Land & Water 
July 4, 1918 
lier masses quickly ; she could not ami them quickly (nor, 
as it turned out, anything like sufficiently), nor replace her 
instructed and properly equipped men with rapidity as 
losses increased. It was unlikely that there would be actually 
in the field and properly equipped for war on the Eastern 
and Western fronts combined— during the first stages of the 
war at least— more than two-thirds of what Austria-Hungary 
and' Germany could bring to bear ; while the enemy which 
had to be immediately defeated (the French) could be 
attacked in almost any superiority— at any rate, m a 
superiority of 50 per cent. The British entered the war, 
and added at its opening a contingent of 5 per cent, to the 
French armies. The overwhelming numerical preponder- 
ance of the German armies failed them at the Marne. Better 
generalship overcame numbers. No decision could be 
arrived at, but the hopes of immediate victory were restored. 
The enemy was pinned, fought hard to get out, and failed. 
Meanwhile, the Russian forces, about equal in number to 
the German and Austrians pitted against them, had had 
very varying fortunes ; advancing in the south, suffering a 
heavy check in the north. With the end of 1914, so far as 
numbers alone were concerned, you had upon a vast scale 
the spectacle not unknown in mihtary history, of a greater 
force in the middle contained by somewhat lesser forces on 
either side ; but contained and siege e^stabhshed. 
That was the story of 1914. 
British Military Growth 
In 1915 came the constraction in almost miraculous fashion 
of the British Army. 'It grew from a few thousands to 
millions. But the army in line and able to bring its weight 
to bear was at first but a small proportion, and even towards 
the end of the vear no very great proportion of the total 
number enrolled! The marvel is that things should have 
proceeded as rapidlv as they did. In 1915, therefore, al- 
though before -the end of the year equality and perhaps 
slightly more than equality was established upon the West, 
no Allied offensive succeeded in effecting a breach. 
Upon the East of the siege A'all, against the Russians, 
there appeared a totally new factor. The immense industrial 
production which the war had rendered necessary could be 
met by the Central Empires, and could not be met by Russia. 
Hence the great retreat of the Russians throughout 1915 ; 
their terrible losses ; the overrunning of Poland, and that 
shaking of the whole Russian State the ultimate effects of 
which we were to see eighteen months later. Horribly 
expensive as the retreat was in men, and still more in the 
insufficient equipment of our then ally, there was no decision. 
The Grand Duke escaped envelopment time after time, and 
by the end of the year the offensive power of the enemy was 
here exhausted. Meanwhile, Serbia had been overrun with 
the aid of Bulgaria, and the Turkish allies of the Central 
Empires had maintaine.d their mountain front against the 
Russians, had threatened Egypt, and had prevented anV 
forcing of the Dardanelles. If, at the end of 1915, we sum 
up the numerical position we find this : 
Of men arined, equipped, instructed, and in hue, there 
was now some preponderance upon the side of the AlUes. It 
was ill-distributed. Italy had come in, and had occupied 
nearly half of the Austraan forces which had been thrown in 
in defence. The British Army had grown very largely. The 
French losses were somewhat less than those of the Germans 
upon the two fronts. The Russian numbers upon paper were 
less than the Russians actually in the field, and the Russians 
actually in the field were in a great measure ill-equipped. 
Anyone surveying the whole field from above would have 
seen .some such scheme as this : 
From the Alps to the North Sea the Franco- British forces, 
somewhat superior to the German line in numbers, so that 
the German hue stood upon the defensive, but with nothing 
like the superiority required to effect a breach. South of 
the Alps again, an Italian superiority over the Austrian line, 
but that line standing in strong mountain positions and the 
Italians without the necessary superiority for forcing such 
positions. On the South-Eastern front everywhere a mere 
defensive of the Allies against far superior forces. On the 
Eastern front the Russians incapable of aggressive action 
against any tolerable cordon of men stretched from the 
Carpathians to the Baltic. 
In 1916 this numerical position — slight inferiority of the 
enemy in total numbers, coupled with an advantage to him 
in the fact that his opponents were ill-grouped, threatened 
to become with the continual growth of the British Army, a 
serious Western superiority against them in, say, twelve 
months. He determined in the interval, before the full 
effect of the British increase could be felt, to break the 
French resistance. He could hold the Eastern line with 
much smaller forces than those used in the great offensive of 
1915. He massed in the West, and began the Battle of 
Verdun. He obtained no result. He lost a good many 
more men than the I'rench, and he could afford the dispro- 
portion for the moment. But he watched with anxiety 
the growing strength of the British. Austria still had to 
be on the defensive against Italy ; less than Half and much 
more than one-third of the enemy's disposable strength was 
massed against a still existent Russian State and Army. 
The effort at Verdun had not succeeded, an^ the great Alhed 
counter-offensive of the Somme opened in the middle of the 
summer of 1916. It was, in its largest aspect, a repetition of 
Verdun > that is, a continued offensive, but one conducted 
with a superiority of numbers not sufficient to effect a breach ; 
it compelled a retirement, but it did no more. 
Meanwhile, the entry of the Rumanian forces into the war 
upon the Allied side, affecting the total forces in but a small 
proportion, had, before winter, failed to change the state of 
siege in our favour. One-half Rumania was overrun, and 
in the proportion of losses the Rumanian campaign shghtly 
decreased the still existent though quite insufficient numerical 
superiority of the Allies. One great event had come in during 
the year to tip the balance a little more in our favour, and 
that was the unexpected success of Brussiloff, gra\'ely 
weakening the existing Austrian armies. But it was not 
sufficient. It was checked, and we must remember that the 
main Russian attack which had been delivered to the north 
of Brussiloff broke down. 
If we survey the position in the early winter months of 
1917 we find a numerical preponderance still in our favour, 
allowing for the existence and equipment of such Russian 
forces as were in line. That proportion in the West was 
considerable, but still, as experience had proved, insufficient 
to achieve any decisive end. 
Now, supposing at this moment one could have counted 
the Russian State as a permanent unit in the war like France 
or England ; supposing one could have counted upon the 
regular Russian recruitment, and its now increased equip- 
ment from the manufactories of the Western Allies, and 
particularly of Britain. What we should have had would 
have been the renewal of the siege during 1917 with a gradual 
exhaustion of the Central Empires, and probably their 
collapse within that year. Numbers were still against them, 
and the Russian pressure, if it could be continued, was the 
counter-balance. Against the three Western Allies alone 
the Central Empires had an enormous superiority. But, 
granted the permanent presence in the field and activity of 
the Russian Army ; granted our power to equip them, 
which was now at last fully organised ; granted, above all. 
their enormous reserves in men which could be perpetually 
called up and trained and thrown in to replace losses, and 
the issue was not in doubt. 
Downfall of Russia 
The whole position was turned upside down by the dis- 
solution in the spring of 1917 of the Russian State. Pro- 
perly speaking, it ceased to exist. It lost its offensive power ; 
it lost in rapid dissolution its armed forces ; it fell into dust. 
The full process of this was a matter of six months, during 
the earlier part of which sporadic, ill-combined, utterly 
undisciplined efforts were made, especially upon the south 
of the Russian fine against our enemy, but by the end of 
which the Eastern sector of the siege wall no longer existed. 
In the West the remaining Allied superiority again proved 
insufficiently great to break through, and. 1917 ended with 
the following situation : 
The Central Empires, now reUeved upon the Eastern side, 
were potentially stronger in numbers than Italy, France and 
Britain combined in a proportion as to their total of about 
10 tf) 7, or perhaps a little more. One whole half of the 
bulk which had formerly given the Allies their superiority 
had disappeared. ' To turn that potential superiority into an 
actual one : in other words, to train men for the new task 
in the West, to bring them over to the West, to make use of 
the new numerical superiority in vyhat was now no longer a 
siege, but a duel, was the task of the autumn and winter. 
On the other side was the element of American recruitment. 
The United States had come into the war at much the same 
moment as saw the dissolution of the Russian Empire. But 
even more tlian had been the case with Britain, the vast new 
armies had to be created, as it were, out of nothing. The 
enemy argued, rightly, that, it would be a year at least before 
any American troops were in line ; eighteen months before 
they could come near to redress the balance of forces in the 
West : two years before they would achieve numerical 
preponderance. For a year, at least, he would be hi.ghlv 
superior, and even during the following six months, to the 
