In these circumstances he preferred
to consolidate and prepare rather than to continue to challenge forces
that could not be exactly estimated.
Both the increase of enemy strength on the Italian front and the
paralyzing uncertainty under which the Allies labored, were directly due
to the debacle of the Russian Army during the summer. The means by which
commanders-in-chief arrive at the indispensable knowledge of what forces
they have against them is through a highly organized intelligence
department, working in close cooperation with the similar departments of
the other Allied armies.
[Sidenote: How the enemy's strength is ascertained.]
Each of these departments, by interrogating prisoners and reading papers
found on enemy dead, by collating the reports of the air service, by
minutely sifting the enemy press, arrives at a fairly accurate knowledge
of the enemy's order of battle on the front of its own army. So
essential is this system to the successful carrying-on of operations
that raids are often specially organized on the enemy trenches with the
sole object of capturing prisoners who may be able to give information
that will clear up some point about which there is uncertainty. All the
knowledge of the enemy's dispositions thus collected by each of the
Allied armies is open to all of them; it is exchanged and compared and
collated, so that they finally arrive at a fairly complete knowledge of
the distribution of the enemy's forces in each one of the theaters of
war.
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