THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE

Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S.A.

3 February 1916

(page 8)

FROM OTHER PENS.

GERMAN RESOURCES.

From the Chicago Tribune.

Hilaire Belloc, who is the incorrigible optimist against Germany, is sustained by what is to him a mathematically demonstrable fact, the Germans have reached the maximum of their military strength. Given population so much, as ascertainable ratio of military effectiveness to population, a weekly waste of so much, and it becomes possible to determine with exactness when the supply of reserves ceases to be sufficient to fill in the holes in the lines.

When the reserves are no longer available in sufficient numbers the lines must contract. Units cannot be kept up to their fighting strength. The loss becomes irreparable and with each month becomes more appreciable.

Belloc’s idea is that time is the fifth power in the European entente. Russia has sufficient men if they can be given sufficient training and equipment. Great Britain has enough men if the government can lay its hands on them. France, if she attempted Germany’s tactics would expose herself to the same peril Germany is in, having even less reserve force, but France has husbanded her strength for the part she has to do.

Aleister Crowley, an Irishman who will not be accused of sympathy for England, recently sent to the New York German publication, the Fatherland, a communication containing observations on the state of things in France and Great Britain. He said that from what he was able to see behind the lines in France he would conclude that great masses of half-trained British troops were being shipped across the channel, put in the charge of old French sergeants, taught a little French, made familiar with the conditions in which later they would have to fight and then returned to England for further organization, equipment and training.

It was his idea that if the British were looking forward to two more years of fighting in northern France they were preparing themselves for it in a fashion that did not suggest muddling.

In a war of attrition haste in putting men in the field is not needed. With Russia a great depot of human supplies, and with the British painstakingly raising a great army, the anti-Germans would be insured against failure for loss of men and the numerical preponderance necessary for success would be established.