Modern warfare is no longer confined to the battlefield itself. More often than not, the contest outside the battlefield is even more intense. From the moment the war for hegemony erupted, Britain fell into a passive position. However, that was largely due to outdated ways of thinking about warfare, which allowed the Holy Roman Empire to catch it completely off guard. For the war as a whole, this could only be considered a first move advantage and could not directly determine the final outcome. Just as in the Second World War, Germany initially swept across Europe, only to retreat in disgrace in the end. The only difference was that the Soviet Union, the human shield, had not yet come into being, and the American global nanny was still just a little girl. With its allies proving unreliable, Britain could only shoulder the trial alone. Fortunately, Britain was still at its peak and not yet in the “decline” it would experience during the Second World War. Yet no matter how solid the foundations were, they could not escape the impact of war. Rising prices were not the real problem. The key issue was that disruptions to maritime trade routes had led to shortages in domestic supplies. In the short term, these could perhaps be sustained through stockpiles, but wars do not end in a day or two. Sooner or later, those reserves would be exhausted. There was no helping it. Expectations for the Royal Navy had been set far too high beforehand, and hardly anyone had seriously considered the security of trade routes. If capitalists had not sensed the approach of war in advance and stockpiled some materials, the situation now would have been far worse than mere price increases. Naval Secretary Swinton said, “The navy will provide escorts for merchant ships, but our warship numbers are limited. We also have to contain the Continental Alliance, so the number of vessels we can spare is restricted. To ensure the safety of merchant ships, it would be best for merchant vessels to sail in convoys, with the navy providing unified protection.” The Royal Navy’s performance in the Battle of Malacca had already caused a major uproar at home. No matter how much they claimed to have fallen victim to enemy stratagems, a defeat was still a defeat. Compared with the Japanese Navy, the Royal Navy was actually fortunate. British citizens mostly just called them useless and did not brand them with the label of “traitors to the nation.” Whether to win the war or to shed the stigma of being “useless,” the Royal Navy would have to perform well in the operations to come. But performance aside, the harsh realities they faced still had to be addressed. Every day, thousands of vessels enter and leave the British Isles. Even ocean-going liners alone number well over a hundred. Even if the Royal Navy deployed all its forces at once, it would still be impossible to escort them all. Especially now that the enemy has adopted a commerce raiding strategy and refuses to fight decisive engagements. The ships participating in these attacks are all high-speed warships. Their combat power aside, their speed alone is first-rate. To deal with such enemies, ordinary warships are simply useless. Only a small number of specialized vessels can actually take part. Submarines lurking underwater are even more troublesome. In this era, without sonar detection equipment, they cannot be discovered at all unless they come into close contact. Under these circumstances, even if merchant ships sail in concentrated groups, the burden of escort duty remains extremely heavy. Secretary of Commerce Burns said, “Sir, concentrating merchant ships to sail together only works in theory. It is barely feasible on occasion, but doing it every time is simply impossible. Not all goods can be shipped at the same time. Forced concentration would severely slow transport efficiency. Especially on some minor routes, there may only be a few ships a month. You cannot expect them to sail only once a year, can you? Our transport resources are not unlimited. We cannot afford such waste.” War is cruel. In the original timeline, the British also experimented with convoy transport, but the results were hardly encouraging. Aside from particularly important materials that required concentrated transport and naval escort, everything else was shipped as quickly as possible. There was no helping it. Concentrated convoys with naval escorts did solve security problems, but gathering ships together dragged down transport efficiency. Some goods that were unsuitable for long term storage even rotted away in warehouses. Other problems could be tolerated, but interfering with profits was unacceptable. In wartime, human lives were the cheapest commodity of all, and maritime trade happened to be at its most lucrative. As long as the profits were high enough, risk was not an issue. Since they did not need to escort the ships personally, capitalists naturally did not care about taking such risks. A single run on an oceanic route could earn back nearly one third of a ship’s value. No matter how fierce the enemy’s attacks were, they could not possibly intercept every vessel, nor even one tenth of them. The probability of encountering an enemy attack on any given voyage was, at most, only a few percent. It was entirely feasible to gamble on luck. As long as four voyages were completed without being sunk, the profits were enormous. Even if an accident did occur, insurance companies would cover the losses. Of course, insurance companies were not charities. Once the war broke out, premiums rose sharply. In the end, the cost was still ultimately passed on to the consumers. After hearing the Secretary of Commerce, Swinton waved his hand helplessly and said, “If convoys cannot be concentrated, then we can only express our regret. The enemy’s colonial outposts are spread very widely. The moment the Royal Navy moves out, they simply withdraw. Unless we first uproot these colonial bases, there is no way to eliminate these rats.” Was he shirking responsibility? No, this was politics. Unlike in the past, when political slogans could be shouted at will, this was wartime. Any promise that could not be fulfilled would be tantamount to voluntarily handing one’s political enemies a weapon. Although everyone appeared to be in the same boat, even those in the same boat competed with one another. When real problems arose, shifting blame was always faster than anyone else. Sharing hardship was unrealistic. Letting others die to save oneself was the normal political logic. Eliminating the enemy’s colonial ports sounded simple, but actually implementing it was not something that could be accomplished overnight. Britain’s energy was limited. Even defending its existing colonies was a strain. Opening new fronts would clearly be asking too much. Secretary of War Marcus said, “The Cape of Good Hope is already in grave danger, and the East African front has collapsed across vast areas. The British Empire’s gains in Africa are being eaten away bit by bit by the enemy. In Asia, the enemy has launched simultaneous offensives against Persia and the Indochinese Peninsula, and their ambitions toward India are not concealed in the slightest. According to intelligence gathered from the front, the Russians have also reinforced the Afghanistan region and could launch an attack at any time. The Persian government has already requested our assistance for the seventh time. If we do not dispatch reinforcements soon, Persia’s defeat is only a matter of time. Of course, it is not as if we have achieved nothing in return. Through the unremitting efforts of the Canadian Corps, we have already taken control of most of Alaska. However, due to long standing national policy, the army has maintained relatively low troop levels. Now, fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously has already exceeded our limits.” The justification was more than sufficient. Because the Royal Navy had failed to play its proper role, the burden of combat now fell primarily on the army. Opening five fronts simultaneously, and even achieving a major victory on one of them, was a record fully worthy of the British government’s investment in the army. As for the amount of embellishment involved, there was no need to examine it too closely. The British government needed good news to stabilize public sentiment, and the British people likewise needed good news. In this context, any victory was worth promoting on a grand scale. The capture of Alaska was an excellent talking point. One point seven million square kilometers was larger than all the territory Britain had lost combined. After offsetting the figures, the British Empire still came out ahead. As for the differences between one piece of land and another, those could simply be ignored. As long as the newspapers did not mention them, how could ordinary people possibly tell? Moreover, Alaska was by no means obscure in Britain. It even enjoyed a popular nickname, the “Golden State.” Therefore, the Canadian Corps’ armed parade could not merely be called a parade. It had to be presented as a great victory. With a bit more shamelessness, it could even be labeled a “turning point of the war.” Since the purpose was to reassure the public anyway, a little exaggeration did no harm. “The army has already expanded to two million men, and there are numerous colonial formations as well. How is it that…” Before the First Lord of the Admiralty could finish, Marcus interrupted him: “My lord, expansion also takes time. Two million exist only on paper. The war has been underway for just over a month. To mobilize two million troops in such a short time is something only two or three countries in the entire world can accomplish, and Britain is not one of them. The army is different from the navy. You enjoy ample funding and maintain large establishments even in peacetime. Just over a month ago, the Royal Army numbered only one hundred and thirty seven thousand men. Expanding directly to two million means a fourteenfold increase. With such an expansion, we simply do not have sufficient reserves of officers or weapons and equipment. Even with optimistic assumptions, ensuring that every newly recruited soldier receives a rifle within the next two months would already be a remarkable achievement. If they can begin to form basic combat effectiveness within the year, that would be a blessing from God. In the short term, the amount of deployable forces we can actually deploy is, in fact, quite limited.” Shifting blame was something everyone could do. The navy did not want to assume responsibility, and the army was equally unwilling to carry the blame. Everyone’s arguments were well prepared, and on the surface there seemed to be nothing wrong with them. The navy’s inability to keep the sea lanes open was attributed to the existence of enemy colonies, which made it impossible to eliminate the enemy’s commerce raiding forces. The army was even more straightforward and immediately began to emphasize its hardships. Expansion had indeed taken place, but most of the recruits had not yet even entered their barracks. When it was impossible to guarantee one rifle per man, how could there be any real combat effectiveness? What was said in jest was taken to heart. Prime Minister Campbell was deeply shaken by this. Britain, once the world’s factory, was now unable to guarantee even one rifle per soldier. How was that not humiliating? There was no helping it. The British Army had long been limited to a force of only a little over one hundred thousand men. Even if there had been weapons reserves, at most there would have been only a similar number of rifles in storage. Even if expansion had been anticipated, no one could have foreseen the need for growth on this scale. Especially over the past century, international conflicts had been frequent, but most of them ended after a brief disturbance. Based on past experience, it had always been Britain attacking other countries, not the other way around. At least in recent decades, that had been the case. By the time the situation truly became tense, everyone finally reacted, but by then it was already too late. Leaving aside the legislators who dragged their feet, production capacity alone was a massive problem. In normal years, Britain needed an annual output of only one or two hundred thousand rifles to meet the needs of its home forces and colonial troops. Now both the home army and the colonial forces were expanding, and a shortfall of five to six million rifles appeared almost overnight. How could such a gap possibly be filled in the short term? In the original timeline of the First World War, Britain had already faced this problem. Rapid expansion outpaced weapons production, forcing it to place orders with the Americans. Now the situation was even worse. The only difference was that the industrial capacity of the United States had not yet fully developed, and its military production capabilities were actually inferior to Britain’s. If American arms production was insufficient, then the industrial base of the other members of the Oceanic Alliance was even weaker. Most of those countries relied almost entirely on imports for their weapons. At this point in history, nations with real military industrial capacity were concentrated on the European continent, and they were now all enemies of the British Empire. Under these circumstances, where was the British Army supposed to obtain so many rifles? Even through smuggling, no trafficker possessed that kind of capacity. Moreover, it was not just weapons that were needed. Ammunition would be required in enormous quantities as well. Given Britain’s existing military industrial output, even working at full capacity it would likely be unable to produce enough training ammunition for several million troops. If these problems could not be resolved, talking about an army counteroffensive was nothing more than a joke. Merely stabilizing the situation would already be an extraordinary feat. Campbell glanced at the world map hanging on the wall and let out a deep sigh. The words that had reached his lips were swallowed back once again. … In the Near East, as the Holy Roman Army launched its offensive against Persia, the Russian government quietly reinforced its troops along the border as well. Whether these forces were meant to guard against a Persian incursion or were preparing to jump in at a critical moment to reap the spoils was, for the time being, impossible to determine. At the very least, Colonel Sikrestov could not make sense of what the authorities back home were trying to do. In recent weeks, he had repeatedly submitted requests to join the fighting, only to have them all rejected. Life was not easy for minor and mid-level nobles these days. Without a distinguished family background, and without military merit to one’s name, advancing one’s status was no simple matter. The Far East front was out of the question. That was a thankless assignment. Leaving aside the harsh climate, the real problem was that logistics could easily break down. Worst of all, earning merit by fighting the Japanese came at a discount. Victory was taken for granted, while defeat was considered an unforgivable crime. Even if the government showed understanding toward the hardships of frontline officers and refrained from pursuing accountability, the individuals involved would still find it hard to hold their heads high in aristocratic circles. This was evident from the battle reports coming back from the Far East, where Russian officers and soldiers were genuinely fighting with desperate determination. No one liked thankless assignments, and Colonel Sikrestov was no exception. Building merit and reputation also depended on timing. Not every battlefield was worth getting involved in, and it was always better to pick on a softer target. After waiting so long for the outbreak of the hegemonic war, and after the Russian Empire joined the Continental Alliance against the British-led Oceanic Alliance, it was disappointing to find that the situation amounted to a declaration of war without actual fighting. To secure better opportunities, internal competition within the Russian army intensified, and the Afghan front naturally became the most sought after posting. Although the enemy there was numerous, large numbers also made it easier to accumulate achievements. The Indian colonial troops flew the British flag, and their officers were British. By a bit of generous rounding, they could all be considered British troops. Rising to prominence by stepping on British shoulders was simply too tempting to resist. Unfortunately, Colonel Sikrestov was outmaneuvered. Limited by his background and connections, he lost out to his rivals and was instead assigned to the Persian front.
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