L A :N D A i\ D WATER 
June 19, 1915. 
great pre- 
With the 
Dormal to the type of vrarfare, for the reinforce- 
ments provided were at about the ratio of the 
increasing casualty roll. The latter period in- 
cluded two or three considerable local offensive 
movements with their heavy toll of men, and 
(it is important to remember this) the deaths 
in hospital of men ^^ounded earlier, when 
the larger reinforcements were just beginning to 
come out. 
We next turn to the proportion of missing. 
iThese are very nearly exactly one in five, and give 
us, as to the whole force, something like one in 
Beventeen. That also is important, because, in 
estimating the results of the compaign, it is valu- 
able to calculate as best we may the enemy miss- 
ing, remembering that on the Western front the 
form of capture is precisely the same upon both 
sides, consisting, as it does, of wounded men 
picked up by the opposing sides whenever the line 
fluctuates and of small batches of unwounded 
men surrounded and cut off. Though even here 
we must make the remark that the 
ponderance is in favour of the Allies, 
exception of the surprise due to the use of poisons 
north of Ypres upon one particular day, the in- 
dividual actions upon the whole Western front 
have resulted in the capture of perhaps two Ger- 
mans to one of the Allies. 
This result has not been apparent upon the 
British front, where things have lain more or less 
even. But if you consider all the local French 
actions in front of Alsace, in the Woeuvre, in 
Champagne, and latterly north of Arras, I think 
this estimate will be found "fairly accurate when 
statistics are available. 
Now let us put our conclusions together. 
Tliey mean, with regard to missing, that the 
enemy cannot have lost less in his driblets of 
prisoners upon the Western front since the trench 
warfare began than 100,000 men. He has prob- 
ably lost more, but he has not lost less. 
They mean that he may safely multiply his 
admitted killed in the official lists by six to get 
bis total casualties — there is no doubt that this 
multiple of six is too low, for the names of his 
killed often comiC in in very belated fashion. And 
on the Eastern front the great mass of his work 
has been done in the open field. Well, to appre- 
ciate losses from this cause alone — wounded and 
missing, excluding sick — we have only to discover 
the Prussian lists of killed (which are published), 
to add rather less than one-fifth for the non- 
Prussian lists of the German Empire (which are 
also published, though less easily obtainable), to 
add eighty per cent, more to this total for the 
Austro-Hungarian contingents (for that is abouf 
the proportion these Allies furnish to the Ger- 
manic Powers as a whole), multiply the result by 
six, and we shall get the enemy casualties, exclud- 
ing sick, upon the basis of the British casualties, 
which are the most accurate, detailed, and up to 
date of any given in this great campaign. 
I repeat, without fear of being belied by 
actual statistics when these shall be fully avail- 
able, that such a multiple of six is, for the enemy, 
insufficient. The Austro-Hungarians have lost 
enormously more in prisoners in proportion than 
have the British ; the German lists are belated, 
and the lists of killed refer mainly on their side 
to those immediately killed in action, &c., &c. 
But take a multiple of six as a conservative esti- 
mate, and excluding sick you have, before the big 
and enormously expensive Galician adventure 
was undertaken, about a million and a third in the 
Prussian lists with killed to total casualties one- 
fifth under the true ratio. Call the Prussian lists 
a million and a half up to the big Galician effort 
and you are not in any great error. And, say, 
300,000, or a trifle less, for the rest of the German 
Empire, and you are near 1,800,000. Add eighty 
per cent, for the Austro-Hungarians, and you get 
about three millions and a quarter. 
Now, that is excluding sick. It is cutting 
down the very high rate of wounded in the open 
mana?uvring of all the Eastern war. It is exclud- 
ing the mass of the great Galician effort, which 
cannot possibly account for less than half a million 
men upon the enemy's side, counting the lighter 
casualties and sick, and it is excluding the very 
large proportion of Austro-Hungarian missing 
through disaffection and capture in every stage 
of the campaign, and particularly in the earlier 
part of it. 
Conclude that the enemy as a whole has at 
the present moment much nearer four million than 
three million men permanently out of the field and 
you are making what is called in commerce a con- 
servative estimate. 
The mood of those who desire to control 
public opinion in this country at this moment — 
for what object I know not — is adverse to the 
mildest and most just conclusions upon what is 
called " the optimistic side." I cannot help that. 
Arithmetic is arithmetic, and a sound judgment 
based upon real things is worth all the sensa- 
tionalism in the world. The enemy's potential 
manhood for actual fighting within the first year 
has probablf/ been diminished by nearly one-half 
from all causes. But it has quite certainly been 
that I have quoted. 
A GENERAL SURVEY. 
(Continued.) 
I SAID last week that after the German and 
Austrian motive in preparing and launch- 
ing this war the next point to be considered 
was the theories of the coming war — i.e., the 
jguesses as to its probable nature — with which the 
enemy entered it. For on the rightness and 
wrongness of these guesses depended the issue. 
The enemy's theories with regard to modem 
■war in general and the coming campaign in par- 
ticular must be distinctly tabulated if we are to 
grasp both the measure of his particular success 
•8 
and of his general failure, and each must be 
numbered so that we may refer to each and show 
in what it was a just judgment or the reverse. 
Those theories are as follows : 
(1) Under the political conditions of the 
French a blow struck at Paris would necessarily 
have one of three effects, either of them fatal 
upon the numerically inferior French forces. 
Either (a) it would lure the French Army as a 
whole to the defence of Paris, and therefore bring 
it up against the numerical superiority of the in- 
