The third period belongs at the moment of writing to the future. All we can say of it is that it presents for the enemy no considerable field of recruitment; but while in the West it offers no increase to the French, it does offer another five units at least, and possibly another six or eight, to the British; and to the Russians, if the blockade can be pierced at any point, or if the change of weather, coupled with the broadening of the gauge of the railway to Archangel, permits large imports, an almost indefinite increase in number--certainly an increase of two millions, or twenty of the units we were dealing with in the figures given above. So much, then, for the numerical factor in men which dominates the whole campaign. When we turn from this to the second factor--that of munitions--we discover something which can be dealt with far more briefly, but which follows very much the same line. The enemy in the first period of the war had, if anything, an even greater superiority in munitioning than in men. This superiority was due to two distinct causes. In the first place, as we shall see in a few pages, his theory upon a number of military details was well founded; in the second place, _he made war at his own chosen moment, after three years of determined and largely secret preparation_. As to the first point:-- We may take as a particular example of these theories of war the enemies' reliance upon heavy artillery--and in particular upon the power of the modern high explosive and the big howitzer--to destroy permanent fortification rapidly, and to have an effect in the field, particularly in the preparation of an assault, which the military theories of the Allies had wrongly underestimated. It is but one example out of many. It must serve for the rest, and it will be dealt with more fully in the next section. The Germans to some extent, and much more the Austrians, prepared an immensely greater provision of heavy ammunition than their opponents, and entered the field with large pieces of a calibre and in number quite beyond anything that their opponents had at the outset of the campaign. As to the second point:-- No peaceful nations, no nations not designing a war at their own hour, lock up armament which may be rendered obsolete, or, in equipment more extensive than the reasonable chances of a campaign may demand, the public resources which it can use on what it regards as more useful things. Such nations, to use a just metaphor, "insure" against war at what they think a reasonable rate. But if some one Government in Europe is anarchic in its morals, and proposes, while professing peace, to declare war at an hour and a day chosen by itself, it will obviously have an overwhelming advantage in this respect. The energy and the money which it devotes to the single object of preparation cannot possibly be wasted; and, if its sudden aggression is not fixed too far ahead, will not run the risk of being sunk in obsolete weapons.