1918[8] |Present |British |====================== 71,445,000 | | | 1918[8] |Present |French |========================= 81,070,000 ---------+---------------+---------+------------------------------------ [6] Average, year ended Nov. 10, 1918. [7] Year ended June 30, 1864. [8] Year ended Nov. 10, 1918. The industrial effort necessary to maintain modern armies in action may be measured to a certain extent by their expenditure of artillery ammunition. European wars of the past 100 years were for the most part decided before peace-time reserves had been exhausted. The American Civil War, however, required for its decision an industrial mobilization at that time unprecedented, which, like the use in that war of intrenchments by field armies, was more truly indicative of the trend of modern warfare than were the conditions of the more recent European wars.] Thus when a peace army of 100,000 becomes a war army of 3,000,000 its ammunition consumption becomes not 30 times greater, but anywhere from 48 to 182 times 30 times greater--an increase far out of proportion to its increase in the consumption of food, clothing, or other standard supplies. Modern invention has made possible and modern practice has put into effect a greatly augmented use of ammunition. Figures 1, 2, and 3 show graphically how ammunition expenditure has increased in modern times. Another circumstance that complicated the ordnance problem was the increasing tendency throughout the great war to use more and more the mechanical or machine methods of fighting as opposed to the older and simpler forms in which the human or animal factor entered to a greater extent. At the time the United States entered the war the regulations prescribed 50 machine guns as the equipment for an infantry division. When the armistice was signed the standard equipment of a division called for 260 heavy machine guns and 768 light automatic rifles. Of the heavy machine guns with a division, only 168 were supposed to be in active service, the remainder being in reserve or in use for antiaircraft work. However, the comparison in the two standards of equipment shows the tendency toward machine methods in the wholesale killing of modern warfare and indicates the fresh demands made upon the ordnance organization to procure this additional machinery of death. Moreover, when the fighting came to an end the A. E. F. was on the point of adding to its regimental and divisional equipment a further large number of automatic rifles.