The machine gun mechanized war. Artillery and gas mechanized war. They were the hardware of the war, the tools. But they were
only proximately the mechanism of the slaughter. The ultimate mechanism was a method of organization-anachronistically speaking, a
software package. "The basic lever," the writer Gil Elliot comments, "was the conscription law, which made vast numbers of men
available for military service. The civil machinery which ensured the carrying out of this law, and the military organization which turned
numbers of men into battalions and divisions, were each founded on a bureaucracy. The production of resources, in particular guns and
ammunition, was a matter for civil organization. The movement of men and resources to the front, and the trench system of defence,
were military concerns." Each interlocking system was logical in itself and each system could be rationalized by those who worked it
and moved through it. Thus Elliot demonstrates, "It is reasonable to......
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