It is no wonder that he made certain of a decisive success in the West, and of the indefinite holding up or pushing back of the Russian forces in the East.  It is no wonder that he confidently expected a complete victory before the winter, and the signing of peace before the end of the year.  To that end all his munitioning, and even the details of his tactics, were directed.

The Figures of the Second Period, say to April 15-June 1, 1915.

The second period saw in the West, and, in the enemy’s case, a very great change proceeding by a number of minute steps, but fairly rapid in character.

The French numbers could not grow very rapidly, because the French had armed every available man.  They could bring in a certain number of volunteers; but neither was it useful to equip the most of the older men, nor could they be spared from those duties behind the front line which the much larger population of the enemy entrusted to men who, for the most part, had received no regular training.  The French did, however, in this second period, gradually grow to some two and a half million men, behind which, ready to come in for the final period, were about a third of a million young recruits.

Great Britain discovered a prodigious effort.  She had already, comparatively early in the second period, put across the sea nearly half a million men, and drafts were perpetually arriving as the second period came to a close; while behind the army actually upon the Continent very large bodies—­probably another million in number—­hastily trained indeed, and presented with a grave problem in the matter of officering, but of excellent material and moral, were ready to appear, before the end of the second period or at its close, the moment their equipment should be furnished.  Counting the British effort and the French together, one may say that, without regard to wastage, the Allies in the West grew in the second period from the original 16 to over 30, and might grow even before the second period was over to 35 or even more.

On the enemy’s side (neglecting wastage for the moment) there were the simplest elements of growth.  Each Power had docketed every untrained man, knew his medical condition, where to find him, where and how to train him.  The German Empire had during peace taken about one-half of its young men for soldiers.  It had in pure theory five million untrained men in the reserve, excluding the sick, and those not physically efficient for service.

In practice, however, a very large proportion of men, even of the efficients, must be kept behind for civilian work; and in an industrial country such as Germany, mainly urban in population, this proportion is particularly large.  We are safe in saying that the German army would not be reinforced during the second period by more than two and a half million men.  These were trained in batches of some 800,000 each; the equipment had long been ready for them, and they appeared mainly as drafts for filling gaps, but partly as new formations in groups—­the first going in or before November, the second in or before February.  A third and last group was expected to have finished this rather elementary training somewhere about the end of April, so that May would complete the second period in the German forces.