"Comrade Voroshilov, is our army ready for war?" Joseph asked. He increasingly felt that war was drawing near, and it left him deeply uneasy.
"Comrade Joseph, our army is making preparations for war. If your orders are issued, we can fight at any time. However, our stockpiles of war materiel still need time, and mobilizing the reserve forces will likewise take time," Voroshilov said.
Joseph could not help frowning. This was clearly not the answer he had hoped to hear. But he also knew Voroshilov was telling the truth. Although Buru's military strength had developed at high speed over these years, there was still a considerable gap compared with Germany, the world's foremost power. Their foundation had been far too weak; even if they rose in hot pursuit, it would be difficult to catch up.
Buru's standing army now exceeded three million men. But Buru had ample manpower. If they wished, expanding the army to over ten million would not be difficult. Given the increasingly tense international situation, especially Germany's constant war preparations, Joseph had already issued orders some time ago to mobilize another three million troops, raising Buru's military strength to six million.
For Buru's national strength, mobilizing another three million troops was not much of a problem. After all, their soldiers only needed to be given meager allowances, unlike other nations that had to pay their armies hefty salaries. But how to equip those three million men was a difficult matter. They could not possibly send those troops onto the battlefield empty-handed, could they? How would that differ from sending them to their deaths? Voroshilov and Shaposhnikov had been running themselves ragged over this matter these past days.
"Comrade Joseph, our mobilization has already begun in secret. But in order to avoid alerting the Germans, progress has been