Owing to the extended use of this weapon, the number supplied to the various units has been appreciably increased, says the review. Not only is each unit in possession of its full regulation complement of machine guns, but the number of these guns attached to each unit has been increased since Feb. 1 by one-third.
The report next passes to the transport service, which, it says, has worked with remarkable precision since the beginning of the war. This section of the review closes by referring to food supplies for the army, which are described as abundant.
LONDON, March 27, (Correspondence of The Associated Press.)—The eighth installment of the French official review of the war, previous chapters of which have been published, takes up the German losses of officers, the wastage of guns and projectiles, and "the moral wastage of the German Army."
The chapter on losses of officers begins with the statement that the condition of the cadres, or basic organizations, in the German Army is bad. The proportion of officers, and notably of officers by profession, has been enormously reduced, it says; and a report made in December showed that in a total of 124 companies, active or reserve, there were only 49 officers of the active army. The active regiments have at the present time, according to the review, an average of 12 professional officers; the reserve regiments, 9 to 10; the reserve regiments of new formation, 6 to 7; and it is to be remembered that these officers have to be drawn upon afresh for the creation of new units.
"If Germany creates new army corps, and if the war lasts ten months," it continues, "she will reduce almost to nothing the number of professional officers in each regiment, a number which already is very insufficient."
FRENCH CONDITIONS IN CONTRAST.
The French report points out that on the other hand, all the French regiments have been constantly kept at a minimum figure of eighteen professional officers per regiment. At the same time it admits that the commanders of German corps, commanders of active battalions, and the officers attached to the commanders of army corps are officers by profession.
The French report then addresses itself to the wastage of material. Discussing the wastage of guns, it says:
It is easy to ascertain the German losses in artillery. On Dec. 28 the Sixty-sixth Regiment of Artillery entrained at Courtrai for Germany twenty-two guns, of which eighteen were used up. This figure is extremely high for a single regiment.
The same facts have been ascertained as regards heavy artillery. On Dec. 21 and 22 seventy-seven guns of heavy artillery, which were no longer serviceable, were sent to Cologne. These movements, which are not isolated facts, show how ill the German artillery has resisted the ordeal of the campaign.