LAND AND WATER 
December ii, 1915- 
the developed ^nd expensive fighting which covered 
the autumn, winter and summer.. 
But that official statement is not accurate. It 
is demonstrably below the mark. 
How do we know this ? We know it by con- 
trasting the Prussian lists, including Baden, with 
those of the other German States. The 2,640,000 
which purport to be the total casualties up to the 
31st of July are composed of 900,000 for the smaller 
(ierman States and 1,740,000 for Prussia and 
Baden. 
That proportion is impossible. The smaller 
German States amount to almost exactly one- 
quarter of the German forces and Prussia and 
Baden to almost exactly the other three-quarters. 
If the smaller German States were losing 900,000, 
Prussia in proportion was not losing 1,700,000, but 
2,700,000. 
It may be advanced that the smaller States 
would have been sacrificed by what has always 
been the Prussian policy and the Prussian contin- 
gents (excluding the Guard, which comes from 
everywhere^ spared for the later fighting. To some 
extent this is true, but we are fortunately in a 
position to gauge the disproportion accurately 
by following the lists in detail. When we follow 
the lists in detail we find that whereas the smaller 
States should account for just under a quarter of 
all the casualties, or say, one-third of those of 
Prussia and Baden, they come, as a fact to just 
over one-quarter. In other words, the smaller 
German States have indeed suffered more heavily 
in proportion, up to this autumn at least, than 
Prussia has ; hut the excess is not 5 per cent. 
Therefore the. figure 1,740,000 for Prussian casual- 
ties alone up to the 31st of July cannot be accepted. 
How much more it may be is another matter. 
Why it should be thus under-estimated, whether 
from policy, from some difficulty in completing 
the figures, or from greater delay in the Prussian 
Bureau which have much heavier work to do, is 
open to discussion. But the fact itself is not open 
to discussion. Where the smaller States lost 
900,000 Prussia and Baden together must have 
lost a great deal more than 1,700,000 ; the exact 
proportion would be 2,700,000. 
(5) The fifth point is that there is no mention 
in these figures of the sick and of those disabled 
in any other fashion than through wounds in 
action. Now that proportion we know from our 
own statistics to be very high. Exactly how high 
must . always remain in debate until the official 
figures are obtainable at the end of the campaign. 
This paper is read by numbers of men who have full 
experience of the work of last winter in Flanders, 
and they will bear me out when I say that even 
in the highly civilised west with its abund- 
ance of good buildings available for hospitals, its 
excellent communications, its stationary warfare, 
the omission of all mention of disablement from 
disease makes the figures quite unreliable. Frost- 
bite, the effects of cold in general, alone account 
for a very great proportion ofi the strength at any 
given moment in the winter, and if this were the 
case in the west, it was far more the case in the 
east, in the Polish and the Carpathian campaigns. 
(6) Next, the figure of -J for returned casualties 
is far too high. 
That is a point upon which any amount of 
misconception has arisen. It is confused with the 
number discharged as " cured " from particular 
hospitals : with the total number available for 
any service however light, etc. 
All that counts in war as a true " return " 
is the man who, having fallen sick or having been 
wounded, actnaUv re/iirns-not "as marked fit 
to return " — to his original duties- not to " any 
service," and can be maintained there. If of a 
total casualty fist (dead, missing, prisoners, 
wounded, sick) you take a quarter to represent 
these you are not over-estimating. 
(7) Lastly and most important this neutral 
estimate omits that essential factor ", the perma- 
nent margin of temporary losses." At whatever 
fixed date you take the numbers " off the strength " 
you must count not on\\ those who cannot ever 
"return to their original duties, but those who as 
yet have not. And that permanent margin does 
not decrease - it increases. Towards the end of 
a failing force it increases very rapidly indeed. 
The conclusion remains the same' unless we 
believe the Germans able to work miracles, to lose 
far less than any one, ally in proportion to their 
numbers (though they are always somewhere on the 
offensive on such extended fronts). Unless their 
experience is utterly unlike our own or the 
French — or anything known in the history of war — 
they have now, at the close of the year not less 
than three and a half millions off the" strength of 
their original man-power, and probably more. 
H. Belloc. 
Answer to Corre-SPOndknt ■. — I propose next week to deal with 
an important suggestion from a Correspondent " S " wliicli 1 liave no 
time to deal with this week, as I have only received the letter as this 
article was being written. 
The following arc extracts from a remarkable article 
written by Mr. George Louis Beer, which was printed 
in the Nciv Republic, one of New York's most influential 
weekly journals, on November 20th : — 
" By our policy of self-centred aloofness from the affairs 
of Europe, we have deliberately ignored tlie obligations that 
every State owes to mankind. Such a policy was probably 
e.xpedient in the days of our weakness, but the United States 
steadfastly adhered to it even after it had become one of the 
Great Powers and thus forfeited the influence it could and 
should have exerted upon the course of world history. . . . 
According to Rohi'bach, Germany must become ' co-mistress 
of the culture of the world, for it will not exist at all.' The 
enemy is not only the British Empire, but the United States 
■ as well, for the cultural unity of all English-speaking peoples 
is fully recognised. . . . In England, natural Iv, there 
was a keener realisation of the imminence of the German 
peril ; and many Englishmen turned to what might have been, 
and began to regard tlie political schism in the English- 
speaking race effected by the American Revolution as tlie 
great tragedy of modern history, in that it weakened the forces 
that stood pre-eminently for p.olitical freedom. Btit with 
their usual common sense, they recognised that public opinion 
in America was not ripe for such a reversal of policy as an 
Anglo-American alliance implied. 
" It is obvious that the only Powers with whom our 
political traditions and our material interests would permit 
active co-operation are the present Allies of the Quadruple 
Entente, and among these England would naturaUv be the 
one to whom our common civilisation would draw us most 
closely. An alliance of the United States with the British 
Empire in unequivocal terms, made in the oncn light of dav, 
would effectively secure the future peace of the world and 
Its development along democratic lines. . . . Such an 
alliance, made for no aggressive purpose and seeking merelv 
to preserve peace, order and justice in the world, would 
naturally attract to it the nations of like mind, and mieht be 
the foundation-stone of that federation of the worid which 
alone can reconcile the ' freedom of individuals and of in- 
dividual States with the -accomplishment of a common aim 
for mankind as a whole.' " 
A very practical little handbook for militarv officers 
\?^ Revolver Shcothii; in Time of War, by Captain CD. Tracy 
(Sifton Praed and Co., is. net). The book treats the subject 
in ail eminently practical way, and is designed soleh' to 
familiarise officers with tiie service revolver, and enable them 
to use^it tp the li^st advantage. This aim is well fulfilled, 
ind ofhcers will find the concise little work of real assistance 
14 
