Hilaire Belloc Compares the Reserves of the Belligerents.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 203, 25 August 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

Hilaire Belloc Compares the Reserves of the Belligerents.

Wo may take advantage of such a lull in operations as now exists (May 13). to consider the war as a whole, and' to estimate the enemy's position for tha near' future. Very many of my correspondents have asked me to make such an estimate when an opportunity should be afforded by some pause in the. main operations, and they late'y added to this request frequent suggestions that I should reply in detail to the more ridiculous statements put about by those who work in this country for the exaggeration of the enemy's power. The two foundations of any estimate are, of course, an estimate of men and t,n estimate of the power of munitionment and supply, including in the latter material for industry and ma;ntenance of population as well as material directly used in war. The general situation of boith those elements at the present moment is well known and need only be stated. There are in this war, from the point of view of man-power, two distinct groups. There is the group of what may be called the "fully mobilised countries," and there : s the group, the

members of which have, for various reasons, not yet put forth a maximum effort in manpower. In the first group we put the French Republic, the German Empire, the Austo-Hungarian Empire, the Bulgarians and the Serbians, livery one of these nations, from the first day iit ener.od the war, had the whole of its available man-power organised, could calculate with precision how long "normal methods of recruitment" would last it at a given rate of wastage, and what "abnormal methods of recruitment" would yield—particularly the numbers of the "immature classes" (1916 and 1917) which would ultimately be drawn upon should the war be prolonged beyond the close of the year 1915. Eliminating for the moment Bulgaria and Serbia, and considering only the three major members of this group, we know what the condition of exhaustion is, and we know it by the very simple test of remarking the necessities under which each fully mobilised Power finds itself of calling upon the last drafts jf recruitment. APPROACHING F.XD OF RESERVES. The position : s briefly this: All three Powrcs are approaching tin: end of .their reserves in men —that is, of the numbers over and abovo those necessary to the keeping of their armies in the field. All three Powers have already fallen back upon the ••abnormal methods of recruitment, "and particularly ujwn the calling up of the youngest classes normally regarded as "immature'' and below the tniVtary age. Bitf though these three Powers are all near the limits of recruitment as compared with the other giroup of Powers which still have large reserves. they are by no means neck and neck. Reduced as the margins are in each, there is still a difference, giving an ampler margin to one and a lesser margin to another, though the man-gin is in all cases narrow. The Austro-Hungarian Power ; s the most exhausted ol the three. It o\u.-> this misfortune to a number of causes. The excellence and persistence of the Italian artillery work upon the narrow but densely-crowded Gorizia front : s one cause; the terrible climnitic conditions of the Carpathian lighting last year is another; the very bad defeats suffered at the beginning of the war are a third; the d'safieetion end con.sefjiient desertion and mishandling ol Slav troops, especially in the earler part of the campaign, is a fourth. At any rate, whatever weight we allow tn each of these cruise-, and to others which may have eon'rihiited to the result, we know that Austro-Hungary is at the present moment the most heavily hit of all the bolli>J>rent Powers in the matted of men. She has put nun up to 55 under contribution for military work of s.orts (though, ol course, there can be no question of using these older classes in the field). She has long ago used her 191G class mid has

HOW THEY STAND, WARRING NATIONS' RESERVES. THE INEVITABLE END.

By HIKAIRE BELLOC, in "Land and Water."

now many weeks ago put portions of Jncv 1917 class into the field. She is the only Power which has warned and, I believe, already examined, her 1918 class —that is the lads who will be 20 years of age in the course of 1918, and who are consequently d ther just under or just over 18 years of age at the present moment. The German .umpire comes next in its exhaustion ot men. It has called up into the field pretty well the whole of its 1916 class. It has called up and '» training and has already, I believe, put into the field portions of its 1917 class There certainly exists secret information upon the status of the 1918 class in the German Empire at this moment, but I have not seen that information. I am dependent only upon published telegrams which seem to show that the 1918 class has been warned, and perhaps, in the case of special services, examined, but at any rate, the 1918 class in Germany is not so far advanced to wards service as is the corresponding class in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Lastly, we have the French Republic in the following situation: — i The 1916 class was cal'ed up many months ago, and has been in training ever since. The Germans even claim that certain members of it have been i discovered among their prisoners before I Verdun. I was specially told, upon the • other hand not many weeks ago, that ! none of this class (save a few original j volunteers) had as yet been put under i fire. But, no matter which of these | versions be true, it is of no great con- : sequence. The French have certainly I not yet put into line many of their i 1916 class. The Germans have put into ! line nearly all of theirs. They have ' called up for training, now four months ago, their 1917 class. So have the Germans. Neither party has put. this class into the field yet in any appreciable numbers. The French have certainly put none of it at all. y If the Germans have begun to put theirs in, it has been only on a very small scale so far. GERMAN TACTICS AND EXHAUSTION. We must, of course, remember further in this contrast that the French period of training is very much longer than the German. It ?s more than twice as long. i If it be asked why the Germ!an Emp:re should be somewhat —though but slightly—more exhausted than tha i French Republic, the answer would ! seem to be that frequently given in ' these columns; that the German Em- | pire has been fighting upon two fronts, I that it is ruled by a tactical tradition J of close formation (from which it some- • times attempts to depart, but to which 1 it invariably returns), and that it has 1 also since the Aisne been condemned to a perpetual offensive against entrenched enemies. The two great offensive actions of the French, that in the Artois a year ago and that in the Cliampagne last September, you can | sot in the history of the campaign ; at least five such expensive German 1 efforts' —of which Verdun is the last and greatest by far. It is only in the natural order, and precisely what was to be expected, that the Gorman service should show a slightly greater loss in proportion to its numbers than the French. But we msut be careful to remember that this difference is only slight. Such is the general situation as to numbers upon the continent, so far a's these numbers regard the fully mobilised great nations. We can represent the thing clearly, but exceedingly roughly, by saying that where AustroHungary has probably lost in 21 months 10 men out of a given unit, Germany has lost, say 9, and France about 8, while the man-power of Ausi tro-Hungary and Germany is to that of France alone as almost exactly 3 to i It would be mere waste of space to refute once more the ineptitudes and worse which have been spread upon the situation in the Press of this country, espco'ally during the last few months. Many of my correspondents again point out to me the wearisome iteration of the official German lists, which. : as we all know, are about six weeks bei lated and about 19 per cent, below the truth in dead alone. It is really not ' worth liilo going over that well-worn i field again. Germany does not work miracles. Her losses in the war are proportionate to the effort she has made and are naturally upon much the same scale as those of her Allies and her 1 opponents. Tl>e real losses of the enemy, as of any other belligerent power, arc at this time known to within so small a margin of error that there 's very little room left for discussion. If i any new fact can be produced worthy of our consideration and slightly modifying the conclusion universally r'oichcd upon this matter by every competent observer in every bureau ot every war office and of every 'itaff, it should receive due coiis : deration. But mere vague assertion without a shred ■ of evidence is not worth wasting powder and shot upon in any serious exam- ; ination of our problems. So much then for the first group of category of "fully mobilised powers.'' The second group of powers includes Italy. Groat Britain, Russia and Turkey. It is the group of those Powers winch have not yet, for various reasons, availed themselves of their full man power for the purpose or tlr's campaign. 1 mean, have not put it yet into 'action. Lest th:s phrase should falsify my argument I will pause to consider the different ways in which th,->sr Powers, which still have such large reserves of men. are affected. The Turkish Empire ought u.pnn paper to produce very much larger forces than those it has actually produced. Some have therefore argued that these forces st : ll stand in reserve. They do not. POSSIBLE RFSFRVPX The Turkish Emp : re is very loosely held together, it contains a mass or population that can hardly be used for

war (for political reasons), and other masses that are very bad material indeed for an army; other masses again, simply cannot be enrolled at all for geographical reasons —cannot be got at. It has great difficulty in providing itself with arms, and still greater difficulty in providing itself with munitions. What maximum fully-equipped force the Turkish Empire can keep in the held we don ot exactly know —but we know that the forces already mobilised cannot be appreciably increased. \Ve havo received the maximum effort of this foe. and it is ealready declining. The causes that make Britain, Italy and Russia severally possessed of larga hitherto unused reserves of men ars quite distinct in each case. Great Britain has raised, so far as the mere enrolling of men is concerned, the traning of them, and their potential use in the war, a very great number indeed. She has made an effort everywhere comparable to, and jn some cases surpassing, the effort of the continental powers. At the beginning of the, war the generally acepted rule among soldiers was that the mobilisation of one-tenth of one's population represented a maximum effort. The strain of the war has slightly raised that standard, and, though the extri men squeezed in have for the most pari, been absorbed in auxiliary services, yet the 10 per cent, has r : sen in the case ot Germany and of France to something more like 12 per cent., and some say to even a trifle over 12 per cent. It has been exactly the same thing in this country, with the difference that this country lias produced virtually the whole of its enormous effort by voluntary and not by conscript means—as amazing a political success as has ever been achieved by a free nation in the history of the world. When one says, therefore, that Britain stands in the category of the not-yet-fully-mobilised nations, what one means is not that she hjis failed to reach her practical maximum of manpower in enrolment for she has reached that maximum and perhaps even passed it. —(1 mean by a "practical" maximum the highest number that can be actually used as soldiers without impairing the nation and the army's necestiry supply; as distinguished from a "theoretic" maxwnium, which may, of course, be as high as you like —up to the actual limits of population.) One means that the forces actually put forward in the field and the losses hitherto sustained are not in proportion to that man-power. Roughly speaking, the man-power of these islands stands to that of the German Empire as more than 5 to 7, but less than sto 8. But the total permanent losses in the British forces from all causes whatsoever are not five-sevenths or fiveeighths of the corresponding German losses. They are more like a fourth or a fifth. And that is why Great Britain possesses vast reserves ot men either behind her front or lying in reservoirs, as it were, such as Egypt, or ;'n camps and depots or under training hero athome. ITALY AND RUSSIA. The position of 2taly, again, is different. Italy is fighting very intensely (and with a cumulative effect upon the enemy) upon a narrow front, or rather upon two separate pieces of front, the most crowded one of which is narrow, the open country between the black Mountain and the Adriat'c. Her role there is to hold the dense Austrian line with artillery work which is as good is any in Europe, and we have every evidence that the Austrian losses at thi.< point after a year of warfare are out of proportion to the Austrian losses in any other field o the war. The pressure here must be getting severe, as exhaustion in recruitment is beginning to tell. It may soon provoke a diversion. But for such a task Italy does not need a mass of mobilisable men, and there stands behind the army in action a very large potential reserve of manpower. With Russian, again, there is a separate and quite different cause for the reserve of man-power which she can boast. So large are those reserves that even if Russ : a had the same power ot equipment and munitionment which the industrial civilisations of the west and south possess, she would never have put into the field at any one time, even upon her vast front, all her human resources. But she is handicapped by great difficulties in munit.ionment and equipment. The evil results of theso difficulties in the great retreat of last year we all know. But, on the other side of the account there is the presence of masses of men pouring through the depots, trained and passed on to the front as equipment is obtained and munitionment produced or purchased. The next consideration after we have got a clear view of the way in which numbers stand, is the consideration of the length of front to be held. There is no exhaustion, nor any approach to exhaustion of reserve power in Italy, England or Russia. There >* the approach of such exhaustion in the three fully-mobilised Powers of France. Germany and Austro-Hungary. But when we consider the fronts to be held by the belligerents in this war of pos.' ti'ons, this element gives the problem :i very different significance from what t would have if we were considering forces in movement.

TREMENDOUS FRONTS. Our enemy has to keep troops—if we exclude the' Asatic campaigns upon fronts, difficult to estimate exactly on account of the mounta'nous character of the southern belts, but not less in all their sinuosit'es than 2.'500 miles. The two ch'ef fronts, however, upon which the campaign depends and which must be held in full strength, are the eastearn and the western, which, between them, come to about 1500 miles. The German Empire alone (to take tlie case which we can study most prec:sely has almost exactly 1000 miles of front to hold, of which just over half s on the west and just under a half on the ce.st. These fronts have been arrived at, not by the deliberate policy of the German commanders but by the hazard of war. The German armies did not stand where they chose to stand in the west. They stood where they could. They were pinned, in spite of themselves, to a line only part of which was at first organised. The..- have tried hard to break out s ; nce the Autumn of i 914 and they have failed. * Their considerable extension towards tho east in Poland (s not du'e to any policy of occupying such and such aistricts. but to the fact that they reached their present lines after equilibrium was

restored between their limniense superiority in equipped men and munitions and the Russian inferiority therein. They stand where they stood seven months ago, halted alter a series or tremendous efforts (all of which facJed) to enevelop the Russian armies during the great retreat. Though the very extended front which the German armies, to speak or these alone, are holding, thus include alien territory which they think can be used as an asset for the obtaining or an inconclusive peace, tha£ is of no purely military advantage whatsoever. It is indifferent so far as the military problem is concerned, whether the line stands iin Poland or Prussia. It is itslength and its facility 01 supply that count. The great extension of these fronts a'nd their distance from supply, especially in the case of the eastern line, stand in the balance against, and not in favour of, those who hold them. —(We must not follow the analog}' of past wars here. Distance with a good railway supply is not the same thing as distance with supply by horse and wagon. But the German eastern front does suffer from length and paucity ot communications throughout the Winter. This, as definite collected evidence lias shown, was a cause of heavy losses from sickness. The enemy conceals this (of course) in his published lists ) What has been deliberate in the policy of the German Government, if not in the strategy of the German commanders, has been the determination to stand on these extended lines probably beyond the moment when it would be prudent to shorten them, and certainly up to the very last moment of such prudence. If the Russian forces were in precisely the same situation of munitionmen,t and equipment as the western forces the situation, already clear to most ob. servers of this campaign, would be equally clear to the whole world, instructed or uninstruqtetf. OVERWHELMING SUPERIORITY. The Allies have an overwhelming superiority in reserves of men; only one of them is in anything like the same state of exhaustion as the enemy. The enemy has come to hold fronts requiring all his armies in the field, save a small margin still remaining lor offensive power, but rapidly dwindling. The end of such a situation would be almost mathematically certain. But Russia is notlin the same situation for miHrtionmsnt and equipment as the western Powers, and it is this distinction between the eastern and western fronts which gives its particular character to the whole position. Lastly, there is an estimate to be made of the position in munitionment and supply. We do nqt know, of course, the exact numbers of shell produced in each belligerent country per day at any moment. One hears roughly from time to time what is being produced in the various countries of the Allies, and one hears what the enemy claims to be producing One oan estimate the probable truth of his claims, and one can estimate bv the nature of the activity shown and bV the rate at which the effort has developed in the factories of,the Allied countries, how far the estimate one hears of their-production agrees with the truth. The general conclusion—without giving away even the broadest statistics—is roughly that the Allies in the W r est turn out munitions at a rather higher rate than the Central Empires. The Central Empires are not producing half a million shells a day, nor will they ever produce half a million shells a day. But they may pass the 400,000 The-actual production of Russ'a is supplemented by purchase from abroad and by the aid of her Alios. You cannot industrialise a great country in a few months, nor produce a system of railways in the same /time where it was lacking before. Of the two parties one is far more severely handicapped for general supply than the other. The Allies are far less burdened by want than the Central Powers and Turkey. They suffer in the west from a restriction, of freight, in the oast from the great distances from which industrial products must be liroiight. But the Central Powers are now really hampered, .even for food—more for leather, rubber, fats and oils. We cannot starve them, unfortunately But we increas : ngly strain them.