ABSTRACT
The irony in the arguments for the adoption of the offensive before 1914 was that they had little basis in traditional military thinking. Many military theorists believed that only professional soldiers could deliver an effective attack. By contrast, conscripts and citizen soldiers were considered fit only for the defence. But in the years after 1870, long-service professionals had been ousted by short-service conscripts. Through this means, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Austria-Hungary collectively doubled the size of their standing armies. On the eve of the First World War, both the French and German armies totalled over 800,000 men each, and that of Russia 1,300,000. Those bewitched by the fashionable theories of ethnic evolution might therefore reasonably contend that an army represented the spirit of the nation. More prosaically, such an army would have to secure a quick victory and therefore would have to attack. Otherwise the absence of so many able-bodied men from productive occupation and the strain on the exchequer through prolonged mobilisation would cause economic collapse.
