LAND AND WATER 
, January 27, 1916* 
alone ; but the original statement about one 
division was so grotesque that no one beHeved it.) 
Now evidence of the minimum German loss 
— the loss admitted by the enemy — began to 
dribble in with the third week of October. It was 
then (October 17th, i8th, 19th) that we began 
to see in the German lists the casualties referring 
to units we know to have been engaged against 
the great Allied offensive of last September. 
The big lists of prisoners were already noticeable 
in the lists of October 29th. These items extended 
on week after week (so belated are the German 
returns), until after a full three months only does 
one begin to appreciate in round numbers what the 
(iermans themselves admit in the hsts to have been 
their losses on that occasion. 
These lists give us not much less than 300,000 
men. By the end of November they had provided 
us with the names of 266,752 of whom about 
24,000 were prisoners, about 44,000 killed and 
rather more than 198,000 wounded. But all 
during November more names kept on appearing 
in the belated lists — 12,000 for the Infantry alone— 
and, on the analogy of German lists in the past, 
yet more names will continue to appear dtiring 
January. The total must be already, as I have 
said, close on 300,000. It will probably pass that 
figure even in the German official lists, incomplete 
as they are, before the whole tale is told; and even 
this enormous total makes no mention of the men 
suffering from shock and of all the other casualties 
apart from wounds — the sick list consequent upon 
a strain of that kind. 
I say this work has been done very thoroughly 
and completely by numerous observers — by none 
better than the neutral (by no means adverse to 
the enemy) who carries the greatest authority 
at the present moment in Europe — Colonel Feyler. 
I am sure that work on much the same lines has 
been done by our own officials in this country. 
Would it not be of real advantage to opinion 
and to the judgment of the public if our govern- 
ment were to issue from the Press Bureau with 
regard to this one item of news some such state- 
ment as the following ? — 
" The Press Bureau authorises the following 
statement : It is now, after a delay of more than 
three months, possible to establish from the German 
casualty lists themselves the extent of the catas- 
trophes suffered by the German armies during the 
great blows delivered upon them in the British 
offensive at Loos and the French contemporary 
offensive in Champagne, at the end of last September. 
It will be remembered that the enemy put forward 
the obviously untenable claim that the main shock 
of this offensive was met in Champagne by no more 
than a division, say in full strength 20,000 men. 
This statement carried no weight and has deservedly 
been forgotten, but it is remarkable how much greater 
Ms losses were even than ivas at the moment the 
Allied estimate of them. The highest stich estimate 
hitherto made by the victors upon that occasion put 
the enemy losses at some 240,000 men. So far 
we can already discover from the German lists alone 
a loss of close on 300,000 men, excluding all- ca.';es 
of shock, sickness, etc., necessarily arising in large 
numbers from so intense an action. 
" We must further remark upon the delays in the 
publication of the German lists and their consequent 
incompleteness. Even during the third month after 
the action, the Infantry lists alone included 12,000 
names checked and admitted after so great a lapse of 
time, and this fourth month after the action, January, 
is still providing us with new names in the lists. 
It will probably be found when the history of the 
war is written that counting all casualties, the enemy 
suffered no less than 350,000 of loss and certainly 
more than a third of a million in those memorable 
days." 
I say that a statement made in those terms 
officially (and it would be strictly accurate) would 
be of immense advantage and I say that a policy 
of issuing such statements sometimes for the 
sobering of opinion, sometimes for the enlightening 
and heartening of it, has become an immediate 
duty of those in authority. 
THE FRONTS. 
In the six main areas of the war there is no 
news of movement save in connection with the 
threats made by the Allies against Bagdad and 
the Mesopotamian communications of the 
Turkish " Caucasian " army. Of these that of 
most interest to this country is o'^ course the 
advance of the British up the Tigris in their 
attempt to relieve the force belcagured at Kut-el- 
Amara. 
WESTERN FRONT. 
On the western front the only point of interest 
has been yet another of these curious little local 
offensives, in which the enemy is now perhaps 
compelled to indulge. This week the attacks were 
delivered first in the neighbourhood of Arras, 
later about 100 miles off on the extreme north of 
the line, and then again near Arras. In both 
cases there was the usual intense, but short bom- 
bardment against a very short sector of front 
(about a mile), followed by an attack with con- 
siderable bodies of men. In two cases this attack 
set foot in the French trenches for a moment, in 
the other case it did not even succeed to that 
extent. In both cases the compara'ivelv small 
local offensive broke down. It is not too much to 
say that in all these cases it was expected to break 
down — the talk of the sensational newspapers 
about an attempted piercing of the Allied lines — 
" A bid for Calais " — in such manceuvres is, of 
course, nonsense. When the enemy shall try to 
break the western line he will not proceed in this 
fashion, but in a fashion ve y different indeed. 
It will not be a matter of a few thousand shells, 
but of a few million ; not of a brigade or two, but 
of massed armies ; and not of a kilometre or two, 
but of a twenty-mile front at the least. 
If we ask ourselves why the enemy is perhaps 
compelled to indulge in these local attacks, which 
are very expensive to him and which have abso- 
lutely no permanent result, the best answer is by 
a metaphor. 
If you are trying to hold a door against 
pressure from without and you are already in a 
state when you find it difficult to hold that door, 
you will almost inevitably be led to a succession 
of sudden jerks against your opponents, each 
destined to give you something of a breathing 
space. This necessity is not only a material, but 
a moral one. Little local offensives of this kind, 
even when you only get a few yards of ground 
and a handful of prisoners for your money, 
hearten troops. They are probably valuable 
when new drafts have reached the front. They 
also test troops. But they are not the tactics 
of a defensive line which feels itself immovable. 
In neither case was the attack delivered against 
anything of even local importance. It was not 
