The Barmouth and County Advertiser and District Weekly News

THE SIZE OF ARMIES- ANCIENT and MODERN. Weapons mainly affected tac- tics, the chief effect of improve- ments being that battles are now commenced with the cornbatantq at a greater distance apart than formerly, and that cover has be- come of immense importance. Bat the enthusiastic soldier is not content to watch his oppon- ent through a telescope. We read to-day of trenches only fifty yards apart, and of hand-x grenades being thrown from one to another, pending the bayonet charge, which finally settles the question of possession. If the engineer had done noth- ing but invent long-range weapons warfare would not have exhibited the startling features we see to-day. The first of these is the immense size of armies. As the Marquis of Graham poin- ted out in his able Presidential Address to the Junior Institution of Engineers last Monday night, the great armies of the past were all well below 100,000 in number, with the single exception of that of Attila, the "soourge of God for the chastisement of chris- tians." The armies of those days were, of course, drawn from much smaller populations than at the present time, but, on the I other hand, the proportion of potential combatants in a coun- try was larger, and it is clear that the numbers were not so much limited by want of men, as by the difficulties of transport and commissariat. It is, indeed, related that Attila crossed the Rhine with 700,000 followers, and was even- tually defeated af Chalons in a pitched battle, but one naturally feels sceptical about the figures. The defeat is probably authentic, j but is difficult to understand if we admit that Attila commanded forces so greatly exceeding the usual limits of the time, for his men had been almost uniformly victorious against the Greeks and the Romans, and at Chalons were mainly opposed to Franks and Burgundians. Whether we reject the figures, or weather we regard the case of the Huns as the one exception that proves the rule, it is clear from history that the size of armies was strictly limited by the difficulties. of transport. Napoleon's maxim was scatter to live, concentrate to fight," but the necessity of concentration in a reasonable time limited the possible area over which the army could dis- perse to live, and therefore the number that could be dealt with. To-day we see armies of a couple of millions standing steadily face to face, without a single man detached for foraging, and it is quite possible that before the war ends there may be ten million soldiers crowded into a comparatively small area. The first step towards this condition of affairs was made when George Stephenson got his Puffing Billy" to work in Northumber- land, and the last—so far-was the introduction of the petrol motor. The intermediate stages are far to numerous to mention in detail, but prominent among them was the invention of mild steel by Bessemer. The loco- motive, the steel rail, the steel steamer and the triple-expansion engine, are the all-important con- tributions of the engineer to this war, and it is by their means that it has been possible to bring all these millions of men face to face, and to feed them when there. It is idle to speculate what would happen if great coun- tries bad no railways, and could not maintain large armies in the field, because the countries are equally the product of the engineer as are their fighting forces, and the former would-not have come into existence.

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