A General Sketch of the European War Part 7

_The Figures of the Second Period, say to April 15-June 1, 1915._

The second period saw in the West, and, in the enemy's case, a very great change proceeding by a number of minute steps, but fairly rapid in character.

The French numbers could not grow very rapidly, because the French had armed every available man. They could bring in a certain number of volunteers; but neither was it useful to equip the most of the older men, nor could they be spared from those duties behind the front line which the much larger population of the enemy entrusted to men who, for the most part, had received no regular training. The French did, however, in this second period, gradually grow to some two and a half million men, behind which, ready to come in for the final period, were about a third of a million young recruits.

Great Britain discovered a prodigious effort. She had already, comparatively early in the second period, put across the sea nearly half a million men, and drafts were perpetually arriving as the second period came to a close; while behind the army actually upon the Continent very large bodies--probably another million in number--hastily trained indeed, and presented with a grave problem in the matter of officering, but of excellent material and _moral_, were ready to appear, before the end of the second period or at its close, the moment their equipment should be furnished. Counting the British effort and the French together, one may say that, without regard to wastage, the Allies in the West grew in the second period from the original 16 to over 30, and might grow even before the second period was over to 35 or even more.

On the enemy's side (neglecting wastage for the moment) there were the simplest elements of growth. Each Power had docketed every untrained man, knew his medical condition, where to find him, where and how to train him. The German Empire had during peace taken about one-half of its young men for soldiers. It had in pure theory five million untrained men in the reserve, excluding the sick, and those not physically efficient for service.

In practice, however, a very large proportion of men, even of the efficients, must be kept behind for civilian work; and in an industrial country such as Germany, mainly urban in population, this proportion is particularly large. We are safe in saying that the German army would not be reinforced during the second period by more than two and a half million men. These were trained in batches of some 800,000 each; the equipment had long been ready for them, and they appeared mainly as drafts for filling gaps, but partly as new formations in groups--the first going in or before November, the second in or before February. A third and last group was expected to have finished this rather elementary training somewhere about the end of April, so that May would complete the second period in the German forces.

Austria-Hungary, by an easily appreciable paradox, possessed, though but 80 per cent. of the Germans in population, a larger available untrained reserve. This was because that empire trained a smaller proportion of its population by far than did the Germans. It is probable that Austria-Hungary was able to train and put forward during the second period some three million men.

It is a great error, into which most critics have fallen, to underestimate or to neglect the Austro-Hungarian factor in the enemy's alliance. Without thus nearly doubling her numbers, Germany could not have fought France and Russia at all, and a very striking feature of all the earlier weeks of 1915 was the presence in the Carpathians of increasing Austro-Hungarian numbers, which checked for more than three months all the Russian efforts upon that front.

Say that Austria-Hungary nearly doubled her effectives (apart from wastage) in this second period, and you will not be far wrong.

Russia, which upon paper could almost indefinitely increase during the second period her numbers in the field, suffered with the advent of winter an unexpected blow. Her equipment, and in particular her munitioning (that is, her provision of missiles, and in especial of heavy sh.e.l.l), must in the main come from abroad. Now the German command of the Baltic created a complete blockade on the eastern frontier of Russia, save upon the short Roumanian frontier; and the entry of Turkey into the campaign on the side of the enemy, which marked the second period, completed that blockade upon the south, and shut upon Russia the gate of the Dardanelles. The port of Archangel in the north was ice-bound, or with great difficulty kept partially open by ice-breakers, and was in any case only connected with Russia by one narrow-gauge and lengthy line; while the only remaining port of Vladivostok was six thousand miles away, and closed also during a part of the winter.

In this situation it was impossible for the great reserves of men which Russia counted on to be put into the field, and the Russians remained throughout the whole of this second period but little stronger than they had been at the end of the first. If we set them down at perhaps somewhat over three millions (excluding wastage) towards the end of this second period, we shall be near to a just estimate.

We can now sum up and say that, _apart from wastage_, the forces arrayed against each other after this full development should have been about 120 men for the central powers of the enemy--35 (and perhaps ultimately 40) men against them upon the West, and, until sufficient Russian equipment could at least be found, only some 30 men against them upon the East.

Luckily such figures are wholly changed by the enormous rate of the enemy's wastage. The Russians had lost men almost as rapidly as the enemy, but the Russian losses could be and were made good. The handicap of the blockade under which Russia suffered permitted her to maintain only a certain number at the front, but she could continually draft in support of those numbers; and though she lost in the first seven months of the war quite four hundred thousand in prisoners, and perhaps three-quarters of a million in other casualties, her strength of somewhat over three millions was maintained at the close of the first period.

In the same way drafts had further maintained the British numbers. The French had lost not more than one-fifth of a million in prisoners, and perhaps a third of a million or a little more in killed and permanently disabled--that is, unable to return to the fighting line.

In the case of both the French and the British sanitary conditions were excellent.

You have, then, quite 35 for your number in the West, and quite 33 for your number in the East of the Allied forces at the end of the winter; but of your enemy forces you may safely deduct 45-50 might be a truer estimate; and it is remarkable that those who have watched the matter carefully at the front are inclined to set the total enemy losses higher than do the critics working at home. But call it only 45 (of which 5 are prisoners), and you have against the 68 Allies in East and West no more at the end of this second period than 75 of the enemy.

The following diagram ill.u.s.trates in graphic form the change that six months have produced.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 15.]

In other words, at the end of the winter and with the beginning of the spring, although the enemy still has a numerical preponderance, it is no longer the overwhelming thing it was when the war began, and that change in numbers explains the whole change in the campaign.

The enemy was certain of winning mainly because he was fighting more than equal in the East, and at first nearly two to one, later quite four to three, in the West. Those are the conditions of the late summer of 1914. 1915, before it was a third over, had seen the numbers nearly equalized. With the summer of 1915 we might hope to see the numbers at last reversed, and, after so many perilous months, a total (not local) numerical majority at last appearing upon the side of the Allies. If ever this condition shall arrive before the enemy can accomplish a decisive result in either field the tide will have turned.

The third period belongs at the moment of writing to the future. All we can say of it is that it presents for the enemy no considerable field of recruitment; but while in the West it offers no increase to the French, it does offer another five units at least, and possibly another six or eight, to the British; and to the Russians, if the blockade can be pierced at any point, or if the change of weather, coupled with the broadening of the gauge of the railway to Archangel, permits large imports, an almost indefinite increase in number--certainly an increase of two millions, or twenty of the units we were dealing with in the figures given above.

So much, then, for the numerical factor in men which dominates the whole campaign.

When we turn from this to the second factor--that of munitions--we discover something which can be dealt with far more briefly, but which follows very much the same line.

The enemy in the first period of the war had, if anything, an even greater superiority in munitioning than in men. This superiority was due to two distinct causes. In the first place, as we shall see in a few pages, his theory upon a number of military details was well founded; in the second place, _he made war at his own chosen moment, after three years of determined and largely secret preparation_.

As to the first point:--

We may take as a particular example of these theories of war the enemies' reliance upon heavy artillery--and in particular upon the power of the modern high explosive and the big howitzer--to destroy permanent fortification rapidly, and to have an effect in the field, particularly in the preparation of an a.s.sault, which the military theories of the Allies had wrongly underestimated. It is but one example out of many. It must serve for the rest, and it will be dealt with more fully in the next section. The Germans to some extent, and much more the Austrians, prepared an immensely greater provision of heavy ammunition than their opponents, and entered the field with large pieces of a calibre and in number quite beyond anything that their opponents had at the outset of the campaign.

As to the second point:--

No peaceful nations, no nations not designing a war at their own hour, lock up armament which may be rendered obsolete, or, in equipment more extensive than the reasonable chances of a campaign may demand, the public resources which it can use on what it regards as more useful things. Such nations, to use a just metaphor, "insure" against war at what they think a reasonable rate. But if some one Government in Europe is anarchic in its morals, and proposes, while professing peace, to declare war at an hour and a day chosen by itself, it will obviously have an overwhelming advantage in this respect. The energy and the money which it devotes to the single object of preparation cannot possibly be wasted; and, if its sudden aggression is not fixed too far ahead, will not run the risk of being sunk in obsolete weapons.

Now it is clearly demonstrable from the coincidence of dates, from the exact time required for a special effort of this kind, and from the rate at which munitions and equipment were acc.u.mulated, that the Government at Berlin came to a decision in the month of July 1911 to force war upon Russia and upon France immediately after the harvest of 1914; and of a score of indications which all converge upon these dates, not one fails to strike them exactly by more than a few weeks in the matter of preparation, by more than a few days in the date at which war was declared.

Under those circ.u.mstances, Berlin with her ally at Vienna had the immense numerical advantage over the French and the Russians when war was suddenly forced upon those countries on the 31st of July last year.

But, as in the case of men, the advantage would only be overwhelming during the first period. The very fact that the war had to be won quickly involved an immense expenditure of heavy ammunition in the earlier part of it, and this expenditure, if it were not successful, would be a waste.

It takes about five months to produce a heavy piece, and the rate of production of heavy ammunition, though slow, is measurable. At the moment of writing this, towards the close of the second period, the balance is not yet redressed, but it is in a fair way to be redressed.

The imperfect and too tardy blockade to which the enemy is somewhat timidly subjected is a factor in aid of this; and we may be fairly confident that, if a third period is reached before the enemy shall have the advantage of a decision, there will be a preponderance of munitioning upon the Allied side in the West and the East which will be, if anything, of superior importance to the approaching preponderance in numbers.

Having thus briefly surveyed the opposing strength of either combatant, checked and measured as it varied with the progress of the war, we will turn to the _moral_ opposition of military theory between the one party and the other, and show how here again that, _save in the most important matter of all, grand strategy_, the enemy was on the highroad to the victory which he confidently and, for that matter, reasonably expected.

(3) THE CONFLICTING THEORIES OF WAR.

The long peace which the most civilized parts of Europe had enjoyed for now a generation left more and more uncertain the value of theories upon the conduct of war, which theories had for the most part developed as mere hypotheses untested by experience during that considerable period. The South African and the Manchurian war had indeed proved certain theories sound and others unsound, so far as their experience went; but they were fought under conditions very different from those of an European campaign, and the progress of material science was so rapid in the years just preceding the great European conflict that the ma.s.s of debated theories still remained untried at its outbreak.

The war in its first six months thoroughly tested these theories, and proved, for the greater part of them, which were sound in practice and which unsound. I will tabulate them here, and beg the special attention of the reader, because upon the accuracy of these forecasts the first fortunes of the war depended.

I. A German theory maintained that, with the organization of and the particular type of discipline in the German service, attacks could be delivered in much closer formation than either the French or the English believed to be possible.

The point is this: After a certain proportion of losses inflicted within a certain limit of time, troops break or are brought to a standstill. That was the universal experience of all past war. When the troops that are attacking break or are brought to a standstill, the attack fails. But what you cannot determine until you test the matter in actual war is what numbers of losses in what time will thus destroy an offensive movement. You cannot determine it, because the chief element in the calculation is the state of the soldier's mind, and that is not a measurable thing. One had only the lessons of the past to help one.

The advantages of attacking in close formation are threefold.

(_a_) You launch your attack with the least possible delay. It is evident that spreading troops out from the column to the line takes time, and that the more extended your line the more time you consume before you can strike.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 16.]

If I have here a hundred units advancing in a column towards the place where they are to attack (and to advance in column is necessary, because a broad line cannot long keep together), then it is evident that if I launched them to the attack thus:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 17.]

packed close together, I get them into that formation much more quickly than if, before attacking, I have to spread them out thus:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 18.]

(_b_) The blow which I deliver has also evidently more weight upon it at a given point. If I am attacking a hundred yards of front with a hundred units of man and missile power, I shall do that front more harm in a given time than if I am attacking with only fifty such units.

(_c_) In particular circ.u.mstances, where troops _have_ to advance on a narrow front, as in carrying a bridge or causeway or a street or any other kind of defile, my troops, if they can stand close formation and the corresponding punishment it entails, will be more likely to succeed than troops not used to or not able to bear such close formation. Now, such conditions are very numerous in war. Troops are often compelled, if they are to succeed, to rush narrow gaps of this kind, and their ability to do so is a great element in tactical success.

I have here used the phrase "if they can stand close formation and the corresponding punishment it entails," and that is the whole point.

There are circ.u.mstances--perhaps, on the whole, the most numerous of all the various circ.u.mstances in war--in which close formation, if it can be used, is obviously an advantage; but it is equally self-evident that the losses of troops in close formation will be heavier than their losses in extended order. A group is a better target than a number of dispersed, scattered points.

Now, the Germans maintained in this connection not only, as I have said, that they could get their men to stand the punishment involved in close formation, but also that:--