I found his estimate of losses correct.  The English casualties at the end of 1914 were over 100,000,—­killed, wounded, prisoners, and missing,—­or fully the number of the first Expeditionary Force.

Yet every week and every month the forces of the English grew larger and never smaller.  The filling in of the gaps and the augmentation of the English forces and their maintenance, munitions, and supplies was but the smaller part of the work of the War Office.

The great problem was to compass the situation as a worldwide war and summon and put into an effective fighting machine the resources of the Empire.

“Not alone the men but the machinery,” said Kitchener, “must win this war.”

England had to put into operation machinery, financial and diplomatic, machinery of men, guns, and transportation, belting the whole world and bringing the whole forward as a complete organization, yielding here and pressing forward there, but always firmly pressing to the one desired end—­the crushing, crumpling and destroying of the war machinery of Germany.  At the beginning England could not turn out 10,000 rifles a week; and a rifle can shoot well for only about 1000 rounds.  Yet in December a single contractor in England was turning out 40,000 a week, and every possible contractor there and elsewhere had his hands full.

Kitchener must compass every detail from the rifle to the supply base; from the seasoned wood for that rifle right down to the number of troops he must have on the Continent when it comes to a settlement; for, says Kitchener, “You cannot draw unless you hold cards.”

The broad sweep of the English preparations may be indicated by this:  that when war broke out England not only commandeered horses in every city, village, and highway of England, taking them from carriages and from under the saddle, but started buying them over the seas.  Of English shipping she gathered into her war-fold such a number of boats as I do not dare to repeat.  She gathered in under the admiralty flag so many steamships from the mercantile marine that those which were found most expensive to operate were soon turned back into the channels of trade.  With the many hundred steamers that she commandeered she set about transporting everything needed, including horses, from over the ocean.

The French bought their horses by the thousand in Texas and contracted at good prices for their shipment to Bordeaux.  Steamship rates became almost prohibitive, and the horses arrived from their long journey in poor condition.  England inspected the horses in America, paid for them, and then put them in charge of her own men on her own ships, and landed them by the shortest routes in England and on the Continent, in prime condition.

Although Germany had been buying liberally of horses in Ireland as early as March, when the long arm of Great Britain reached out there was no failure in her mounts for the cannon and cavalry divisions.  For good horses at home and abroad she did not hesitate to pay as high as $350.