Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-08-28
No Wonder
Germany Quit
BY MAJOR FRANK @. NIAHIN
OF the Army Recruiting Station

"Of the things that helped lick the
Boche which few people realize was
the change numerically on the West
Front during 1918. OF the vast
numbers of men in an army, a very
| considerable percentage are not
combatant troops. And of the COM
| batant troops, many are artillery,
signal corps, engineers and soforth.
| The result is that for some CEN
turtles, military men have figured the
| strength of an army not on the
number of men, but on the number
of rifles and sabers available for
| effective fighting. In this war the
cavalry with sabers passed out of
the reckoning, as soon as the arm
les settle down to trench warfare,
so the fighting strength was calcu-
lated on the basis of effective rifle
only. AS you know, Russia broke
down completely in the winter of
1917 and the Germans started
! swinging their troops from
the east front to the west front
Swiftly their number mounted, while
the Allied strength was virtually at
standstill. You have read of the
millions of men of the West Front
| and naturally you believed they were
all fighting men and about half of
+, them were of one sort or another
but the rifles, the effective rifles,
made a poor showing comparatively
speaking. AS it takes six or seven
men behind the lines engaged in
| fn Nftt tntr Oh, RI
for every man on the firing line, the
disproportion is not as great as it
first appears. AS the German power
grew, they started their great Of
| fensiVeS, and the figures for April
l, 1918, show the Boche with 1862
900 rifles on the west front while
the Allies had only 1,245,000 to op-
pose them. In other words, the
Boche had a superiority of $4,000
effective ritiemen, and as all arm
les had practically the same pro-
portion of artillerymen, machine
gunners, signal corps, engineers and
soforth, the Boche actually had in
| the vicinity of a million more men
on the west front than the Allies
had. We have gotten so accustomed
during this war to speaking in
terms of millions of men, that few
people realize what q difference of
$4,000 effective rifles mean. 1t
means at least seven times as many
as were in the Union Army at Get
tysburg. Now do you begin to real
ize what n superiority Germany had,
seven armies such as the North had
! at Gettysburg. Also do you now see
why Germany felt so sure of win
ming in the spring of 1918, and why
the Allies felt so depressed. And
still further, it was known on the
first of April that there were still
a considerable number of divisions
on the Russian front that were to
be swung to the west front, and the
/ Allies only hope of matching the
Boche superiority of numbers was
with untried, partially trained Amer
leans. BY June /, the Boche had
made three great offensives; their
loses had been tremendous, yet their
rife strength had grown by 10000 or
to 1,639,000 due to the arrival of
those divisions from Russia. The
Allies too had lost heavily, but Amer
lean troops had been tried and found
excellent and they were arriving ten
thousand a day. From the first of
April infantry, machine gunners and
artillery had the right of way on
the troop ships, so the Allied rifle
strength was swiftly mounting and
the difference between the two arm
les had been reduced by American
arrivals from $4,000 to $4,000.
During all the desperate fighting of
June, every man the Boche lost was
rifle less, as their last pool of
reserves and requirements was used
up so that by July 1 the Allies had
overtaken and passed them by 144.-
900 rif1emen. But most of the
Americans were still too unframed
for battle use. BY the first of Au-
gust we were better prepared and
the Allies had started to attack.
Then was when the Boche losses
mounted swiftly and irresstibly.
Day by day thousands were killed,
wounded or captured and day by day
the Allies grew stronger as the
Yanks came in. On November l
the Allies rife strength was actually
$4,000 greater than the Boche. So
tlst seven months from April /,
to November /, there was a change
in rifle strength from a Boche supe-
riority and the change amounted to
$4,000 rifles. The Boche strength
during the seven months decreased
from a hight point of 1,639,0 900 to a
final strength of 100000 or practi-
cally to half. No wonder they quit