Great Britain controls half of the shipping of the world. She engages in the present war and part of her floating mercantile resources is suddenly required for the campaign. Those ships have to be constantly steaming, consuming coal, provisions for their crews, materials for repairs, at a far higher rate than their civilian use demanded; and the thing translates itself to the ordinary citizen in the shape of vastly increased freights and consequently increased prices for the imports received by this island. [Illustration: DIAGRAM III. Great Britain controls half the shipping of the world. She engages in war, and a part of her floating mercantile resources is suddenly required for the campaign. Those ships have to be constantly steaming, consuming coals, provisions, etc., at a far higher rate than their civilian use demanded; and the thing translates itself to the ordinary citizen in the shape of increased freights, and consequently increased prices for imports. The groups A, B and C combined represent the shipping of the world--A being foreign shipping. B and C together represent the whole of the British shipping, while the group C by itself represents the portion detached for the purposes of the war.] Here is another example. This country is as highly industrialized as any in the world. It is particularly fitted for the production of mechanical objects, and especially for mechanical objects in metal, yet suppose that even this country were asked suddenly (with no more than the plant it had before the war) to equip such a force as that with which the French defended their country last August--not to equip it with ammunition but with weapons and auxiliary machinery alone; the performance of such a task would have taken all the arms factories of Great Britain more than two years. Take the rate of expenditure of ammunition. In considering this element in the pace or rate of supply we must remember the moments in which waste at the front becomes abnormal. A rapid retirement like the retreat from Mons means the loss of material wholesale. A favourable moment seized, as September 6 was seized, for the counter-offensive, which is known as “The Battle of the Marne,” means such an expenditure of ammunition as was never provided for in any of the text-books or considered possible until this campaign was engaged. Here is an example. The Germans had prepared war for two years--prepared it specially for the particular moment in which they forced it upon Europe. Their first operations in France up to September 6 followed almost exactly the plan they had carefully elaborated. Nevertheless, we now know that whole groups of the enemy ran through the enormous supplies which were pouring in to their front, and that one element in the disarray of the first German army in those critical days was the shortage of shell, particularly for the heavy pieces.