At the end of the retreat from Moscow each army corps of the Grand Army still preserved its name, each regiment its nominal identity.  And the roll was called by Ney, for instance, before the Beresina, division by division and regiment by regiment, and even in the regiments company by company; but in most of these last there was no one to answer, and there is a story of one regiment for which one surviving man answered with regularity until he also died.  What fights is numbers of living men—­not headings; and if five army corps are present, each having lost two-fifths of its men, three full army corps are a match for them.

The third method is that of commonsense.  We must deduce from the results obtained, from the fronts covered, from the energy remaining after known losses, from the reports of intelligence, from the avenues of communication available, what least and what largest numbers can be present.  We must correct such conclusions by our previous knowledge of the way in which each service regards its strength, which most depends upon reserves, how each uses his depots and drafts, what machinery it has for training the untrained and for equipping them.  This complicated survey taken, we can arrive at general figures.[1]

Using that method, and applying it to the present campaign, I think we shall get something like the following.

The Figures of the First Period, say to October 1-31, 1914.

Germany put across the Rhine in the first period (without counting a certain small proportion of Hungarian cavalry and Austrian artillery) rather more than two and a quarter million men.  She put into the Eastern field first a quarter of a million, which rapidly grew to half a million, and before the end of October to nearly a million; a balance of rather more than another million she used for filling gaps and for keeping her strength at the full, and also in particular cases (as in her violent attempt to break out through Flanders, or rather the beginning of that attempt) for the immediate reinforcement of a fighting line.  Say that Germany put into the field altogether five million men in the first period, and you are saying too much.  Say that she put into the field altogether in the first period four and a quarter million men, and you are saying probably somewhat too little.

France met the very first shock with about a million men, which gradually grew in the fighting line to about a million and a half.  Here the limit of the French force immediately upon the front will probably be set.  The numbers continued to swell long before the end of the first period and well on into the second, but they were kept in reserve.  Counting the men drafted in to supply losses and the reserve, it is not unwise to put at about two and a half million men the ultimate French figure, of which one and a half million formed, before the end of the first period, the immediate fighting force.

Austria was ordered by the Germans to put into the field, as an initial body to check any Russian advance and to confuse the beginning of Russian concentration, about a million men; which in the first period very rapidly grew to two million, and probably before the end of the first period to about two million and a half.