in the case of every combatant, and would come more rapidly in the
case of some than in the case of others. But we are fairly safe if we
take the general turning-point from the first period to the second to
be the month of October 1914. The second period had begun for
some--notably for Germany--with the first days of that month; it had
already appeared for all, especially for England, before the beginning
of November.

The second period is marked for all the combatants by the bringing
into play of such forces as, for various reasons, the Government of
each had once hoped would not be required. The German Empire might
have marked them as not required, in the reasonable hope that victory
would be quickly assured. The British Government might, from a very
different standpoint, have believed them not to be required, because
it regarded the work of its continental Allies as sufficient to gain
the common object, etc. But in the case of all, however various the
motives, the particular mark of this second period is the straining to
put into the field newly trained and equipped bodies which in the
first period were, it was imagined, neither needed nor perhaps
available.

This second period merges very gradually into the third, or final,
period, which is that of the last effort possible to the belligerents.
There comes a moment before the end of the first year when, in the
case of most of the belligerents, every man who is available at all
has been equipped, trained, and put forward, and after which there is
nothing left but the successive batches of yearly recruits growing up
from boyhood to manhood.

Although Britain is in a peculiar position, and Russia, through her