But when you have studied the situation and the record, you will see that no simple answer can be readily given.  A brief one would be:  French mobilization plans were imperfect, and, therefore, Belgium could not be defended by the French.  But motor-busses did what the railroads were unprepared to do, and finally saved Paris and France.

The French had been warned many months publicly and privately that their mobilization plans would be found faulty in case of sudden hostilities.  The railways moved perishable goods at the rate of thirty miles a day while German and Austrian railways bore military trains at the rate of thirty miles an hour.

So ill prepared were the French in their mobilization plans that they actually summoned to arms the men who were to man the railways, and the railways themselves were deficient in rolling-stock to move the troops.  The citizens responded promptly enough, but France had no bureaucracy or military plans to match those of Germany, and, as throughout French history, the leaders of the people failed at the crucial moment.  The plodding English had to help out the French railway plans, and then had to turn around and find their own railroad defects.  When England first sounded the call to arms, men deserted the railroad service to go into training to such an extent that the authorities had to stop it and maintain transportation as, of course, an important arm of the war-service.

The history of the unpreparedness of both England and France has yet to be written.  It would not be useful to print much that is already known.  There are two political sentiments in both countries, and political issues will rise again in both after the war.

A little contemplation here will show the extravagance of many estimates of the number of men to be put in the field in time of war.  Many estimates have taken little account of the number of men required to handle a modern transportation service, and the supply organization to back up an effective army at the front.  Transportation and war-supplies are on such an expanded basis as was not dreamed of a few years ago.  The war plans of one generation cannot be the war plans of another either on land or sea.  That France had 4,500,000 men capable of bearing arms did not mean that she could hold 4,000,000 men in fighting array at any one time.

After five months of war France had only 1,500,000 men at the front, and from the camps and military organizations she expects to have ready a fresh army of another million in the spring.  But she mobilized nearly 4,000,000 men.  Paris industry, trade, and commerce could shut down in a day, but there was no organization that could make in a day or a week the men of France into an army at the front.  Her 600,000 regular troops were, of course, always in position to be thrown on the defensive at the German frontier.  None of the nearly 4,000,000 additional men could be got with arms and munitions of war into Belgium, to meet effectively the trained troops of Germany.