LAND AND WATER 
'January 2, 1915, 
The policy has, like every other German 
policy in this war, lacked thoroughness and homo- 
geneity. It has — just like the massacres, and just 
like the looting — been carried to an extreme in 
one place, left almost unpractised in another. 
But we have enough evidence before us to know 
that the proportion of prisoners of war in Ger- 
many v.hich consists of civilian inefficients, or of 
men below or above the military age, or of men 
of military age employed upon necessary civilian 
occupations (such as mining or railway running) 
is very large. In the town of Amiens alone, for 
instance, which was in the possession of the Ger- 
mans for only a few days, 2,000 able-bodied men 
of military age were taken, largely from the rail- 
way services; and a French doctor recently re- 
turned from a prisoners' camp in the North of 
Germany has testified to the nmnbers of old men 
present there : driven into captivity mainly from 
the eastern fringe of France. 
(&) Killed and Wounded. — But if wastage 
from prisoners is now increasingly against the 
Germans, and is already large, wastage from 
casualties of killed and wounded is far more strik- 
ing. We can infer positively from the known pro- 
portion of killed to wounded that the Germans 
have lost three men to the French one. 
The published Prussian lists of casualties as 
reported through Copenhagen make the propor- 
tion much larger, something like four or five Ger- 
mans killed to one French. But we have no need 
to consider the more favourable estimates; at 
three to one the ratio is quite sufficient to show 
that the present lines in the West cannot indefi- 
nitely be held. 
The reason of this abnormal contrast between 
German and French casualties is clear enough. It 
consists in several points. 
( a ) That the Germans had to win at once if 
they were to van at all, and were therefore lavish 
of men. (/3 ) In the great superiority of French 
Field Artillery — and of the excellent Russian gun 
when it can be properly supplied. (y) In the 
superior nvunbers with which the campaign in the 
West was imdertaken by the Germans. ( 8 ) In 
the formation the Germans choose for fighting. 
( e ) In the fact that most of their casualties have 
occurred in that most expensive of all 
efforts, a prolonged and unsuccessful offen- 
sive. Of such a nature was all the 
fighting on the Yser and later roimd Ypres, and 
of such a nature has been the whole of the second 
battle for Warsaw. ( ^) In the small reserve 
with which the Germans work. ( ij ) In that the 
Germans unlike the French embrigade older men 
with younger. (5 ) In that the Germans unlike 
the French permit a large number of volunteers 
xmder age to join the colours, and so eat their 
wheat green. Etc., etc. 
One detail I think will sufficiently illuminate 
this contention of the very much more rapid was- 
tage of the Germans from casualties. Taking the 
number of wounded of all kinds at eight times the 
number of dead,* and applying that test to the 
• Frequent reference has been made in these columns to the mul- 
tipl© 8 as being "conservative," or too low, as a multiple to connect 
dead and wounded; i.e., there are more (we eay) than 7 wounded, 
normally, to 1 killed in action. Correspondents who have doubted this 
from a consideration of exceptional cases may, if J,hey wiU, consider 
thifl one proof out of many. The total casualties of the British con- 
tingent to a given date in November were 82,000; ot ihes&nothing like 
8,000 repreeeuted Uie killed— the ratio wae not even 1 in 11, let alone 
I in 8, 
published official figures of French wounded of all 
kinds, we get for the total number of French killed 
in the war more than double but not three times 
the numbers of Prussian officers alone reported 
killed to date ; excluding the list of officers killed 
in the Bavarian, Wurtemberg, and Saxon Armies 
— of the former we are told that 25,000 havefallen. 
The French with just under 500,000 officially re- 
ported wounded may have lost 50,000 dead — even 
possibly 60,000 — but more probably much fewer. 
Remember that it is not here a question of 
total actual numbers but of proportion. We are 
contrasting the rate of wastage rather than its 
amount. It is true that more than half the men 
wounded return to the front in either army, but 
the rate of wastage in killed and wounded Avhich 
the German force was suffering when the trench- 
work began, and which it is still suffering, count- 
ing east and west together, is at least three times 
that of its western ojyponents. 
III. The Occupation of Germany in the East. 
The occupation of German effort in the 
eastern field is the third factor which makes the 
reduction of forces in the western trenches to 
breaking point ultimately inevitable. What that 
occupation is we shall follow in detail when we 
come in a few lines to the present phase of the 
two battles for Cracow and for Warsaw; but in 
considering this necessary weakening of the 
German lines in the western trench-work we are 
concerned not with the details but with the general 
character of the eastern struggle. 
This Polish war is now for the Germans essen- 
tially a series of attempts to reach certain objec- 
tives — notably Warsaw — which attempts necessi- 
tate the concentration of every man they can spare 
from the v/est; such attempts are necessarily 
coupled with very high loss in case of failure to 
reach the objective — and that objective has, after 
weeks of effort, not been reached. To beat back 
Russia and to stiffen Austria Germany must put 
very large forces into Poland; she cannot with- 
draw them until she has made the threat upon 
Silesia fail by the capture of Warsaw ; and War- 
saw she approaches and does not take. 
If she sends back forces from the east before 
Russia is really hard hit, then Russia readvances 
and Silesia is again in peril : for it is not possible 
to hold merely defensively the whole line from the 
Baltic to the Carpathians. 
THE ACTION NEAR LA BASSEE (IN 
FRONT OF FESTUBERT, RICHE- 
BOURG, NEUVE CHAPELLE, AND 
GIVENCHY). 
The sharp affair in the neighbourhood of La' 
Bassee, somewhat to the north and west of that 
town, which is the only event of moment in the 
West this week, is a very good example of the way 
in which contradictory accounts come in, and of 
how, almost inevitably, each side in a war accuses 
the other of falsehood. It is also an example of 
the way in which the enemy's accounts may, as they 
are intended, create an impression worse than the 
truth. Let us begin by the German Wireless of 
last Saturday, December 26th. It tells us that 
the affair between the Germans and the British 
forces (including certain Indian contingents) re- 
sulted in the capture of 819 men, 19 officers and 
loss in dead alone to the Allies of 3,000. But 
6* 
