July II, I9;.8 
Land & Water 
The method of modern conscript recruitment is well known. 
All the males of a conscript nation are called up for examina- 
tion (in peace time) round about their 20th year. About 
three-quarters are passed fit for service, and in fully conscript 
nations, such as France, nearly all these find their way in 
their 21st year into the ranks. Each yearly batch is called 
a "class," and it is named either after the year in which it 
was born or, more commonlv, after the vear in which it reaches 
its 20th birthday. Thus Class 1919 in Germany (which is 
being rapidly exhausted in the present battles), means the lads 
bom at any time in 1899, and passed fit for service. 1920, 
which is already being incorporated, and most of which will 
have appeared in the field before the end of this year, means 
the lads bom in iqoo, etc. Under the wastage of war the nor- 
mal conscript system of peace time* suffers this modification : 
Classes are "borrowed ;" that is, lads not yet 21, not yet 20, 
and sometimes not yet 19, are called up and put into the ranks. 
But even under such a strain the limits of the system are 
apparently simple, and it looked when this war began as 
though one could calculate to within a very small margin of error 
what the recruitment of the various conscript powers would be. 
In the countries not hitherto conscript, notably in Great 
Britain, a somewhat different system arose, and in the par- 
ticular case of this country', lads were called up for examina- 
tion and lengthy training, not in batches, but as each reached 
his 19th year. But in spite of this difference of system, the 
apparent ease of calculation remained. You knew the number 
of males of a required age. You estimated some 75 per cent 
or at a pinch nearly 80 per cent as fit for service, and there 
was your factor of recruitment. 
Now with two unexpected elements entering into the 
campaign, the calculation became more difficult. These two 
unexpected elements were first the prolongation of the strug- 
gle, and secondly the nature of the full national effort 
demanded. 
Wlien it was thought (on both sides— ^and probably more 
naively on the enemy's side than on our own), that the fight- 
ing would be over in a few months, everything was taken in 
the conscript countries that could be taken. In Great Britain, 
not yet conscript, there was something of the same sort later 
on, because at the moment when conscription became 
universal here, the end of the war seemed to be in sight. 
It was this belief in the brevity of the struggle which led 
to the enrolment of men whose special training was known to 
be essential to the national life : engineers for instance, 
miners, shipbuilders were taken largely, in spite of their 
indispensability to the national life. The skilled mechanics 
could, it was thought, be spared during the short crisis which 
was envisaged. 
But the prolongation of the war made it necessary to revise 
everywhere the first simple idea of a maximum recmitment. 
The war, it was clear, could not be fought " on stocks." It 
would have to be supplied in regular and permanent fashion 
for an indefinite period, and to ensure this supply many 
categories of men at first called to the field had to be released 
for work in the factories. 
Economic Strain 
But the prolongation of war was not all. There appeared 
a second element. War upon such a scale, and so prolonged, 
affected the whole life of the nation in its fundamentals. 
After two years it began to affect food even in the most 
favoured countries; after three years it affected food sharply, 
and but for the timely revision of earlier policies, and but for 
the rapid and therefore necessarily imperfect organisation 
attempted, famine would have threatened. As it was, the 
fourth year was everywhere (and the fifth year will be still 
more), a period of heavy and increasing economic strain. 
The essential economic truth in connection with war is that 
war is the destraction of wealth. It is the consumption of 
produced wealth in a non-reproductive form. The great 
example of that which we have before us in this island is the 
sinking of shipping. If you take away the bulk of manhood 
from direct production, the economic machine threatens to 
run down in spite of the men remaining out of the army, 
and of women. When you add to this the fact that you arid 
your enemies are perpetually flcstroving wealth as well as 
refraining from making wealth, the" total result is that a 
period of intense war is a period of immensely rapid con- 
sumption not replaced. 
Now merely from the military point of view, without con- 
sidering tlie ultimate future of the nation or its breed, there 
comes a point in the prolongation of such an effort when 
an error in recmitment may jeopardise military success : 
The error not of failing to provide men for the field, but of 
taking, perhaps in small numbers, the wrong men, and the 
highly practical point to which opinion ought to be directed 
to-day in this country, is that such a point has noxv been 
reached. 
There are four factors in the arrangement of results ; 
there ought to be a fifth, but that fifth is extremely difficult 
to obtain. 
The fou^ factors are the demand of the Army for recruit- 
ment ; the clamour of the popular Press, which is to-day a strong 
element in Government ; the attitude of the special govern- 
mental departments, and the attitude of the industries which 
alone can bear testimony to their own cond^ions of working. 
The fifth element is — or should be — a suprelme 90-ordinating 
authority which strikes the balance between the direct and 
the indirect necessities of the nation at war : between the 
maintenance of numbers in the field and the maintenance 
of supply abroad and at home. 
The Press — or, to be more accurate, i. considerable section 
of it — works in complete ignorance ; it works for excitement ; 
for the immediate success of the day ; for the cry either popular 
or violent. The clamour which it raises for this or for that is ex- 
pressed by a small number of men, no one of whom is competent 
to speak on this matter which is at once vital and extremely 
complex. But when I remember that these same men gaily 
give their advice on the highest strategy, and even impose 
their commands, and that men of this calibre make and 
unmake governments as well, I am not surprised that they 
should light-heartedly tackle the most difficult of all com- 
bined military and pohtical problems, which is tliat of recmit- 
ment. 
It so happens that the Press has plumped for a maxi- 
mum recruitment without consideration of necessary limita- 
tions. On the whole, that is perhaps a blessing. If the news- 
papers had thought it more popular to plump for restriction 
of recmitment that would have been disastrous. Luckily, of 
the two errors open to them, they chose the least danger- 
ous ; but, even so, the extreme to which they ran was very 
dangerous indeed. Maximum recruitment, which appeals to 
the simplest and least experienced, may, if it be enforced, 
lose the war. 
National Necessities 
The Army has naturally presented the demand for recruit- 
ment in its strongest form, but, on the other hand, it has not 
pretended to judge national necessities other than its own. 
The Departments, even including the much too large 
number of new (and, let us hope, temporary) civil servants, 
have displayed a good though rapidly acquired knowledge 
of what they had to manage. A striking example of this 
has been the success of the food control, created out of nothing 
and admirably organised by the late Lord Rhondda. The 
trades and industries have also given a great mass of informa- 
tion and argument, acting through all sorts of channels, 
through letters, through private recommendations, through 
the speeches of their representative men in public assemblies, 
etc. The fifth element, which has been at fault, is the 
element of co-ordination. 
That word, co-ordination, has been worked to death, and 
is becoming a sort of joke ; but one must use it here where it 
particularlj' applies. The Commonweatlh has fallen into 
such a state that co-ordination is difficult, and often impos- 
sible. In theory it is the business of the Executive ; to-day 
a small chance group of politicians not nominated by the 
people, nor even by the House of Commons ; still less by the 
Crown. But that is only theory. In practice the Executive 
has but limited power, in spite of the machinery for absolute 
power which the war has created. It balances its dread of 
this interest against its dread of that interest ; its fear of the 
popular press against its fear of finance, and so on through a 
whole series of petty calculations which confuse personal 
with national interests. The best example one can take of 
the errors to which this confusion leads, is that of agricul- 
tural labour. 
Only a small proportion of the nation to-day is acquainted 
with the nature and necessities of agriculture. But I can 
confidently appeal to those who are acquainted with that 
industry, as witnesses to the trath of what I say here. You 
cannot conduct the processes of agriculture at all without a 
certain mininmm number of men who are really highly 
skilled, although, for some reason I have never understood, 
the mechanic and his master seem to regard agriculture as 
an unskilled profession. 
Let me give one instance. On heavy lands, which are 
our best wheat lands, if the weather is bad so that one cannot 
drill, one must have recourse to broadcast sowing. It may 
be but a small proportion of the whole, but with bad weather 
in the autumn the proportion rises. 
Now, what is broadcast sowing ? It is so difficult and 
skilled an operation that many men cannot leam it. It is 
