Kovembcr 1, 1914 
LAND AND WATER 
Gcfvemmcnt permits and encourages the publication, 
in German provincial newspapers, of cliildisli stories 
against the Allies, and of e<pally childish prophecies 
of inevitable German victories. It presents for the 
consumption of neutral countries something quite 
different, not fantastic stories but special pleading. 
America is full of this, so is Scandinavia. Finally, 
it issues, for the effect it may have upon minute and 
careful criticism in Europe (such, for instance, as that 
of the General Staffs of the Allies) figures the known 
reliability of which will earn respect. 
The calculated truth-teUing and lying of the 
Prussian Government may be compared at this 
moment to that of a man who is rigidly accurate with 
his bank book, keeps a quantity of his transactions from 
passing through the bank, puts forward through hired 
lawyers a totally false view of his fortune in some law 
case in which he is involved, and finally permits and 
even fosters ridiculous popular legends which make 
him out ten times as rich as he is. If one were deal- 
ing with the evidence of such a man's wealth one 
would respect the accuracy of the counterfoils in his 
cheque book, though one would doubt the rest of his 
reports for various reasons and in various degrees. 
The official cjinmuniqms of statistics are of the 
exact category. One may take it, therefore, as accurate 
that the Prussian Government was {for the Frussian 
forces alonr) able to note 36,000 dead by the middle 
of September. 
But the Prussian male population is only just 
over sixty per cent, of the total male population of 
the German Empire. It contains, with the capital, a 
slightly larger proportion of men for various reasons 
exempted. Call it but sixty per cent, for military 
purposes and you are within the truth. So to get 
statistics for the German armies as a whole we must 
add to any Prussian statistics two-thirds as much 
again — forty to every sixty or sixty-six per cent. 
Therefore we must add to this 30,000 dead another 
24,0C0 and say that official information up to the 
middle of September accounted for 60,000 German 
dead. There is our first item in the process of 
calculation. 
160,000 Prussian wounded would, in the same 
proportions, give us just on 207,000 for the total 
number known upon that date as being wounded in 
the whole German Army. But here we must make 
oar first reservation as to the accuracy of the Prussian 
figures. The proportion of wounded to killed is 
altogether too low. 60,000 dead is to 267,000 would 
give one man killed out of less than 5^ hit, to be 
accurate, one out of 5-45. We know from numerous 
accounts, as well as from accurate statistics (though 
these apply only to portions or samples of the whole), 
that the proportion of dead upon the side of the 
Allies is in heavy lists more like one in eight, and in 
light lists one in fifteen in this war. It is indeed but 
rare that a particular list brings it up to as high as 
one in eight ; and indeed, judging upon the analogy 
of other modern war, one in ten is quite high enough 
a proportion, taking a canipaign iis a whole. The 
proportion of dead to all casualtie.'? by wounds and 
deaths included in the Prussian lists therefore, at 
1 in 545, a great deal too low. There are, of course, 
many particular cases of desperate attack in which 
you — very rarely — reach such proportions. It is 
further truethat the Prussian method of attack lends 
itself to a higli proportion. But allowing for all this, 
the proportion is altogether out of reason. In other 
words, tliere must have been, at the date mentioned, 
the middle of September, knowledge of a great many 
more than 267,000 wounded in the German armies. 
We should probably be still within the mark if we 
doubled that figure : we are quite safe if we add just 
over 50 per cent, to it and make it one in eu/ht. 
This does not mean that the Prussian statistics 
are fantastic or even false. It simply means that 
tliey have only chosen to count as wounded those who 
were very seriously wounded, those, for instance, who 
had no prospect at all of ever appearing again in the 
field and that they did not choose to swell their 
lists with any less serious cases. Such a method of 
presenting casualties is arguable. But we who are 
trying to get at a just estimate of the total wastage at 
t/iis one moment, and who ai'e not handicapped by any 
desire to keep the enemy in good heart, must consider 
all casualties, and, I repeat, the adding of just over 
half to the admitted proportion of wounded, the allow- 
ing of at least eight men hit more or less grievously 
for one of the eight to be killed is an estimate well 
within the probable truth. Such a low estimate 
gives us 60,000 killed and just less than half a million 
Germans killed and wounded — 480,000 — mentioned 
to date at the middle of September. 
In the case of the third category, that of the 
missing, we are on surer ground. The numbers there 
ai-e more nearly accurate. They have but one doubt- 
ful factor in them and that is due to the reluctance of 
those responsible for soldiers to admit the units are 
really lost until there is no further doubt. But 
against this must be set the military habit of estimating 
the number of one's missing men immediately after an 
action, although stragglers coming in, wounded picked 
up, &c., may later reduce that number. 
To be well within the mark let us add no more 
than ten per cent, to the lists of missing, that is, let 
us suppose that the reluctance of subordinates to admit 
losses of this sort in their commands woidd have made 
no greater difference than adding 5,000 to the Prussian 
figures of 55,000. That would give us 60,000 missing 
Prussians, or 100,000 missing men for the whole 
German Army. And such an estimate is very fairly 
corroborated by comparing it with the French 
unofficial statements, nomewhat earlier in date, of 
65,000 unwounded German prisoners ; for, in the first 
place, among the Germans merely marked missing 
there must have been a number of wounded abandoned 
wherever a Prussian force fell back, and, in the second 
place, men marked as missing in the campaign often 
fail to appear in the statistics of either army. They 
are lost for good. They represent desertions, 
people killed but not marked as killed, &c. For 
instance, behind the Prussian lines after the great 
retreat in the early part of September, Picardy and 
the edges of Normandy were full of half-starved little 
groups of Gei-mans that had lost their units — especially 
cavalry — and that often took to brigandage as a 
desperate resource, and very many of whom were 
summarily shot by the French. Next we must admit 
a certain number — not yet large — of captures by the 
Russians. 
Put all this together — ^your 100,000 missing, 
yom- close on 500,000 wounded and dead — and you get 
in round figures more than 600,000 men for the killed, 
Avounded, and missing of all the German forces by the 
middle of September. 
But before we leave that particular patch of 
figures we may note yet another consideration which 
is of great value to our estimate. The figures of 
loss given by an army, howe\Tr accurate, are always 
for a particular date below tlie real total losses. 
For to the list of a given day there are always 
additions to come in, and this is particularly seen 
when you are dealing with millions over two widely 
11' 
