The Two Maps of Europe, and Some Other Aspects of the Great War

by Hilaire Belloc

So much for an illustration of what is meant by absolute numbers and of their importance in the present phase of the campaign.

(2) Now what of Proportionate numbers? That is a point upon which even closer attention must be fixed, because upon it will depend the issue of the campaign.

The first thing we have to see clearly is that Austria and Germany began the war with a very great preponderance in numbers of trained and equipped men ready to take the field within the first six weeks. They had here a great advantage over Russia and France combined, and to see what that advantage was look at Diagram IX.

Diagram IX. A represents the total number of men Germany and Austria together could put into the field by about the middle of September. B represents the French and the first British contingent; C what the Russians could do. This shows that Germany and Austria began the war with a great advantage over Russia, France and Britain combined, in their numbers of trained and equipped men ready to take the field within the first six weeks.

Figure A represents the total number of men Germany and Austria together could put into the field by about the middle of September. B represents the French and the first British contingent in the West; C what the Russians could do in the East.

This original superiority of the enemy is a point very little appreciated because of two things. First, that men tend to think of the thing in nations and not in numbers, and they think of Germany, one unit, attacked by England, France, Russia, a lot of other units, and next because there is a grave misconception as to the numbers Russia could put into the field early in the war.

Russia had a certain force quite ready, that is fully equipped, officered, trained, gunned, and the rest of it. But she had nothing like the numbers in proportion to her population that the enemy had. The proportions of population were between Russia and her enemy as seventeen to thirteen. But Germany and, to a less extent, Austria and Hungary, had organized the whole population ultimately for war. Russia could not do this. Her advantage, only to be obtained after a considerable lapse of time, was the power of perpetually raising new contingents, which, by the time they were trained and equipped could successively enter the field. But at the opening of the war, say by the middle of September, when she had perhaps at the most two-and-a-half million men in Poland, the total forces of the enemy, that is the total number of men Austria and Germany had equipped, trained, and ready for the field since the beginning of the war, was at least eight million.

You have the war, then, beginning with the enemy standing at quite 8, the French nominally at 4, but really nearer 3; Russia at 2½.

Let us see how time was to modify this grave disproportion and how new contingents coupled with the effect of wastage were to affect it.