Apart, therefore, from material preparations of one kind and another, Germany was taking steps to add 200,000 men to her striking force, and the intentions of France were approximately the same. In the {272} case of Germany, however, the increases of strength would be operative by Midsummer 1914, while with France they would not take effect until two years later.[2] Germany, moreover, was arranging to take 63,000 more recruits annually. France was unable to obtain any more recruits, as she already took all that were fit to bear arms. The increase in her striking force was made mainly at the expense of her reserves. Year by year, therefore, the numerical inferiority of France must become more marked. Russia meanwhile was proceeding with her programme of military extension and reorganisation which had been decided on after the Japanese war. A great part of her expenditure was being devoted to the improvement of her exceedingly defective system of railways and communications, and to the fortification of the Gulf of Finland. Austria did not remain stationary in military preparations any more than her neighbours. Her intake of recruits was 181,000 in 1912. It was decided to raise it to 206,000 in 1913, and again to 216,000 in 1914. In the British Army, during this critical period, there had of course been no increases, but the reverse. {273} The Regular Forces, which had been, reduced in 1906 by nine battalions,[3] were in 1914 some eight thousand men under their nominal strength. The Territorials, which had never yet reached the figure postulated by their originator, were at this date about 47,000 short. The Army Reserve was doomed in the near future to an automatic shrinkage on a considerable scale, owing to the reductions which had been effected in the Regular Forces, from which the reservists were drawn at the expiry of their terms of service. Actually, therefore, the weakness of our own military position had become more marked since 1911. Relatively it had undergone an even greater change for the worse, owing to the stupendous German programme, to the fact that we had lagged behind in the matter of aircraft, and that our naval preponderance was not so great as it had been three years earlier. [Sidenote: EFFECT OF BALKAN WARS]