Germany is Gambling Big With Her Men.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 144, 11 February 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

Germany is Gambling Big With Her Men.

EVEN BY USING INEFFICIENTS NOW ONLY 800,000 WILL BE NEW EFFICIENTS IN SPRING. EXPERT'S REVIEW: AUSTRIA DEPENDS ON GERMS 9 SURVIVAL

By HILAIRE UELLOC

We are iit last in a position to judge with far accuracy bow the enemy propose to deal with the one vital question of the moment for his general staff. I mean the fact that his effectives are approaching the point where they wou!d normally decline. He has, m order to make good a wastage of at least 400,000 a month lo draw perpetually from a reserve of men which is approach ng exhaustion. This problem is particularly acute in the Gorman Empire, which maintains a larger number of units at the front in proportion to its numbers than does the Allied Empire of Austria-Hungary. And upon the maintenance of the German forces in particular everything depends. Now, the German reserves of men are of three kinds. There is first the very small number remaining, if any, of efficients of full military age who can be spared from munitions, railways, mines, and the rest of it; see- I ondly, the large number of inefficients of various degrees of inefficiency; thirdly, the lads not yet mature —boys r.f 18 and 19, who remain to be drawn upon. Now the policy upon which the Geiman Government appears to have decided in its grave embarrassment would appear to be as follows: i It proposes to keep back the youths for A\ inter training and to bring them up as trained effectives in the Spring. Meanwhile it will hang on with the replenishment of wastage from what is left of its disposable efficients over '2O. if any, and, after that, by drawing upon tho inefficients for the Winter months. It is a gamble, and only the futuru can show how it-will turn out. i TEMPTED TO USE INEFFICIENTS. ... I Now, it is in the word "efficients' that ambiguity lies; because all commanders, on seeing their effectives in danger of declining in number, tend to make that number good out of inefficients. The temptation is almost irrc- ' sistlble. | You cannot get yourself to refuse the best of the inefficients; you are led en to use the next best—and so on. i I have 100 men fighting for me in a ! certain unit. I have behind them at home 100 other men thuu divided: 50 aro perfectly sound. j Now, as my 100 at the front waste , away I replace them first of all out of > my 50 sound men. 'But there comes a time when I have used up all those sound men. The man commanding my | unit sends word: "We are. after the I last action, reduced to 90; send me a j draft of 10." My mind is full of the importance of keeping my unit at full strength, so I send up that first batch to the front, although ifc is material I should not have used if I still had sound stuff to draw upon. ■ Time passes, and another batch of 10 is asked for. My next batch is a good deal worse than the first, but the line of demarcation is not strictly marked, and I am led on to sending this also.

supply ahead of him at the minimum rate of wastage. Take the other extreme, and weight everything in your own favour, put the total German man power (counting that of next year) at barely nine, the efficient kept back for auxiliary services at two; the losses at three and a half, and the army at four and a half, and the exhaustion of efficient reserves has been proceeding already for more than two months —which is a conclusion equally ridiculous on the other extreme. The reasonable conclusion is something of a mean between these two and the result that the German Empire a'.one has, including the lads of the classes 'l6 and 'l7, perhaps a million of efficients at his disposal. But of these much the greater part are the two younger classes remains over and above these. I USE OF THE CLASSES 1916-17. The enemy would appear to have said to himself: « "I must now, or very shortly, allow my effectives in the field to decline, oi I must make use of inefficient material. But wait a moment. The word 'inefficient' has two meanings. It means re- , cruits inefficient through bad health or malformation or age—three things that time will not cure. But it also means inefficient through immaturity. ''Now. I will distinguish between these two. For the first category are bad in any case, but the inefficiency of the second is modified in my favour by time. "The Winter is approaching. Heavy offensive work against mv lines during , the Winter will be difficult. The Rus- | sian re-equipment will hardly permit an 'offensive from that quartei foi several months. I "Very well. I will, during the coming months, keep up my effectives by drafting up to the front inefficient material of the elderly, or of the physically imperfect kind, and I will keep ; back until the Spring the lads whom I , shall train during the Winter, the boys i who passed their 18th and 19th birthdays in the year 1915. They will be far better material next year than they ' are now, and, if my organisation will 6tand the strain of the inefficient recruitment during the Winter, I shall I be able to appear in the Spring of j 1916 with a mass of human material, immature indeed, but approaching maI turity and advantaged by every day ' that passes."

CONDEMNED TO OFFENSIVES. Let us seo how this pans out in numbers and in dispositions. In dispositions the enemy as a whole (i.e., Germany and Austria-Hungary) h holding 1500 miles of line, and has condemned himself to a necessary and continuous offensive on that very account. He has before him, between now and the Spring fighting, six months. He cannot easily reduce his rate of wastage, both because of the extension of his fronts and because by that extension he is condemned to a perpetual attack. Sx months of that sort of thing means round about two million men lost to his strength. It might be kept as low as 1,800,000, or it might rise to two million and a half. But two million is a moderate figure, for he cannot now keep his wastage down to a third of a million, nor even much below 400,000 a month.

WHY DISASTER COMES. So the procevs continues until I come at last to the perfectly impossible people who are blind or paralytic, or in some other way out of the question. 1 have been gradually tempted step by step to replace my efficients by mefficients; each new batch so suppl.ed is only a little lower in efficiency than the last, the downward grade is almost imperceptible, and I follow it until 1 reach disaster. That 's what is meant by "coming to an end of one's reserves in efficients and beginning to depend upon inefficients"; and all commanders of armies in this dilemma are tempted to the course. Very nearly all nave yielded to the temptation, and it has always been disastrous. Now, why should it be disastrous? For this reason; that, after adding a very smail proportion of men who are almost (but not quite) efficient, every mere increment of numbers actually weakens you instead of strengthening you. Now with the point perfectly clear, that only about three-quarters of your man power are your efficients, the total number of men available, including the two younger classes of '16 —'17, but excluding the later classes of elderly men who are only technically liable and are certainly not efficients, is 12 million. To get a margin of error, let ua put it between nine and nine and a half millions. TWO CALCULATIONS. Of that figure more than three millions, but (probably) less than three and a half million are off the strength for good. If you took the analogy of the English figures in full, counting sickness and permanent temporaries, you would get 3,800,000. On a German officer was found the other day a document putt'ng permanent casualties down at 3,200,000. The rate of wastage is not less than 225,000 a month on the average, may be an high as 260.000, may be lighter. Lastly, there is an unknown number of efficients. That number may be as low as one and a half millon; it is almost certainly over two millions. We are safe if we take two as a maximum and one and a half as a minimum. Now put all these figures together and you arrive at the following position:— AAVighting everything against ourselves and in favour of Germany, allowing a full nine and half millions of original efficients over two years, counting the lads, taking only one and a half millions away for auxiliary work, putting the army at no more than three and three-quarter millions, putting the dead loss at no more than three milftms, then tiie enemy still has a millon and a half of efficient reserves. That is more than six months

It is clear, then, that his attempt to manage tlio-.se coming Winter months without breaking, while keeping his younger (German) classes in reserve is a gamble, and a gamble with the odds against him.

Let us suppose he brings the gamble off. What do the two young classes ot boys now 19 and 18 years old, give him next year ? The Gerriians have not yet called up even 'l6 to my knowledge, I hut are about to call up both 'l6 and 'l7 for the Winter training. What will ' this last available resource in men give them?

I calculate if will give them a little less than 800,000 recruits. This Spring recruitment of 800,000 at the most for the German Empire alone, I arrive at, as follows:

The number of males born in the German Empire in 1896 and 1897 were, t) round numbers, 1,900,000. The numbers surviving after 19 and 20 years were, again in round numbers, about a third les6. In other words, rather over one million and a quarter of these young men will be alive by the Spring and early Summer of next year. To apply to them, especially to the younger protion of them, the rule of 25 per cent, for inefficients would be too little. We must increase it to at least 27 per cent., or 2S per cent. This leaves us rather more than 800,000. Of these a certain number have already gone as volunteers —but we must not exaggerate that number, because we must remember that the war has already lasted more than a year; that the mass of the volunteers joined 13 or 14 months ago, and that, at that moment, the lads who will be 20 in 1916. were most of them still under 17, and not yet 18.

ONLY 800,000 IN SPRING. I take it, then, that the total really available from tbese two classes in the Spring of 1916, should Germany bring off the gamble of the Winter, will be rather less than 800,000. Good authorities say "roughly a million." But it seems to me, on the above calculation, that this figure is excessive. AVe must, of course, add to such figures the great remaining reserve of man-power in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but it is essential to remember that Austria-Hungary now depends entirely upon the direction and survival of the German forces, and that if. or when, these waver, the Central Empires also waver as a whole and together.