My War Memories, 1914-1918
whole. The whole gigantic burden of this War lay on our shoulders.
The enemy had been constantly adding to their numbers since the beginning of the War. Italy had come in. All the Powers had created new formations and summoned all their auxiliaries to arms.' Now Rumania came in against us with 250,000 men. So, despite the adhesion of Bulgaria and Turkey to our cause, and the constant additions to and changes in our war machinery, we were still greatly inferior in numbers. We had six millions at the front against ten millions of the enemy.
The equipment of the Entente armies with war material had been carried out on a scale hitherto unknown. The Battle of the Somme showed us every day how great was the advantage of the enemy in this respect.
When we added to this the hatred and immense determination of the Entente, their starvation-blockade or slrangle-hold, and their mischievous and lying propaganda, which was so dangerous for us, it was quite obvious that our victory was inconceivable unless Germany and her Allies threw into the scale everything they had, both in man-power and industrial resources, and unless every man who went to the front took with him from home a resolute faith in victory and an unshakable conviction that the German Army must conquer for the sake of the Fatherland. The soldier on the battle-field, who endures the most terrible strain that any man can undergo, stands, in his hour of need, in dire want of this moral reinforcement from home, to enable him to stand firm and hold out at the front.
In the situation in which the Field-Marshal and I found ourselves, and in view of our whole conception of the character of this war and the enemy's determination to destroy us, we considered it essential to develop the economic* ohysical and moral strength of the Fatherland to the highest degree
G.H.Q.'s demands on the Imperial Government comprised man-power, war material and moral resolution,
We -endeavoured, as far as we could, to influence our Allies in the same sense. Austria had already raised the age limit of the Landsturm to fifty-five, and Turkey raised the limit of
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