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.
THE GROWTH OF GERMAN IMPORTANCE
As a matter of fact one nation had been for nearly half a century the pivot upon which European hopes and fears have turned in the matter of peace and war, of military and naval preparation, of diplomatic interchange. During this period Germany rose to a foremost place amongst the nations of Europe, to the first place in strength of military power and organized fighting force, to the second place in naval strength and commercial progress. The growth itself was a legitimate one in the main; and, given the character of its people and their cultivated convictions as to inherent greatness, was inevitable. For other nations the vital question asked in diplomacy and answered in their military or naval preparations was equally inevitable: How would Germany use this power, against whom was it aimed, for what specific purpose was it being organized with such capable precision, such splendid skill?
GERMAN MILITARISM
Great Britain, meanwhile, had devoted her main attention to the trade and diplomacy and little wars associated with the maintenance of a world-empire and, in self-defense, had cultivated friendships with Russia and France and the United States and Japan as this German power began to come closer and touch the most vital British interests. France naturally strengthened itself as its historic enemy grew in power; Russia improved her military position after the Japanese was as she was bound to do; Germany appeared to set the pace upon sea and land with an aggressive diplomacy in Morocco and in China, at Paris and at St. Petersburg, which was bound to cause trouble and to promote what is commonly called militarism. The vast ambitions and persistent policy of the German ruler and his people, the unsatisfied characteristics of German diplomacy, the militant ideals and military preparations and naval expansion of Germany between 1900 and 1914 became the dominant consideration in the chancelleries of Europe. Armies and navies, wars in the Balkans or struggles for colonial spheres of influence, financial reserves and naval construction and volunteer forces—all came to be measured against current developments in this center of European gravity.