Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But before we turn to the description and examination of these mechanical appliances we must once more consider numbers in their all-important relation to force. Mass (numbers) and force are not identical. Force does not at all grow always in the same ratio as numbers. Between force and numbers there is, rather, a relation that often varies and depends on a variety of circumstances, demanding more than ever special consideration at this age of enormous armies. CHAPTER III FORCE AND NUMBERS CHAPTER III FORCE AND NUMBERS When we were glancing at the inevitable consequences of calling up for war, in our days, the whole nation, we became aware of the fact that the masses themselves contained some elements of weakness, that they are sometimes even a kind of danger to our own conduct of war, but that nevertheless all States of Europe are dominated by the "mania for numbers," and that the general tendency is rather to increase the levies to the utmost limit of financial and personal capacity. There is no idea of stopping this for the time being. Numbers seem to the present generation the decisive factor in war. The importance attributed to numbers in general by all Continental States of Europe is naturally based on the assumption that, taking armament, equipment, and recruiting as about equal, the efficiency of the various European Armies would be about equal, that we could consequently attain a distinct and tangible superiority only by superiority of numbers. But this faith in numbers is a delusive idea. The experience of war at all times makes this clear, and nothing is more dangerous than to expect numerical superiority to do what it cannot perform by itself. The size of the armies employed is certainly one of the most decisive factors of force. Yet we must not overr...