[Illustration: DIAGRAM IX. A represents the total number of men Germany and Austria together could put into the field by about the middle of September. B represents the French and the first British contingent; C what the Russians could do. This shows that Germany and Austria began the war with a great advantage over Russia, France and Britain combined, in their numbers of trained and equipped men ready to take the field within the first six weeks.] Figure A represents the total number of men Germany and Austria together could put into the field by about the middle of September. B represents the French and the first British contingent in the West; C what the Russians could do in the East. This original superiority of the enemy is a point very little appreciated because of two things. First, that men tend to think of the thing in nations and not in numbers, and they think of Germany, one unit, attacked by England, France, Russia, a lot of other units, and next because there is a grave misconception as to the numbers Russia could put into the field _early_ in the war. Russia had a certain force quite ready, that is fully equipped, officered, trained, gunned, and the rest of it. But she had nothing like the numbers in proportion to her population that the enemy had. The proportions of population were between Russia and her enemy as seventeen to thirteen. But Germany and, to a less extent, Austria and Hungary, had organized the whole population ultimately for war. Russia could not do this. Her advantage, only to be obtained after a considerable lapse of time, was the power of perpetually raising new contingents, which, by the time they were trained and equipped could successively enter the field. But at the opening of the war, say by the middle of September, when she had perhaps at the most two-and-a-half million men in Poland, the total forces of the enemy, that is the total number of men Austria and Germany had equipped, trained, and ready for the field since the beginning of the war, was at least eight million. You have the war, then, beginning with the enemy standing at quite 8, the French nominally at 4, but really nearer 3; Russia at 2½. Let us see how time was to modify this grave disproportion and how new contingents coupled with the effect of wastage were to affect it. The armies which were in the field in the early part of the war bear very various relations to the countries from which they come. Great Britain had upon the Sambre in the first battle of the campaign rather more than one-tenth per cent. of her total population. The French had in the field at the outset of the war 5 per cent. of their total population, the Russians 1 per cent., the Germans perhaps 5 per cent., the Austrians between 3 and 4 per cent., the Serbians quite 10 per cent.--and 10 per cent. is the largest total any nation can possibly put into the field. Now the chances of growth for each of these contingents were very different in each case.