These figures have no relation to reality, because they omit a hundred modifying considerations--such as the age of the reserves, the degree of training of the reserves, the organization prepared for the enrolment of untrained men, etc. The only element in them which is of real value is the statistics--when we can obtain them--of men actually present with the colours before mobilization, to which one may add, perhaps--or at any rate in the case of France and Germany--the numbers of the _active_ reserve immediately behind the conscript army in peace. The second method, which is better, but imperfect, 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._