production of heavy ammunition, though slow, is measurable. At the
moment of writing this, towards the close of the second period, the
balance is not yet redressed, but it is in a fair way to be redressed.
The imperfect and too tardy blockade to which the enemy is somewhat
timidly subjected is a factor in aid of this; and we may be fairly
confident that, if a third period is reached before the enemy shall
have the advantage of a decision, there will be a preponderance of
munitioning upon the Allied side in the West and the East which will
be, if anything, of superior importance to the approaching
preponderance in numbers.

Having thus briefly surveyed the opposing strength of either
combatant, checked and measured as it varied with the progress of the
war, we will turn to the _moral_ opposition of military theory
between the one party and the other, and show how here again that,
_save in the most important matter of all, grand strategy_, the enemy
was on the highroad to the victory which he confidently and, for that
matter, reasonably expected.


(3) THE CONFLICTING THEORIES OF WAR.

The long peace which the most civilized parts of Europe had enjoyed
for now a generation left more and more uncertain the value of
theories upon the conduct of war, which theories had for the most part
developed as mere hypotheses untested by experience during that
considerable period. The South African and the Manchurian war had
indeed proved certain theories sound and others unsound, so far as
their experience went; but they were fought under conditions very
different from those of an European campaign, and the progress of