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

by Hilaire Belloc

Next we must grasp the rate of supply—the pace at which the stream of supply has got to be kept moving (varying for various forms of supply) in order that an army shall neither break down nor dwindle in efficiency.

Lastly we must consider the delicacy or liability to embarrassment of supply; that is, the difficulties peculiar to the maintenance of an army in the field, the ease with which that maintenance may be fatally interrupted, and the consequent embarrassment which an enemy may be made to feel, or which the enemy may make us feel, in this vital operation of war.

As to the scale of supply. Remark that there are in this factor a number of elements easily overlooked, and the first is the element of comparative expense. It is of no great value to put before men rows of figures showing that a large army costs so many millions of pounds. It is the comparative economic burden of armed service as contrasted with civilian work which is really of importance, and which is much more easily grasped than the absolute amount of the cost.

The great mass of men in an army are, of course, drawn from the same rank of society as the great mass of labourers and artisans during peace, and the very first point we have to note about a state of war is that these men are provided for their trade with instruments and provisions upon a higher scale than anything which they require in their civilian life.

Diagram I. The great mass of men in the army are drawn from the same rank of society as the great mass of labourers and artisans during peace; but they are provided for their trade with instruments and provisions upon a higher scale than anything which they required in their civilian life. The difference in the cost of upkeep—clothing, food, implements, etc.—of a navvy and a soldier for one year is shown approximately in the above diagram.

Their clothing is and must be better, for the wear of a campaign is something very different from the wear of ordinary living. It is to this factor that one owes not a little of the complaints that always arise during a war upon the quality of the material used by contractors.

Let me give an example drawn from my personal experience. If I am not mistaken, the heavy dark blue great-coat worn by the gunners in the French service costs (when all expense was reduced to a minimum through the agency of Government factories, through the purchase of clothing wholesale, and through the absence of a whole series of those profits attaching to ordinary trade) no less than 100 francs, or £4. That great-coat stood for material and workmanship which, sold in a West End shop in London, would have meant anything from £6 upwards. In other words, the private soldiers all through a vast body of men were wearing a great-coat of a quality—in expense, at least—which only very well-to-do men, only a tiny minority in the State, could afford in time of peace.

Next observe that you feed the man (I am glad to say) far better than the modern capitalist system of production feeds him. You must do this, or you would not be able to maintain your army at its highest efficiency.

Many a man who in civilian life would never get butcher’s meat more than once or twice a week, receives a pound and a quarter of meat a day in an army. He receives over a pound of bread. And it is curious to note in a conscript service how small a proportion of the men—only those, indeed, who are drawn from quite the wealthier classes—find the provisioning of the army distasteful (none find it inadequate), and how, for the great majority, it is an advance over that to which they were accustomed at home.