ld.

Let us start, then, with some estimate of the number of men who are
about to take part in battle; let us take for our limits the
convenient limits of a year, and let us divide that space of time
arbitrarily into three parts or periods.

There was a first period in which the nations opposed brought into the
field the men available in the first few weeks for immediate action.
It is not possible to set a precise limit, and to say, "This period
covers the first six" or "the first eight weeks;" but we can say
roughly that, when we are speaking of this first period, we mean the
time during which men for whom the equipment was all ready, whose
progress and munitioning had all been organized, were being as rapidly
as possible brought into play. Such an estimate is not equivalent to
an estimate of the very first numbers that met in the shock of battle;
those numbers were far smaller, and differed according to the rate of
mobilization and the intention of the various parties. The estimate is
only that of the total number which the various parties could, and
therefore did, bring into play before men not hitherto trained as
soldiers, or trained but not believed to be required in the course of
the campaign--according as that campaign had been variously foreseen
by various governments--came in to swell the figures.

The conclusion of this first period would come, of course, gradually
in the case of every combatant, and would come more rapidly in the
case of some than in the case of others. But we are fairly safe if we
take the general turning-point from the first period to the second to
be the month of October 1914. The second period had begun for
some--notably for Germany--with the first days of that month; it had
already appeared for all, especially for England, before the beginning
of November.

The second period is marked for all the combatants by the bringing
into play of such forces as, for various reasons, the Government of
each had once hoped would not be required. The German Empire might
have marked them as not required, in the reasonable hope that victory
would be quickly assured. The British Government might, from a very
different standpoint, have believed them not to be required, because
it regarded the work of its continental Allies as sufficient to gain
the common object, etc. But in the case of all, however various the
motives, the particular mark of this second period is the straining to
put into the field n