In the same way drafts had further maintained the British numbers.  The French had lost not more than one-fifth of a million in prisoners, and perhaps a third of a million or a little more in killed and permanently disabled—­that is, unable to return to the fighting line.  In the case of both the French and the British sanitary conditions were excellent.

You have, then, quite 35 for your number in the West, and quite 33 for your number in the East of the Allied forces at the end of the winter; but of your enemy forces you may safely deduct 45-50 might be a truer estimate; and it is remarkable that those who have watched the matter carefully at the front are inclined to set the total enemy losses higher than do the critics working at home.  But call it only 45 (of which 5 are prisoners), and you have against the 68 Allies in East and West no more at the end of this second period than 75 of the enemy.

The following diagram illustrates in graphic form the change that six months have produced.

[Illustration:  Sketch 15.]

In other words, at the end of the winter and with the beginning of the spring, although the enemy still has a numerical preponderance, it is no longer the overwhelming thing it was when the war began, and that change in numbers explains the whole change in the campaign.

The enemy was certain of winning mainly because he was fighting more than equal in the East, and at first nearly two to one, later quite four to three, in the West.  Those are the conditions of the late summer of 1914. 1915, before it was a third over, had seen the numbers nearly equalized.  With the summer of 1915 we might hope to see the numbers at last reversed, and, after so many perilous months, a total (not local) numerical majority at last appearing upon the side of the Allies.  If ever this condition shall arrive before the enemy can accomplish a decisive result in either field the tide will have turned.

The third period belongs at the moment of writing to the future.  All we can say of it is that it presents for the enemy no considerable field of recruitment; but while in the West it offers no increase to the French, it does offer another five units at least, and possibly another six or eight, to the British; and to the Russians, if the blockade can be pierced at any point, or if the change of weather, coupled with the broadening of the gauge of the railway to Archangel, permits large imports, an almost indefinite increase in number—­certainly an increase of two millions, or twenty of the units we were dealing with in the figures given above.

So much, then, for the numerical factor in men which dominates the whole campaign.

When we turn from this to the second factor—­that of munitions—­we discover something which can be dealt with far more briefly, but which follows very much the same line.

The enemy in the first period of the war had, if anything, an even greater superiority in munitioning than in men.  This superiority was due to two distinct causes.  In the first place, as we shall see in a few pages, his theory upon a number of military details was well founded; in the second place, he made war at his own chosen moment, after three years of determined and largely secret preparation.