November 7, 1914 
LAND AND WATER 
in the conclusion that the losses on the German 
side have been on a scale far greater and the 
effort correspondingly more intense than anything 
that has been seen before in this v/ar. It is true that 
the front upon which the fighting has occurred is little 
more than fifty miles, but the main forces massed 
there must account for nearly half the whole German 
forces immediately deployed for action along the 
Western Front. Of the total number of prisoners 
taken we know nothing, save one French estimate of 
one week, and even that estimate only refers to the 
interning within France of un wounded prisoners taken 
some days before. If we multiply that estimate by 
three we get 25,000 prisoners taken upon this front. 
Scale that down to 20,000. Estimate the killed and 
wounded in such a struggle by the known results in 
the Belgian contingent opi)Osed to it, and by the 
partly known and partly presumed rate of loss in 
certain British and French contingents opposed to it. 
Remember that the fight consisted in a perpetual and 
reckless offensive on the part of the enemy — and you 
will not get a total of less than 150,000 men hit and 
missing in this field alone. History (if it can ever get 
accurate information of such things — which is 
doubtful) wiU probably find that 200,000 was 
nearer. Meanwhile the regular wastage has been 
going on at the old rate along the rest of the 
line. Diminish that rate because the line has 
been thinned to bring up masses for fighting in 
Flanders and you must still allow 100,000 casualties 
at least, counting every form of such for more than 
three weeks over nearly 200 miles front and with 
continual fighting. 
Here again I think that estimate would be too 
low by far, but at any rate you have upon the whole 
Western line dui'ing the battle in Flanders at the very 
least another quarter of a million. 
Meanwhile, you are having your regular wastage 
in East Prussia, and in the German defeat upon the 
Vistula, with its rapid though orderly retreat, its 
necessaiy loss in stragglers and parties cut off, as well 
as its loss in killed and wounded, certainly not less 
than 150,000 men. Prisoners will be a small part of 
that total in Poland as yet. The}- are almost certainly 
not a third of it, and prol^ably not a quarter of it, but 
the Gennan reinforcements sent into Poland to help 
Austria were not far short of a million men, and 
another third of a million had been fighting con- 
tinuously on the borders of East Prussia. I am allow- 
ing, remember, for over tlu-ce weeks of action, of 
which a fortnight upon the middle Vistula has been 
one of defeat and retreat, only 12 per cent, of 
losses, and I think it wiU be conceded that such 
an estimate is quite certainly below the truth. Add 
then, your 150,000 here to the quarter of a million 
in the West : that makes 350,000 ; add this to the 
totals of 910,000 minimum to 1,100,000 maximum 
previously obtained, and you get at the veri/ least, and 
on the most favourable calculation, over a million and 
a quarter of Germans hit or caught in the progress of 
the whole campaign to date. Sluch more probably 
the true figures go well above a million and a half, 
but that they are more than a million and a quarter 
we can affirm with absolute certitude. 
I know that the figure looks startlingly large, 
but the various steps by which it is arrived at are 
not, I think, open to criticism. It would be easy by 
a little manipulation of figures to make out very much 
larger totals. I have attempted, on the contrary, to 
fix the lowest conceivable minimum, and I arrive at 
something certainly larger than a million and a 
quarter for the strict German losses in the field. 
But to the losses of men caught or hit you have 
always to add losses from sickness, which term in 
military history signifies not only actual illness but 
the results of fatigue, accidents which prevent a man's 
marching, and even the proportion, such as it may 
be, of men foot-sore at any one moment and unable 
to keep up with their units. 
The estimate of an enemy's losses under this 
heading are exceedingly diflficult to arrive at, for three 
reasons. Fu-st, the factors of such loss are quite in- 
determinate (they range from a few stragglers to the 
myriad victims of an epidemic) ; secondly, that a 
proportion of sick are always coming back on to the 
strength ; and, thirdly, that the curve of such losses 
varies in the most surprising manner with {a) the 
length of a campaign ; (5) the climatic conditions 
under which it is fought ; (c) the quality of troops 
upon which you have to fall back ; {d) management. 
One sometimes hears it laid down as a sort of 
rough rule that for one man hit or caught you must 
count another man off the strength from sickness. 
But that rule of thumb would never do in an estimate 
of a particular campaign such as we are now trying 
to arrive at. It may work in all campaigns on the 
average. It would be wildly exaggerated of, say, the 
Sadowa Campaign, and as. wildly an underestimate, 
for, say, 1812. The campaign began in the very best 
of v/eather (in the West at least). That weather was 
prolonged to a quite exceptional date. We have had 
no rumours of any serious epidemic in the enemy's 
ranks, and such an accident is stiU quite unhkely. 
Losses from fatigue, from over-marching, and the 
rest of it would vary very much with the different 
phases of the camjiaign. There must have been a 
great deal of it during the rapid advance on Pai-is. 
Hardly any of it during the deadlock ; little vx the 
German service, at least, upon the Eastern front of the 
war. Again, a considerable amount of transport, 
even of men, nowadays is mechanical. There must 
have been towards the end of the work on the 
trenches a good deal of loss from ordinary causes of 
sickness and fatigue ; but with a few exceptional 
crises to interrupt its general excellence the supply of 
food and clothing to the enemy at the front has been 
constant and regidar. I propose — it is purely 
empirical, but it has the advantage of being an 
underestimate — to cut severely the old rule of thumb 
and to add only 35 per cent, for these causes instead 
of 100 per cent. ; and that although the active part 
of the war has already been going on for nearly 
three months. Remember, that to add only 35 per 
cent, is to pursue the method that has been pursued 
throughout these notes ; it has been well within the 
mark. Even so, you get little less than one million 
and three-quarters of men in wastage to the enemy 
at this moment. It is quite certainly much more, 
but it is even more certainly no less. 
To that figure, just over one million and three- 
quarters, then, let us pin our fii-st conclusion, 
These losses have almost up to the present day — up 
to within the last two weeks or so^fallen in the mam 
upon the trained troops of the enemy, and with particular 
severity upon his body of officers. 
The German Empne had, counting lunatics, bed- 
ridden men, cripples, old men over SO, and boys 
between 17 and 20, 17,000,000 males available in four 
categories. A quarter were the trained men of useful 
fighting age, 21 to 45 — four-and-a-quarter million ; a 
quarter — another four-and-a-quarter million — the men 
of the same age left untrained or but partially trained, 
never having formed part of the regular army or 
having done their full two years — most of them 
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