, is that which has
particularly appealed to technical writers. It consists in numbering
_units_; in noting the headquarters and the tale of army corps and of
independent divisions.

The fault of this method is twofold. First, that only actual
experience can tell one whether units are really being maintained
during peace at full strength; and secondly, that only actual
experience discovers how many new units can and will be created when
war is joined. In other words, the fault of this method (necessary
though it is as an adjunct to all military calculations) lies in its
divorce from the reality of numbers.

At the end of the retreat from Moscow each army corps of the Grand
Army still preserved its name, each regiment its nominal identity. And
the roll was called by Ney, for instance, before the Beresina,
division by division and regiment by regiment, and even in the
regiments company by company; but in most of these last there was no
one to answer, and there is a story of one regiment for which one
surviving man answered with regularity until he also died. What fights
is numbers of living men--not headings; and if five army corps are
present, each having lost two-fifths of its men, three full army corps
are a match for them.

The third method is that of commonsense. We must deduce from the
results obtained, from the fronts covered, from the energy remaining
after known losses, from the reports of intelligence, from the avenues
of communication available, what least and what largest numbers can be
present. We must correct such conclusions by our previous knowledge of
the way in which each service regards its strength, which most depends
upon reserves, how each uses his depots and drafts, what machinery it
has for training the untrained and for equipping them. This
complicated survey taken, we can arrive at general figures.[1]

Using that method, and applying it to the present campaign, I think we
shall get something like the following.

_The Figures of the First Period, say to October 1-31, 1914._

Germany put across the Rhine in the first period (without counting a
certain small proportion of Hungarian cavalry and Austrian artillery)
rather more than two and a quarter million men. She put into the
Eastern field first a quarter of a million, which rapidly grew to half
a million, and before the end of October to nearly a million; a
balance of rather more than another million she used for filling gaps
and for kee