INADEQUACY OF BRITISH ARMY
In view of the foregoing considerations it was clearly absurd to think that our own small force was at all adequate, in a military sense, to deter Germany from engaging in a war of aggression. Had we been able, during the years 1912 to 1914, to see into the minds of the German General Staff we should probably have realised that this inadequacy was even greater than it appeared. We should then have known that the numbers of the Kaiser's striking force had been carefully understated; and that the amount of preparations in the way of material had been hidden away with an equal industry. We should also have learned, that the sending of our army abroad was viewed with scepticism in German military circles, as an event hardly likely to occur. But even if our Expeditionary Force did go, it was altogether inadequate to redress the adverse balance; still more inadequate to bring an immediate victory within the range of practical possibility. It was inadequate to hold back the premeditated invasion, either at the German frontier, or even at the French frontier. It was inadequate to make Belgian resistance effective, even if that nation should determine to throw in its lot with the Triple Entente.
As a matter of the very simplest arithmetic our land forces were inadequate for any of these purposes. They were unequal to the task of maintaining the balance of power by giving a numerical superiority to the armies of the Triple Entente. Our armaments therefore did not correspond with our policy. It was clear that they would not be able to uphold that policy if it were put to the supreme test of war. It was impossible to abandon our policy. It was not impossible, and it was not even in 1912 too late, to have set about strengthening our armaments. Nothing of the kind, however, was undertaken by the Government, whose spokesmen, official and unofficial, employed themselves more congenially in deriding and rebuking Lord Roberts for calling attention to the danger.
Of course if it had been possible to place reliance upon the statement of the English War Minister, made little more than a year before war broke out,[[6]] that every soldier under the voluntary system is worth ten conscripts, we and our Allies would have been in a position of complete security. In that case our force of 160,000 would have been the equivalent of 1,600,000 Germans, and we should from the first have been in a superiority of more than a million over our enemies.
Even if we could have credited the more modest assumption of the Attorney-General—made nearly four months after war broke out—that one volunteer was worth three 'pressed' men, the opposing forces would have been somewhere about an equality.[[7]]
Unfortunately both these methods of ready-reckoning were at fault, except for their immediate purpose of soothing, or deluding the particular audiences to which they were addressed. The words were meaningless and absurd in a military sense; though conceivably they possessed some occult political virtue, and might help, for a time at least, to avert the retribution which is due to unfaithful stewards.
Both these distinguished statesmen, as well as many of their colleagues and followers, were beset by the error of false opposites. A soldier who has enlisted voluntarily, and another who is a conscript or 'pressed' man, have equally to fight their country's enemies when they are ordered to do so. In both cases the particular war may be against their consciences and judgments; and their participation in it may therefore be involuntary.
Of two men—equal in age, strength, training, and courage—one of whom believes his cause to be just, while the other does not, there can be no doubt that the former will fight better than the latter—even though the latter was enlisted under the voluntary system while the former was a conscript or 'pressed' man. In this sense the superiority of the 'voluntary' principle is incontestable. But is there any evidence to show, that either the original soldiers, or the new levies, of the German army are risking their lives in this war any less willingly than our own countrymen, who went out with the Expeditionary Force, or those others who have since responded to Lord Kitchener's appeal? Is there any reason to suppose that they are fighting any less bravely and intelligently?[[8]]
Another matter of importance in these calculations with regard to the military strength of the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance was the time limit.
THE THREE PERIODS OF WAR