Chapter 9

SUPPLY

Anarmy has two main factors of strength—that is, two main material factors apart from the moral factors of courage, discipline, habit, and relationship. These two material factors are first its numbers, and secondly its supply.

The first of these is so much the more obvious in the public eye that it is often alone considered. It is, of course, the basis of all the rest. Unless you have a sufficient number of men for your task you cannot accomplish that task at all. But the second, which is less often considered by general opinion, is a necessity no less absolute than the necessity for adequate numbers.

The general term “supply” covers all those objects without which an army cannot exist or fight—clothing, shelter, food, weapons, auxiliary instruments, ammunition.

Now it is not the intention of these few lines to enter into details or to give precise information, such as may be obtained by reference to the text books, but rather to bring out a few main points about supply which are not generally considered, especially in moments such as this, when the obtaining of numbers by voluntary recruitment is the chief matter in the public mind. And these chief points with regard to supply may be put briefly in three groups.

First we ought to grasp thescaleof supply: thatis, the magnitude of the operation which is undertaken when an army is equipped, put into the field, and maintained there.

Next we must grasp therateof supply—the pace at which the stream of supply has got to be kept moving (varying for various forms of supply) in order that an army shall neither break down nor dwindle in efficiency.

Lastly we must consider thedelicacyor liability toembarrassmentof supply; that is, the difficulties peculiar to the maintenance of an army in the field, the ease with which that maintenance may be fatally interrupted, and the consequent embarrassment which an enemy may be made to feel, or which the enemy may make us feel, in this vital operation of war.

As to the scale of supply. Remark that there are in this factor a number of elements easily overlooked, and the first is the element of comparative expense. It is of no great value to put before men rows of figures showing that a large army costs so many millions of pounds. It is thecomparativeeconomic burden of armed service as contrasted with civilian work which is really of importance, and which is much more easily grasped than the absolute amount of the cost.

The great mass of men in an army are, of course, drawn from the same rank of society as the great mass of labourers and artisans during peace, and the very first point we have to note about a state of war is that these men are provided for their trade with instruments and provisions upon a higher scale than anything which they require in their civilian life.

DiagramI. The great mass of men in the army are drawn from the same rank of society as the great mass of labourers and artisans during peace; but they are provided for their trade with instruments and provisions upon a higher scale than anything which they required in their civilian life. The difference in the cost of upkeep—clothing, food, implements, etc.—of a navvy and a soldier for one year is shown approximately in the above diagram.

Their clothing is and must be better, for the wear of a campaign is something very different from the wear of ordinary living. It is to this factor that one owes not a little of the complaints that always arise during a war upon the quality of the material used by contractors.

Let me give an example drawn from my personal experience. If I am not mistaken, the heavy dark blue great-coat worn by the gunners in the French service costs (when all expense was reduced to a minimum through the agency of Government factories, through the purchase of clothing wholesale, and through the absence of a whole series of those profits attaching to ordinary trade) no less than 100 francs, or £4. That great-coat stood for material and workmanship which, sold in a West End shop in London, would have meant anything from £6 upwards. In other words, the private soldiers all through a vast body of men were wearing a great-coat of a quality—in expense, at least—which only very well-to-do men, only a tiny minority in the State, could afford in time of peace.

Next observe that you feed the man (I am glad to say) far better than the modern capitalist system of production feeds him. You must do this, or you would not be able to maintain your army at its highest efficiency.

Many a man who in civilian life would never get butcher’s meat more than once or twice a week, receives a pound and a quarter of meat a day in an army. He receives over a pound of bread. And it is curious to note in a conscript service how small a proportion of the men—only those, indeed, who aredrawn from quite the wealthier classes—find the provisioning of the army distasteful (none find it inadequate), and how, for the great majority, it is an advance over that to which they were accustomed at home.

But there is much more than this high scale of expenditure in the things necessary to the maintenance of the man himself. You are also equipping him with special furniture far more expensive than that which he uses in ordinary life.

You give to the minesman a rifle which is a carefully constructed and expensive machine, much more valuable than all the tools that would ever be in the possession of any but a small minority of skilled artisans. He has belt, pouches, pack covering to match. He must expend in the use of that weapon ammunition costing something quite out of proportion to any expenditure involved by the use of his implements in his civilian trade.

The cavalryman you equip with a horse, which he could not think of affording as his own property, and which is superior in quality to the horse he may be working with for a master in most trades, let alone the fact that the proportion of men thus equipped with horses is much larger than the proportion of men who in civilian life have to deal with those animals. To the driver of a gun you are apportioning two horses necessarily sound and strong; to the non-commissioned officers throughout the field artillery, to a great number of officers throughout the service, you are furnishing horses which, in a civilian occupation, they could never afford, and you are, of course, also providing the keep of those horses.

Many branches of the service you are equipping with instruments of very high expense indeed. A field gun does not cost less, I believe, than £600. And to every thousand men you actually put into the field you may reckon at least four of these instruments. Every time one of them fires a shot it fires away fifteen shillings. Apart from the wear and tear of the field piece itself, a modern quick-firing piece, firing moderately, will get rid of a ten pound note in ammunition in a minute, and each piece is allowed from the base onwards 1000 rounds.

Further, an army is equipped with heavy artillery, the pieces of which cost anything from many hundreds to many thousands of pounds, according to their calibre (a 9.2, with its mounting, comes to near £12,000); and it is also equipped with a mass of auxiliary material—vehicles, mechanical and other, telephones, field kitchens, aircraft, and the rest—none of which expense attaches to the same body of men in their civilian life.

The scale of the business is further emphasised by the fact that once war is engaged the nation as a whole is suddenly called upon to produce material not onlymore expensiveupon the average, man for man, than the same men would have used and consumed in the same time in civilian life, but thingsdifferent fromthose things which the nation was organized to produce for use and consumption during peace. That change in effect is costly. And yet another element of cost is the novel use of existing instruments.

DiagramII. Many branches of the service are equipped with instruments of very high expense indeed. A field gun, for instance, does not cost less than £600. Every time one of them fires a shot it fires away fifteen shillings. A modern quick-firing piece, firing moderately, will get rid of a ten pound note in ammunition in a minute. Each piece is allowed from the base onwards 1000 rounds and the extent of this quantity is illustrated in the diagram—40 rows of shells, 25 in a row.

It is more expensive to use an instrument for some purpose for which it was never designed, than to useit for some purpose for which it was designed. That is a universal truth from the hammering in of a nail with a boot heel to the commandeering of a liner for the transport of troops. And in time of war the whole nation begins at once to use instruments right and left for military purposes, which instruments had been originally designed for civilian purposes.

All up and down France and England, for instance, at this moment, every workshop which can by hook or by crook turn out ammunition is turning it out, and very often is turning it out with instruments—lathes, cutting tools, etc.—that were originally designed not for making ammunition at all, but for making the parts of bicycles, of pumps, of motors, of turbines, etc.

Another instance. Both Powers have found their motor-buses extremely handy in this war. Paris has been almost bereft of them. London has been largely denuded of her normal supply. But a motor-bus carrying meat or even troops is not doing what it was specially designed to do—to wit, to run on the good roads of a great town, with a certain maximum load. It needs adaptation, it is used far more roughly, has a shorter life, and is being therefore more expensively consumed.

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, indailyrations 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, inreadyammunition 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 problemstaticallyand 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 aspossible 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 thescaleof supply, a further series of considerations will help us to appreciate therateorpaceat which the stream of supply must flow.

There are several ways in which this can be graphically presented through examples. Here are a few.

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.

DiagramIII. 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 sucha 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.

It is generally reported, and it is probably true, that the enemy exhausted before the end of his great effort in the West (which lasted less than one hundred days, and the intensity of which was relaxed after the middle of November)seven timesthe heavy ammunition he had allowed for the whole campaign.

Here is another example. The life of a horse in the South African War was, I believe, not quite asmanyweeksas the same animal had expectation ofyearsin civilian occupation.

DiagramIV. A troop train is a very long train, and it is packed close with men. To move one Army Corps alone (without the cavalry) you must allow over 180 such trains. The diagram gives you an idea of what that means.

Here is yet another example, connected with the transport. A troop train is a very long train, and it is packed close with men. For the transport of animals and of material objects every inch of space available is calculated and used. Well, to move one Army Corps alone (without the cavalry) you must allow over 180 such trains. Now, even at the origin of the war, upon one front alone, before the numbers had fully developed, the German invasion involved at least twenty-five Army Corps.

Such an appreciation of the scale and the pace of supply is sufficient to illuminate one’s third point, the delicacy of the whole business, and the peril of its embarrassment. You are feeding, munitioning, clothing, evacuating the wounded from, sheltering, and equipping millions of men; those millions subject to sudden abnormal periods of wastage, any one of which may come at any unexpected moment, and further subject to sudden unforeseen movements upon any scale. You must so co-ordinate all your movements of supply that no part of the vast line is pinched even for twenty-four hours.

The whole process may be compared to the perpetual running of millions of double threads, which reach from every soldier back ultimately to the central depots of the army, and thence to the manufactories, and these double threads perpetually working back and forth from the manufactories to the Front. These double threads—always travelling back and forth, remember—are gathered into a vast number of small, local centres, the sheaves or cords soformed are gathered back again to some hundreds of greater centres, and these ropes again concentrated upon some dozens of main bases of supply. And the ends of these threads—though all in continual movement back and forth—must each be kept taut, must cross sometimes one over the other in a complicated pattern perpetually requiring readjustment, while all the time now one, now another group of threads suddenly sets up a heavy strain, where the men to whom they relate are engaged in particularly violent action.

To keep such a web untangled, duly stretched, and accurately working is an effort of organization such as will never be seen in civilian life, and such as was never seen, even in military life, until modern times.

DiagramV. An important point in connexion with supply is the delicacy of the whole business and the peril of its embarrassment. The diagram concerns only one tiny detail of the process—no more than the supply of ammunition to one part of a division out of the hundreds of divisions that build up an army. It shows how the ammunition is sorted and distributed from an ammunition park to the men in the front line; the complexity under actual conditions of service being apt to be far more tangled and diversified, according to circumstances.

Observe the fifth diagram, which concerns only one tiny detail of the process; no more than the supply of ammunition (out of all that has to be supplied) and no more than the ammunition of one part of a division (excluding cavalry) out of the hundreds of divisions and more that build up one of these great national armies. Even that diagram, complex as it is, does not nearly represent the whole complexity even of so small a fraction, but is sufficient to illustrate my case.

Such a machine or organization, by which an army lives, and in the collapse of which an army rapidly ceases to be, is clearly at the mercy of the least disorder. It is indeed protected by the most careful dispositions, and everything is done to safeguard its gathering strands, as they unite towards the base, from interruption. But conceive what the effect ofsuch interruption would be, or even the menace of it! Deduce from this the importance where such a vast body of men is concerned, offreedom from embarrassmentin the minds of those who have to direct the operation of the almost infinite skein!

It is this point, the peril of embarrassment, which is—at the moment in which I am writing these lines—of such capital importance in connection with the question of blockade. We may blockade an enemy’s resources and say: “With very careful economy he has food for nine-tenths of the year”; or, “Though already anxious for the future, he has sufficient copper for his shell and cartridge cases for some time to come”; or, “Though already the Government is forbidding the sale of petrol, the enemy can, for some time to come, supply his mechanical transport.” But the mere numerical calculation of his decreasing resources is no guide to the moral disorder which the peril alone may cause. The elasticity of the whole machine is at once affected from the mere knowledge that abnormal economy is demanded. The directing brain of it is disturbed in an increasing degree as civilian necessities mix with the already severe strain upon the supplies of the army.

To produce such a confusion, moral as well as material, is the directing motive of blockade, and the success of such a policy begins long before the point of grave material embarrassment is reached.

It is on this account that nations fighting with their whole strength, as modern nations in competition with the detestable Prussian model are compelled to fight, must ultimately, willy-nilly, turn tothe policy of complete blockade, and that the success of this policy attempted by both parties to a struggle—necessarily better achieved by one than by the other—will perhaps more largely than anything else determine—seeing what the complexity of national commerce now is—the issue of a great modern war.

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