both for observation 
and as a strong point in the chain of defence, was lost in the 
last movements that followed Caporetto. It was not the 
most important by any means, but it was one of the impor- 
tant points which gave the enemy their power of launching 
an attack on the Asiago Plateau. It secured the left flank 
of such an attack and overlooked the dispositions of its 
opponent. It remained in enemy hands during all the 
recent battle ; the first Italian counter-offensive was unable 
to recover it. Its capture now, after an interval of so many 
days, is good testimony to the vigour and renewed spirit of 
the Italian Army. 
The action began on Saturday morning at dawn, lasted 
throughout the day and the night, during which considerable 
enemy reinforcements must have come up, since prisoners 
from no less than four divisions were captured on the follow- 
ing day (Sunday), when the summit was carried. 
The statements made in the Hungarian Parliament at the 
end of last week, of which a detailed report has arrived in 
this country, have all the appearance of truth. It seems to 
have been one of those occasions when the authorities de- 
liberately take the people into their confidence in spite of 
the danger of this during the crisis of a war, and do so because 
further concealment or discovery of falsehood would be 
dangerous. 
I warned my readers that the estimate of 180,000 for the 
Austrian casualties in the Battle of the Piave was much too 
high. It would have meant the fall of half^ — or perhaps 
more than half — the enemy infantry engaged, and that is a 
ridiculous supposition. The enemy statement of "about 
100,000" is much more probable, though it probably excludes 
the sick and the very hghtest cases which immediately 
return. The very fact that the Army authorities in Vienna 
were in a hurry to say that the sick were included and our 
knowledge that in practice the sick are never included when 
we talk of losses in a great action, confirm one in this judg- 
ment, i 
Losses of somewhat over 100,000, counting all cases, are 
amply sufficient to account for the position in which the 
Austrians found themselves on the fifth day of the battle, 
when they determined to break it off and retire behind the 
Piave. It would be interesting to know what proportion of 
these losses were suffered in the mountains. I have already 
pointed out that the battle was really two battles : One 
which might have been decisive in the mountains ; the 
other, a second best, in th^ plains. What puzzled every one 
at first was why the really important one in the mountain 
sector was broken off so quickly, and it is probable that the 
reason vWll turn out to be the extreme severity of the loss 
there suffered. The success of the Asiago Battle, by the 
way, counts in favour of the policy of mixed units, much as 
there is to be said against it. The battle was fought by the 
troops of the three nations, each of them largely represented. 
The Numerical Position 
IT seems clear from the tone of the Press, and especially 
from private letters printed in it, that a considerable 
confusion has arisen in the public mind with regard to 
the numerical position in the West. When we say "in the 
West!' we must remember that the West is the only front 
that has ever really counted, and that it is now the only 
front seriously engaged at all, and we mean by the West the 
whole line from the Adriatic to the North Sea, with the 
interruption of the neutral territory of Switzerland. I 
have myself received a very great number of letters asking 
me to explain why there now exists a heavy numerical enemy 
preponderance against the Western Allies ; how this pre- 
ponderance has enabled the enemy do what a former Allied 
preponderance . in the West could not do; and why thus 
having obtained the initiative the enemy allows himself to 
suffer these long halts in the face of a rapidly increasing 
Allied recruitment from the United States : the present one 
has, at the moment of writing (Monday, July ist) lasted 
eighteen days. 
The whole situation has also been so confused by vague 
political speeches — speeches in which the terms are emphatic 
indeed, but never clearly defined, that men, then, seem to 
tliink the problems involved insoluble and the study of the 
war in its present stage futile. 
That is quite wrong. The present situation is a natural 
result of the past. Its numerical gauge is perfectly^ well 
known, and though there is little at the present moment to 
comfort us, the best way of confirming resolution is still, 
as it always has been, the study of reality. It is not difficult 
to know what the present situation is or how it came about, 
and to understand it is of the highest practical value in 
support of the national determination. 
Let me begin at the beginning. The Central Empires 
were leagued together for war under Prussia. It was a war 
which they had long prepared, and which was launched at 
the moment they had chosen. It was a war principally 
directed against France, but concerned also with the defence 
of central interests against Russia. 
. We might put it in a phrase by saying that the .system 
organised under Prussia regarded Prance as a menace which 
must be got right out of the way— and Russia a.s something 
which must be stemmed. If Central Europe under Prussia 
were to be, as it desired to be, the most powerful State in the 
world, Prance must be reduced to the second order and the 
Russian Empire, regarded as, a great clumsy thing standing 
on the flank of all Eastern development, must be put in its 
place. It could not be crushed, of course (so they thought), 
but, being little industrialised and slow in its movements, it 
could be shoved back out of the way. As a partner in the 
division of Poland it was regarded as something necessary. 
But its interference in the Balkans, which cut the road to 
the East, was very aggravating, and must be put an end to. 
For the carrying out of this programme there were many 
combined factors which gave Prussia and her dependents 
every hope of immediate success. There was the recent 
very rapid development of an exceedingly offensive but 
powerful commerciahsm ; there was the tradition of com- 
plete success in war covering the whole of a generation. 
(The oldest man living could not remember the last French 
successes, and all the older governing men living could 
remember the triumphant turning point 91 1870. Directly 
connected with this there was the strong and secure homo- 
geneity of the military Prussian State contrasted with the 
humiliated and divided French State under its unpopular 
and corrupt Parliament. There was the new Fleet and, 
above all, there was immense superiority in numbers. 
That is what one has to insist upon the whole time. People 
are tired of it because it is a lesson or task, but without it 
all comprehension of the war falls into chaos. 
The basis of the enemy's hopes at the beginning of the 
war was numbers. The basis of his successes against the 
West, whenever he has had such successes, has always been 
numbers. If we could not do in the West what the enemy is 
doing now for the moment, it is because we had not the 
numbers. If we can hold out he is doomed because numbers 
are his reliance and his superiority will not survive the 
present fighting season. 
Now let us see what this superiority of numbers was at 
the begiijning. The German Empire can mobilise, as com- 
pared with France, seven men to four. The German and 
Austrian empires combined can mobilise, as compared with 
France, three men to one. The counter-weight, then, was 
in Russia ; but Russia, while providing a very large reser- 
voir of men, was not industrialised. She could not move 
