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ping her strength at the full, and also in particular cases (as in her violent attempt to break out through Flanders, or rather the beginning of that attempt) for the immediate reinforcement of a fighting line. Say that Germany put into the field altogether five million men in the first period, and you are saying too much. Say that she put into the field altogether in the first period four and a quarter million men, and you are saying probably somewhat too little. France met the very first shock with about a million men, which gradually grew in the fighting line to about a million and a half. Here the limit of the French force immediately upon the front will probably be set. The numbers continued to swell long before the end of the first period and well on into the second, but they were kept in reserve. Counting the men drafted in to supply losses and the reserve, it is not unwise to put at about two and a half million men the ultimate French figure, of which one and a half million formed, before the end of the first period, the immediate fighting force. Austria was ordered by the Germans to put into the field, as an initial body to check any Russian advance and to confuse the beginning of Russian concentration, about a million men; which in the first period very rapidly grew to two million, and probably before the end of the first period to about two million and a half. Russia put into the field during the first weeks of the war some million and a quarter, which grew during the first period (that is, before the coming of winter had created a very serious handicap, to which allusion will presently be made) to perhaps two million and a half at the very most. I put that number as an outside limit. Servia, of men actually present and able to fight, we may set down at a quarter of a million; and Belgium, if we like, at one hundred thousand--though the Belgian service being still in a state of transition, and the degree of training very varied within it, that minor point is disputable. Indeed it is better, in taking a general survey, to consider only the five Great Powers concerned. Of these the fifth, Great Britain, though destined to exercise by sea power and by her recruiting field a very great ultimate effect upon the war, could only provide, in this first period upon the Continent, an average of one hundred thousand men. To begin with, some seventy-five thousand, dwindling through losses to little more than fi
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