SUPPLY
After numbers, the second main factor in the strength of an army is its supply—its means of obtaining clothes, food, shelter, ammunition and all those objects without which it can neither exist nor fight. The marvellously complicated and expensive organization entailed is here fully explained.
SUPPLY
An army has two main factors of strength—that is, two main material factors apart from the moral factors of courage, discipline, habit, and relationship. These two material factors are first its numbers, and secondly its supply.
The first of these is so much the more obvious in the public eye that it is often alone considered. It is, of course, the basis of all the rest. Unless you have a sufficient number of men for your task you cannot accomplish that task at all. But the second, which is less often considered by general opinion, is a necessity no less absolute than the necessity for adequate numbers.
The general term “supply” covers all those objects without which an army cannot exist or fight—clothing, shelter, food, weapons, auxiliary instruments, ammunition.
Now it is not the intention of these few lines to enter into details or to give precise information, such as may be obtained by reference to the text books, but rather to bring out a few main points about supply which are not generally considered, especially in moments such as this, when the obtaining of numbers by voluntary recruitment is the chief matter in the public mind. And these chief points with regard to supply may be put briefly in three groups.
First we ought to grasp the scale of supply: that is, the magnitude of the operation which is undertaken when an army is equipped, put into the field, and maintained there.