SERVIA AND BELGIUM
As regards the remaining nations engaged in the war, Servia, in which the contest began, has an area of 18,782 square miles, a population of 4,000,000, and a standing army of 240,000, a number seemingly very inadequate to face the enormously greater power of Austria-Hungary. But the men had become practically all soldiers, very many of them tried veterans of the recent Balkan War; their country is mountainous and admirably fitted for defensive warfare, and their power of resistance to invasion was quickly shown to be great.
Belgium, the other early seat of the war, is still smaller in area, having but 11,366 square miles. But it is very densely populated, possessing 7,432,784 inhabitants. Its army proved brave and capable, its fortifications modern and well adapted to defense, and small as was its field force it held back the far more numerous German invaders until France and Great Britain had their troops in position for available defense. This small intermediate kingdom therefore played a very important part in the outset of the war.
If one judges by the figures given of the available military strength of the nations involved, the huge host said to have followed Xerxes to the invasion of Greece could easily be far surpassed in modern warfare. The fact is, however, that these huge figures greatly exceed the numbers that could, except in the most extreme exigency, be available for use in the field, and for real active service we should be obliged to greatly reduce these paper estimates. It must be taken into account that the fields and factories of the nations cannot be too greatly denuded of their trained workers. It was a shrewd saying of Napoleon Bonaparte that “An army marches on its stomach,” and the important duty of keeping the stomach adequately filled can not be overlooked.
In actual war also there is an enormous exhaustion of military material, which must be constantly replaced, and this in turn demands the services of great numbers of trained artisans. The question of finance also cannot be overlooked. It needs vast sums of money to keep a modern army in the field, this increasing rapidly as the forces grow in numbers, and no national treasure chest is inexhaustible. Tax as they may, the war lords cannot squeeze out of their people more blood than flows in their veins, and exhaustion of the war-chest may prove even more disastrous than exhaustion of the regiments. For these reasons a limit to the size of armies is inevitable and in any great war this limitation must quickly make itself apparent.
Chapter IV.
GREAT BRITAIN AND THE WAR
The Growth of German Importance—German Militarism—Great Britain’s Peace Efforts—Germany’s Naval Program—German Ambitions—Preparation for War—Effect on the Empire
The influence of the European War permeated everything from and through the nation to the individual, from trade and commerce and world-finance to the cost of food and the price of labor. The whole world, civilized and uncivilized, was drawn into this whirlpool of disaster—the majority of the population of the earth was actually at war. Was it possible that such a vast conflict—so far reaching in its racial and national elements, so bitter in its old and new animosities, so great in its territorial area, so tremendous in the numbers of men in arms—could come, as some commentators say, like a thief in the night or have fallen upon the world like a bolt from the blue! All available information of an exact character, all the preparation of the preceding few years, all the inner statecraft of the world as revealed in policy and action, prove the fallacy of this supposition.