Page:EB1922 - Volume 30.djvu/265

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
ARMY
229


strength of about 185,000. The total number of men with the colours at the end of the war was 210,000.

The infantry were armed with the Mannlicher-Schonauer rifle 6-5 mm., or the French n-mm. Gras rifle. The cavalry had lances, and carbines of the same pattern as the infantry rifle. The field and mountain artillery were armed with the 75-mm. Schneider-Creusot, though some of the mountain batteries had the 7'5-mm. Schneider- Danglis (" screw-gun "). The heavy artillery was all of old pattern.

At the conclusion of the Balkan War a thorough reorganization of the army was undertaken. By the end of 1914 the army was, on paper, organized into 5 army corps of 3 divisions each, an inde- pendent cavalry brigade of 2 regiments, and a regiment of fortress artillery and fortress engineers. A Greek corps thus consisted of the following: 3 infantry divisions (of 3 regiments and one group of mountain artillery), one cavalry regiment, one field-artillery regi- ment, one regiment engineers, medical and intendance units. The total strength of a corps was about 30,000 combatants. The artillery organization was somewhat peculiar. Infantry divisions were pro- vided with only 3 batteries of mountain artillery, field artillery being retained as corps troops. There was practically no heavy field or siege artillery. On Bulgaria joining the Central Powers in Sept. 1915 the Greek army was mobilized as a precautionary measure. The total strength mobilized was about 150,000 combatants. When in June 1917 Greece joined the Allies, 3 divisions (about 20,000 rifles) were already in being at Salonika, and it was expected that 10 divisions would finally be raised to take part in operations on the Salonika front. By the Armistice there were actually (in Macedonia) 9 divisions (3 corps) of about 60,000 combatants in line. They had been practically entirely armed and equipped by the Allies at Sa- lonika. They participated and gave a good account of themselves in the final offensive against Bulgaria in Sept. 1918.

(4.) Rumania. Under the Army law of 1908, amended in 1910, military service was universal, and lasted from the completion of the 2ist to that of the 42nd year, 7 years being spent with the col- ours, 10 in the reserve, and 4 in the militia.

In May 1913 a new recruiting law increased the total length of service to 25 years from the 2 1st to the 46th year of age. The new term included 7 years with the colours, 12 years with the reserve, and 6 years with the militia. In 1913, out of a pop. of seven and a half millions, Rumania took 0-66% as recruits, and the peace establish- ment of the army amounted to 1-17%, without counting officers or administrative staffs. It was intended to increase the number of recruits to 52,000 in 1914. The peace strength of the army in 1913 showed 5,029 officers, 979 officials, 5,476 reengaged non-commis- sioned officers, 85,791 men. In connexion with the new recruiting law, it was also decided in May 1913 that the " army of operations " should consist of the active army (ist line) and the reserve (2nd line) while the militia (3rd line) was designed for employment in the interior of the country, as well as in rear of the army of operations. In 1913, before the mobilization against Bulgaria, the infantry con- sisted of 40 regiments, of which 32 had 3 and 8 had 2 field batta- lions to one Ersatz battalion. To each regiment there were one ma- chine-gun section with 3 guns; 9 Jager battalions, each with one machine-gun section of 2 guns; 12 frontier guard companies; 2 gendarmerie companies; 80 reserve battalion cadres. In 1913 these would form, for war purposes as first-line troops: 40 infantry regi- ments of 3 battalions, 18 Jager battalions, 12 frontier guard com- panies. The second-line troops would comprise 40 reserve infantry regiments of 2 battalions, and the third line 40 militia battalions. In war-time one machine-gun section (2 guns) would be formed for each first-line battalion. The armament of the line and reserve troops consisted of Mannlicher repeating rifles, mark 93, calibre 6'5 mm. The field artillery was being extensively developed up to the summer of 1913. By the summer of 1913 the artillery establish- ment had reached the following numbers: 10 artillery brigade com- mandos; 20 field-artillery regiments, each of 6 field batteries and one Ersatz battery; 5 field-howitzer detachments of 3 field batteries and one Ersatz battery ; one mounted artillery detachment of 2 bat- teries; one heavy howitzer detachment of 2 batteries; one mountain- artillery regiment of 4 batteries. In war-time 4 reserve field-artillery divisions of 3 foot batteries were to be formed for the reserve divi- sions of the infantry. The artillery armament included 7'5-cm. Krupp quick-firing guns, mark 1904 for foot, mark 1908 for mounted batteries; 12-cm. Krupp light field howitzers, afterwards gradually replaced by io-5-cm. field howitzers, and 6-3-cm. Armstrong moun- tain guns. For heavy (fortress) artillery in 1910 there were two regi- ments, each of 2 battalions of 8 and 1 1 companies respectively. By 1913 this arm had been increased by 3 companies.

In 1913, when Rumania mobilized in case of intervention becoming necessary against Bulgaria, the war muster of the field army included 8,500 officers and 373,500 men. There were, in addition, 45,000 men of the territorial commandos in the interior of the country, and about 55,000 men not embodied. The total number called up was thus about 473,000 men.

In Aug. 1914 Rumania, in view of the political situation, suc- cessively called up all the men of the previous seven-year classes. In Oct., however, the Government decided for armed neutrality, and the army reverted to a peace footing. The strengthening of the army proceeded nevertheless at an increasing rate up to the time of Rumania's entry into the war. At the end of Aug. 1916 the total

war strength of the Rumanian army included 330-340 battalions of first- and second-line infantry, 80 battalions of third-line infantry, and 112 squadrons of cavalry, while the artillery of the field army in- cluded 768 modern guns. The total number of trained men available when Rumania entered the war in 1916 was about 860,000. Of these 700,000 men were taken for the field army, so that there re- mained for use as Ersatz troops 160,000 trained men in addition to about 150,000 not yet trained.

On Aug. 27, when Rumania declared war on Austria-Hungary, the mobilization and marching forward of the army had proceeded so far that the advance against Siebenbiirgen immediately followed the declaration of war. Rumania put four armies in the field, one operating in the Dobrudja and three against Siebenbiirgen. The field troops were formed into 23 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions. After the decisive defeat in Dec. 1916 the reconstruction of the army was seen to be a pressing necessity, and this was effected under a French military mission. The work of reorganization carried out by the French mission had excellent results. From July 1917 onwards the I. Army was again at the front. In the battles fought between the end of July and the middle of Sept. 1917, the' army possessed an actually greater battle strength than when it entered the war.

VIII. THE GERMAN ARMY

In the four years up to the outbreak of the World War, intensified progress was made in the German army along normal lines, but in Aug. 1914 there began and continued an astounding military effort which in many ways differed from that which the peace-time system had led observers to expect. To attempt to understand that effort, therefore, one must return to fundamen- tals. General Ludendorff, in his War Memories, in saying that each of the various component states produced good divisions and poor divisions, adds " Wiirttemberg and Baden had only good ones." In this judgment the Entente intelligence staffs, whose specialty was study of the opponent's quality, would concur. Yet in 1870 these two contingents had a very small share in victory, and in earlier times their troops, though figuring in many wars as components of this or that federal army, never won for themselves an outstanding reputation for high quality. On the contrary, these countries were the very home of the old German GemutlichkeU, and in the i8th century Burke quoted Wiirttemberg as a model of a peacefully and constitutionally governed country.

In reality, two cultural waves, so to say, contributed to make the German army what it was: first, the tide of Germanic civiliza- tion which spread from the upper Rhine and Danube countries N.E. over the mountains and into the great plain of the Slavs, and secondly, the tide of Prussian " objectivity " and efficiency which in the igth century set in in the reverse direction, from N.E. to S.W. And it can be said without forcing the facts, that the military quality of Germany was fundamentally soundest at those two moments in history when, in 1813, the sense of civiliza- tion and nationality worked for the first time strongly upon the hard " East-Elbians," and when in 1914-5 the spirit of business and duty imposed by these East-Elbians upon the peaceful S.W. made their inborn nationalism an effective instead of an ineffective thing.

The study of these currents is, of course, practically the same as the study of German history. But one thing may here be emphasized. No other basic hypothesis than that of continuing national characters can account for the fact that these two comfortable S. German states were awarded primacy in military quality by a Prussian commander-in-chief . Were it otherwise, the quality of the various contingents would simply have been measured by the length of the period during which their respective states had been subjected to the civil and military training of Prussia. Such a criterion has in fact been applied, but it proved false even in respect of the active army of peace-time. Neverthe- less, as Prussian military ideas and methods provided the skele- ton on which this spirit was made flesh, and which fortified the flesh against weakness, an objective account of the German army of the war period must begin with a schematic presentation of that skeleton.

Higher Formations in Peace. The growth of the Prussian- German military organization from 1815 to 1914 is shown by the accompanying Table A (The Roman numerals indicate the corps to which a division belonged at the time considered. When