In actual war also there is an enormous exhaustion of military
material, which must be constantly replaced, and this in turn
demands the services of great numbers of trained artisans. The
question of finance also cannot be overlooked. It needs vast sums
of money to keep a modern army in the field, this increasing
rapidly as the forces grow in numbers, and no national treasure
chest is inexhaustible. Tax as they may, the war lords cannot
squeeze out of their people more blood than flows in their veins,
and exhaustion of the war-chest may prove even more disastrous
than exhaustion of the regiments. For these reasons a limit to
the size of armies is inevitable and in any great war this
limitation must quickly make itself apparent.


Chapter IV. GREAT BRITAIN AND THE WAR
The Growth of German Importance - German Militarism - Great
Britain's Peace Efforts - Germany's Naval Program - German
Ambitions - Preparation for War - Effect on the Empire

The influence of the European War permeated everything from and
through the nation to the individual, from trade and commerce and
world-finance to the cost of food and the price of labor. The
whole world, civilized and uncivilized, was drawn into this
whirlpool of disaster - the majority of the population of the
earth was actually at war. Was it possible that such a vast
conflict - so far reaching in its racial and national elements,
so bitter in its old and new animosities, so great in its
territorial area, so tremendous in the numbers of men in arms -
could come, as some commentators say, like a thief in the night