When an army of 100,000 men expands and becomes an army of 3,000,000, it becomes a job just 30 times bigger to feed the 3,000,000 than it was to feed the 100,000. A soldier of a campaigning army eats no more than a soldier of a quiet military post. The same is true approximately in the case of clothing an army. But the army's consumption of ammunition in time of war is far out of proportion to its numerical expansion to meet the war emergency. For instance, an Army machine gun in time of peace might fire 6,000 rounds in practice during the year. This was the standard quantity of cartridges provided in peace. Yet it is necessary to provide for a single machine gun on the field in such a war as the recent one 288,875 rounds of ammunition during its first year of operation, this figure including the initial stock and the reserve supply as well as the actual number of rounds fired. Thus the machine gun of war increases its appetite, so to speak, for ammunition 4,700 per cent in the first year of fighting. [Illustration: FIGURE 2. RATES OF ARTILLERY FIRE PER GUN PER DAY IN RECENT WARS. ------------------------+------------------+------------------------ War. | Army. | Approximate rounds per | | gun per day. ------------------------+------------------+------------------------ 1854-1856, Crimean |British and French|== [4]5 | | 1859, Italian |Austrian |.3 | | 1861-1865, Civil |Union |== 4 | | 1866, Austro-Prussian |{Austrian |= 2.2 |{Prussian |.8 | | 1870-71, Franco-Prussian|German |= [5]1.1 | | 1904-5, Russo-Japanese |Russian |== 4 | | 1912-13, Balkan |Bulgarian |==== 7 | | PRESENT WAR | | | | September, 1914 |French |==== [5]8 | | Jan. 1-Oct. 1, 1918 |Italian |==== [5]8 | | Jan. 1-Nov. 11, 1918 |United States |=============== [5]30 | | Jan. 1-Nov. 11, 1918 |French |================= [5]34 | | Jan. 1-Nov. 11, 1918 |British |================== [5]35 ------------------------+------------------+------------------------ [4] Siege of Sebastopol. [5] Field gun ammunition only.