Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/97

 RESOURCES IN MEN 91

at home. But this exceptional resource is now nowhere available, and an additional percentage must therefore be deducted. What this should be it is difficult to say, but it is certainly not less than ten per cent.

It thus results that the male population of military age (20 per cent, of the whole) must itself be reduced by at least 20 per cent. This leaves 16 per cent, of the total population between the ages 18 to 45. A similar deduction gives 18.8 per cent, for the age limit 17 to 50. These figures must be considered maxima which could be realized only under the stress of an emergency so great as to sweep into the ranks practically every available man. In the Confederate service the age limit 17—50 was undoubtedly exceeded, and it was a common saying in those days that the South was robbing both the cradle and the grave to replenish her vanishing armies. Even in the northern army there were enrolled over 100,000 boys of fifteen years or under. Many authorities consider that 10 per cent, of the total population is the practical limit available for the recruitment of armies. The application of these per- centages to the several belligerent states is shown in the table on p. 90.

Right here it is important to repeat the caution given in a preceding paragraph that the annual increments to the military age do not mean corresponding increase in the number of men available. How easy it is to make a mistake here is shown by the following recent utterance in one of our most widely read and authoritative periodicals :

Germany is growing at the rate of a million a year. That means at least 500,000 fresh soldiers coming into manhood annually.

Quite evidently, from what we have shown, it means nothing of the sort. The population curves (see diagram) are practically the same for any two consecutive years. Applying these to the actual popula- tion of any country in which the population is increasing (of course there is no increment in a stationary population like that of France) it will be found that the annual increment is distributed throughout the whole period of life in practically the same proportion as shown in the diagram. This gives a maximum of 16 per cent, available for duty between the limits 18 to 45. Applied to the assumed annual increase in German population of one million (it is actually a little less than that) we have 160,000 instead of the 500,000 assumed by the author quoted, and even this is probably too great.

Thus far we stand on comparatively sure ground. But we find our- selves on very slippery ground the moment we attempt to determine the extent to which the present war is drawing upon these resources. The best estimates that can be made are largely guesses. We shall here make two arbitrary assumptions which we consider maxima and minima and somewhere between which the actual facts probably lie. Assume

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