8 
LAND ^ WATER 
December 26, 1918 
A Remarkable 
Tkes&L&^permaa ctyilian.i7wrale. 
'Variations lupermaii^smili^JiyjDositioa. 
Xegree (political unify in Oermany: 
Thefiodsi^iation iiz 7/or^h Gerzmzay: 
Condition. i^AastirCL-Ifui^aiyr 
CZ-3oad^sinktil£sCif^iitiz^rej)or&(?f%mu2gesuiLk) 
Tli£,mauLlaze ir, 
German morale is 
be t^pauz£^atwl 
iTie decree of mo 
secoiialary /in£i 
GIVEN a reasonable degree of accuracy in com- 
pilation, a chart of any series of events is far 
more convincing than chapters of letterpress. 
The chart of the state of Germany given here was 
compiled from sources of which the reliability 
was unquestionable, and the original, of which this reproduc- 
tion is a copy, was displayed on the wall of the American 
Secretary of State for War's Office in Washington, furnishing 
Mr. Baker with the state of the war and of the principal 
adversary at a glance. 
A brief study of the key, which defines the nature of the 
lines on the chart, is sufficient to render the latter intelligible. 
The thick black line starting at the left-hand side is the 
factor which decides all the rest, representing as it does the 
variations in Germany's military position throughout the 
fifty-one months of the war. The top limit of the chart 
itself gives loo per cent, of each state illustrated by the lines, 
and the bottom is the zero line. It may be noted that, at 
the outset, Germany's mihtary position is shown as only 
68 per cent, of totalpossible efficiency ; by the first week in 
September, completion of mobilisation and the advance 
toward Paris combined had raised this to about 92 per cent. 
— very near the total necessary to show an equivalent of 
complete victory. The AlUed success of the Marne made a 
reduction to 75 per cent, of the total. February of igi6, 
and the last week in March and the first week in April of 
1918, are the two other high-water marks, though the result 
of the German offensives up to last June gave a last^rise|to 
90 per cent. ; and after that the decline is very rapid, down 
to the 12 or 13 per cent., at which Germany gave up the 
struggle. 
In tliis one Une is the cause and background of practically 
all the rest, with the exception of the food situation in North 
Germany, and the U-boat sinkings. These we may leave for 
the present, for what is most interesting in this unique graph 
is the line showing "the state of Germany's civilian moral," 
which does not exactly coincide either with the results of the 
submarine war nor with the military situation. There is a 
fairly close correspondence, at the outset, between political 
unity and civUian moral, but the latter is a more stable 
quantity. Up to the end of 1915 it shows as definite behef 
in ultimate victory, a steadier and more constant quality 
than that of political unity, even, though both were main- 
tained at very high level for the first seventeen months. 
From January of igi6 war-weariness begins to be apparent ; 
the civilian moral at that point drops so that it becomes a 
less quantity, valued in these percentages, than the military 
state of the country ; in October of 1916 it coincides again 
with the military situation through the fall in the latter to 
its own level for a brief space ; in March of 1917 it recovers, 
only to fall again swiftly and decidedly, and not until the 
victory of the coming offensive is heralded and prophesied 
as decisive, iq December of 1917, is there any real rise to 
such a point as to give the army faith in itself. It is evident 
that civilian opinion did not fully support the last great 
series of offensives ; the spirits of the people began to 
fall as soon as it became clear that' the break-through of the 
last week of March, 1918, was not finally decisive, and from 
then on there was no more rallying — Germans understood 
that Germany had lost. 
The food situation was a negligible factor, according to 
this chart, until the end of July and the beginning of August, 
-1915. From -.then onward rationing became a stern reahty, 
and in spite^of rises from periods of bad scarcity, there is 
never shown more than 75 per cent, of the normal food 
supply, up to the end of the war. Here, however, it must 
be understood that the material from which the chart was 
compiled, especially in the last eighteen months of the war, 
