Yet the masses of troops still available by the half-beaten Austrians were remarkable in the extreme. The calling up of their Landsturm gave them a million of fresh men with which to recoup the enormous wastage of the earlier battles. To this new million, an estimate of the astute Colonel Shumsky adds the further resources of the German allies. He reminds us that “On the list of the German Minister of War there are 4,300,000 trained men. Supposing that the Germans have lost 800,000 in the fields of Belgium, France, Eastern Prussia, and Galicia, then they must have 3,500,000 trained men, of whom 1,000,000 are in France. The remaining 2,500,000 are not occupied with France, and consequently can operate on the east front. But it must be remembered that if Austria and Germany have a population of 110,000,000 from which to derive their troops, their antagonists have not less than 220,000,000. In the battles of the present war strategy and tactics are playing a secondary part. All that counts is the numbers and the spirit of the soldier.” An Italian estimate of about the same date stated that by the month of October Russia would have fully three millions of men actively engaged in this complicated theatre of operations--an overwhelming avalanche of troops, flushed with victory and confident of the ultimate result. The general reader derived some idea of what the preparation for fight of the units of such an embattled host really means from a vivid account in the _Daily Telegraph_ by Mr. Alan Lethbridge, who had been deputed by that journal to attend the headquarters of the world’s most gigantic mobilisation. Mr. Lethbridge records, with many human touches, the gathering together of 30,000 Cossacks within four days after the outbreak of hostilities. He makes one realise the significance, to the mind of the local Muscovite peasant, of what is to him very essentially a holy war, because his “Little Father” the Tsar orders it. He tells, with rare lucidity and wealth of detail, how he saw the green-and-gold vested priests, with their ikons and huge crosses borne before them, blessing the great masses of men amid the prayers and tears of their womenkind, and solemnly impressing upon their auditors that this was no war of aggression into which their Tsar had felt himself forced to enter. He describes how one Siberian township alone (Omsk) contributed its quota of 75,000 conscripts, and how in a single day he saw at least a hundred thousand more being transported over one small section of the Siberian railway. He emphasises the extreme “teetotal” aspect of all that he saw and heard, remarking that perhaps nothing brought home to one as much as this the realities and possibilities of the true awakening of Russia. Incidentally, he gossips amusingly as to a rumour of Japanese troops passing through Russian townships _en route_ for “the front”--first cousin, this, to the equally fantastic story of Cossack soldiers having passed through England.