THE HUN MILLIONS

Levin Daily Chronicle, 14 September 1918, Page 1

THE HUN MILLIONS

SECRET OF AN INEXHAUSTIBLI SUPPLY. (By FREDERICK W. WILE.) , Germany's apparently inexhaustible supply of man-power—cannon fodder as the Huns themselves call it —becomes one of the increasingly mysterious problems of this endless war. Where does/it come from? An American gentleman- named Dr. .George Usher is reported to have told the United States that "Germany falsified her population statistics for twenty years preceding the war." In 1914 she had 90,000,000 inhabitants instead of the 68,000,000 she was supposed to have. "Hindenburg gave this information to my daughters when they were visiting him in 1913," avers Mr Usher. It is a very interesting and easy explanation of the Man-Power, mystery. As an eidtor once said to a reporter who told him that he knew positively that the world was coming to an end next day, it is important—if true. The faked-census story, of course, is not new. We have all heard it and been eager to bolieve it. I lived in Berlin for thirteen years. Somehow I find it difficult to believe that some suggestion of such a gigantic, systematic swindle would not have leaked out in Germany. The Huns are a garrulous and a hyper-critical race. Before the war tamed thorn the Social Democrats ] were no respecters of official secrets. They specialised, on the contrary, in | exposing them. They had a lively in- ■ terest in . knowing how many people I there were in Germany. If' there had ! been 90,000,000 inhabitants instead of 68,000,000, there could have been 150 Social Democrats in the Reichstag instead of 110. And I cannot imagine Hindenbiirg taking American young ladies, charmig as the Misses Usher doubtless are, into his confidence on a matter of such overwhelmingly vital bearing on the German General Staff's imminent plans. No. Persoally I find the explanation of the Huns' seemingly bottomless well of Man-Power in the preamble to the llindenburg "Mass Levy" law of November, 1916: "1. Every male German, from the completion of his 17th year to the ! completion of his 60th year, is> in so far as he has not been summoned to service with" the armed forces, liable to patriotic auxiliary service _ during the, period of the war. ' '2. Patrotic auxiliary service con- ! sists, apart from service in Government } offices and other official institutions, in ! partiular of service in war industry, in i the nursing of the sick, and in organisations of every kind of an economic character connected with the war, as well as in other undertakings which are immediately or indirectly of importance for conduct of the war or provision of the requirements of the people.'" Every man up to 60 a soldier—in the trenches, in the shell factories, on the farms, in the hospitals, or on actual war work of some kind—therein, it strikes me, is mainly to be found the solution of the German Man-Power puzzle. The Kaiser faces us in superior strength because tlie German war machine does riot allow one solitary scrap of useful human strength to be wasted, except on the business of war. Conscientious objectors and exemptions for the asking arc unknown in Germany in either peace or war. I am assured tliat Ludendorff employs thousands of one-legged or one-armed men in the field. They have been taught to work machineguns. There are countless other kinds of work he has discovered that they can do, even though crippled. I am not advocating such a heartless procedure as worthy of Allied emulation. I only chronicle it as a well-authenticated and significant bit of information. Finally, we should not forget that though German generals have commanded oa many fronts, they have often directed the operations and slaughter-,of non-German divisions. Austrians. Hungarians, Turks and Bulgars have been driven into dozens of battles by Mackensea, for example, but theso have not sappedviJerman fiian-power. The most persuasive estimate of Germany's remaining fighting material that I have seen —published early in Jime in a prominent provincial newspaper —fixes the Huns' available manpower at 0,000,000. The estimate is based on thq total number of Germans mobilised since 1914 at 12,000,000, half of whom are said to have been definitely put out of action* Writing early in 1917, Mr Gerard estimated that Germany then had 9,000,000 available fighting mon. Allowing for " attrition of 3,000,000 during the intervening sixteen months, the estimate above-men-tioned —that we have to meet and beat 6,000,000 Huns —impresses me as one that is fairly corroborated by the astuto American Ambassador's "inside" figures. Let us Allies watch out for one giguntie menace—that Germany, benefiting from Allied procrastination in Russia, may mobilise, arm, and lead into battle against us the limitless manpower of Russia. To me that is t'te most portentous possibilty which the future holds.