nning mainly because he was fighting more
than equal in the East, and at first nearly two to one, later quite
four to three, in the West. Those are the conditions of the late
summer of 1914. 1915, before it was a third over, had seen the numbers
nearly equalized. With the summer of 1915 we might hope to see the
numbers at last reversed, and, after so many perilous months, a total
(not local) numerical majority at last appearing upon the side of the
Allies. If ever this condition shall arrive before the enemy can
accomplish a decisive result in either field the tide will have
turned.

The third period belongs at the moment of writing to the future. All
we can say of it is that it presents for the enemy no considerable
field of recruitment; but while in the West it offers no increase to
the French, it does offer another five units at least, and possibly
another six or eight, to the British; and to the Russians, if the
blockade can be pierced at any point, or if the change of weather,
coupled with the broadening of the gauge of the railway to Archangel,
permits large imports, an almost indefinite increase in
number--certainly an increase of two millions, or twenty of the units
we were dealing with in the figures given above.

So much, then, for the numerical factor in men which dominates the
whole campaign.

When we turn from this to the second factor--that of munitions--we
discover something which can be dealt with far more briefly, but which
follows very much the same line.

The enemy in the first period of the war had, if anything, an even
greater superiority in munitioning than in men. This superiority was
due to two distinct causes. In the first place, as we shall see in a
few pages, his theory upon a number of military details was well
founded; in the second place, _he made war at his own chosen moment,
after three years of determined and largely secret preparation_.

As to the first point:--

We may take as a particular example of these theories of war the
enemies' reliance upon heavy artillery--and in particular upon the
power of the modern high explosive and the big howitzer--to destroy
permanent fortification rapidly, and to have an effect in the field,
particularly in the preparation of an assault, which the military
theories of the Allies had wrongly underestimated. It is but one
example out of many. It must serve for the rest, and it will be dealt
with more fully in the next section. The Germans to som