The Two Maps of Europe, and Some Other Aspects of the Great War — John Shaqi
The Two Maps of Europe, and Some Other Aspects of the Great WarBelloc, Hilaire
History
The Two Maps of Europe, and Some Other Aspects of the Great War
Belloc, Hilaire
Europe -- Politics and government; Military art and science; World War, 1914-1918
Here is one fairly graphic way of showing what this scale of supply
means. Take an Army Corps of 40,000 men. That stands in meat
alone for one year for about as many beasts. It means in clothing
alone--initial expense--apart from waste of all kinds, and apart
from weapons and auxiliary machinery, something between (counting
accoutrement) a quarter and half a million pounds. It stands, in
_daily_ rations of bread alone, for nearly 200 sacks of wheat; in
material equipment--initial, apart from ammunition--it stands in
weapons and machines for at least another quarter of a million, in
_ready_ ammunition of small arms for at least £80,000, in shell for
as much again.
To all this conception of scale you must add two more points. The
soldier is moved in a way that the civilian is not. He is given at
the expense of the State and not for his pleasure, the equivalent of
a great quantity of lengthy excursions. He is taken across the sea,
brought back on leave or in convalescence, moved from place to place
by train or by mechanical traction, and all that upon a scale quite
out of proportion to the narrow limits of his travel during civilian
occupation. Within six months hundreds of thousands of Englishmen
have been conveyed to the heart of France, moved again in that
country over a space of more than a hundred miles, and a considerable
proportion of them brought back and sent out again in the interval.
Lastly, there is the indeterminate but heavy medical expense.
The second and last point in this consideration of scale is the
enormously expensive element of uncertainty. It would be expensive
enough to have to arrange for so much movement and so much clothing
and equipment upon a wholly novel and increased scale, if we knew
exactly what that movement and that equipment was to be--if, so to
speak, you could take the problem _statically_ and work out its
details in an office as you work out the costings of a great shop
or factory. But it is in the essence of an army that it should
be mobile, moving suddenly and as quickly as possible where it
is wanted, with no power of prediction as to how those moves may
develop. You are “in” therefore, for an unknown factor of expense
over and above the novelty and very high cost of the economic energy
you suddenly bring into play with war. And that unknown factor is the
extent to which you will be wasting and moving.
If considerations such as these give us some idea of the _scale_ of
supply, a further series of considerations will help us to appreciate
the _rate_ or _pace_ at which the stream of supply must flow.
There are several ways in which this can be graphically presented
through examples. Here are a few.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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