Yet despite all its evident weaknesses this loosely knit con glomeration of races withstood the shock and strain of war for four years, in a way that surprised and dismayed her opponents. The explanation is that this complex racial fabric was woven on a stout Germanic and Magyar framework.
From the Central we turn to the Entente Powers. France pos sessed but 6o% of the potential man-power of Germany, and this debit balance had forced her to call on the services of prac tically every able-bodied male. A man was called up at 20, did three years' full-time service, then r r in the reserve and finally two periods of seven years each in the Territorial Army and Terri torial Reserve. This system gave France an initial war strength of some 4,000,000 men, equal to her German rival, but, in contrast, she placed little reliance on the fighting values of reservists. The French command counted only on the semi-professional troops of the first line, about 1,5oo,000 men, for the short and decisive cam paign which they expected and prepared for. Moreover, they I assumed a similar attitude on the part of their enemy—with result. But this initial surprise apart, a more profound handicap was the lesser capacity of France for expansion, in case of a long war, due to her smaller population—under 40,000,000 compared with Germany's 65 millions. Col. Mangin, later to become famous, had advocated tapping the resources in Africa, the raising of a huge native army, but the Government had considered the dangers to outweigh the advantages of such a policy.
The French general staff, if less technically perfect than that of Germany, had produced some of the ablest military thinkers in Europe, and its level of intelligence could well bear comparison. Unfortunately, in recent years a sharp division of thought had arisen, which did not make for combined action. Worse still the new French philosophy of war in its abstraction with the moral element had become more and more separated from the insep arable material factors. Abundance of will cannot compensate a definite inferiority of weapons, and the second factor, once real ised, inevitably reacts on the first. In materiel, the French had one great asset in their quick-firing 75 mm. field gun, the best in the world, but its very value had led them to undue confidence in a war of movement and a consequent neglect of equipment and training for the type of warfare which came to pass.
Russia's assets were in the physical sphere, her defects in the mental or moral. If her initial war strength was no greater than
that of Germany, her man-power resources were immense and the courage and endurance of her troops were famous. But corruption and incompetence permeated her leadership, her rank and file lacked the intelligence and initiative for scientific warfare—they formed an instrument of great solidity but little flexibility—and her manufacturing resources for equipment and munitions were far below those of the great industrial Powers. This handicap was made worse by her geographical situation, cut off from her allies by ice- or enemy-bound seas, and with immense land frontiers. Another radical defect was the poverty of her rail communica tions, the more essential as she relied for success on bringing into play the weight of her numbers. In the moral sphere Russia's condition was less clear. Her internal troubles were notorious and must be a brake on her efforts unless the cause was such as to prove a crusade-like appeal to her primitive and incoherent masses.
Between the military systems of Germany, Austria, France and Russia there was a close relation, differences of detail rather than of fundamental, and this similarity threw into greater contrast the system of the other great European Power—Britain. Throughout modern times she had been essentially a sea-power, intervening on land through a traditional policy of diplomatic and financial sup port to Allies, whose military efforts she reinforced with a leaven from her own professional army. This regular army was primarily maintained for the protection and control of the overseas de pendencies—India in particular—and had always been kept down to the minimum strength for this purpose. The reason for the curious contrast between Britain's determination to maintain a supreme navy and her consistent neglect, indeed starvation of the army, lay partly in her insular position, which caused her to regard the sea as her essential life-line and main defence, and partly in a constitutional distrust of the army, an illogical prejudice, which had its almost forgotten source in the military government of Cromwell. Small as to size, it enjoyed a practical and varied experience of war without parallel among the Continental armies. Compared with them, its professional handicap was that the leaders, however skilled in handling small columns in colonial expeditions, had never directed large formations in la grande guerre.