L A N D A X D W A T E R 
January 6, 1916. 
but the main batch first announced was precisely 
1,381, of whom only 21 were officers. 
To this, the German communiques rephed 
denying the French claim and saying that it was 
nnpossible, because their total losses of all kinds, 
whatsoever, dead, wounded and missing, were not 
more than 1,100. , . 
This amazing statement (and how amazmg it 
is we shall see in a moment) mav be read in our 
London papers of Friday the 24th of December. 
It is the German official communique from Berlin 
of the dav before, Thursday the 23rd. It con- 
tradicts a" French announcement alread\' 48 hours 
old and it was made after the local German com- 
mand had had two davs in which to check then- 
lists. , , ( 
Before analysing this sharply-cut example ot 
the enemx's method, the reader will do well to 
consider what this sort of trench warfare means. 
For a period varying from a few hours to 
two or three days, guns of all calibres shell a zone 
of trenches from a couple of hundred yards to 
perhaps 500 yards in depth. The works are 
knocked to pieces, the dug-outs ca\e m, the ela- 
borate little shelters which conceal the machine 
guns are blown to pieces, many men are buned, 
many more killed and maimed, and a much larger 
number stunned and dazed by the intensity of 
the fire. But both sides know that such artillery 
actiyity on the part of an enemy means a forth- 
coming assault. The party thus attacked, there- 
fore, leaves as few men as it dares in the front 
lines and keeps the mass of its men behind, where 
the losses will be slighter. The moment the intense 
artillery preparation stops, the assault leaps from 
its trenches and rushes over the short interval 
between the two lines, probably overwhelms the 
first trench with its dazed occupants, and perhaps a 
trench or two beyond. The extent of the belt 
thus swarmed over differs with the magnitude of 
the artillery preparation and of the forces involved. 
But such an assault is checked alter its first drive 
by two things. First, that it comes upon the 
less damaged further portion of ground upon 
which the artillery preparation has not been so 
thorough and where a number of machine guns are 
still in" action and the men in the trenches still 
able to reply. Secondly, the enemy's reserves 
come pouring up the communication trenches and 
meet their opponents by a counter-offensive. 
It will be seen by anyone who visualises this 
type of action that' the' number of unwounded 
prisoners remaining in the hands of the assailants 
when they thus seize a narrow belt of trench w^ork 
is necessarily but a small proportion of the enemy's 
total casualties. . , ,.rr 
The proportion differs, oi course, with different 
actions, but the experiences of many months upon 
both sides and the drawing up of hundreds of lists 
by our ow^n commanders showing our own losses 
w-hen the enemy thus attacked, i)ermit us to give 
a rough estimate and to say that the proportion 
of unwounded prisoners to total casualties will 
hardly ever be less than one in fire. 
If the enemy can strike so hard as to get, say, 
I 000 of our men prisoners when he overwhelms 
our first trenches, then he will, first and last, have 
inflicted upon us at least 5,000 casualties. 
The proportion during the French offensive 
in Champagne was more nearly one in seven, and 
far over one in six. , 
In other words, for every prisoner capable ol 
inarching and parading taken by the French there 
were certainly more than five and nearly six other 
men killed and wounded on the German side who 
cUd not fall into our hands. There have, of course, 
been innumerable actions, smaller and greater, in 
which the proportion was very much higher. 
There have been actions where the enemy made us 
lose very heavily and hardly took any prisoners, 
and vice' versa. But I am speaking of the case of 
trenches successfully rushed, and I say that a 
proportion of one in five is the very highest you 
can get. 
Observe then, what the German communique 
means. It means that when the French seized 
this quite narrow belt of trenches after their inten- 
sive bombardment, if they were telling the truth 
and had really captured 1,300 prisoners, certainly 
7,000 Germans were out of action and pro- 
bably a great many more. If, on the other 
hand, the Germans arc telling the truth, and their 
total casualties, dead, wounded and missing were 
1,100 only, then it would be exceedingly 
unlikely that the French should hold more than 
200 unwounded prisoners and hardly possible 
that the\- should hold 300. 
CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE. 
How are we to decide which of the two state- 
ments was true ? 
Mr. Warner Allen was present at the French 
Headquarters immediately after the German c()m- 
munique w^as issued, anci we have the following 
simple and clear piece of evidence from him :-— 
"I am able to give personal evidence," he 
writes, " as I saw the prisoners taken march past 
the General commanding the Army of the Vosges. 
There w^ere 21 officers, 1,360 non-commissioned 
officers and rank and file." A neutral observer 
present confirmed these figures. 
That is conclusive. 
I hope that none of my readers will blame mc 
for having dealt with the point at such great length. 
The number of men involved is very small in such 
a campaign as this, the action was a mere local 
affair, the line did not, perhaps, fluctuate by an 
average of fifty yards, but as a particularly clear 
example of the "point I am driving at you could 
not better it in the whole course of the war, and 
the general conclusion is this : — 
Where you may reasonably believe the state- 
ment of a German communique, accept it as 
rigidly accurate. Where you may with equal 
reason think it exaggerated, you are free to treat 
the exaggeration as enormous in almost any degree 
— as deserving no credence at all. 
It is a \ery important point in judging this 
war. It confirrns what, on the analogy of other 
nations' communiques, so many obser\-ers have 
hitherto doubted, the \aluelessness of the more 
erratic German claims. 
The second point equally illustrated by this 
affair was that of the type of drafts the enemy is 
now using. In his evidence upon this point, Mr. 
Warner Allen is, of course, only adding his testi- 
mony to what is now a commcmplace with the 
troops all along the 500 miles of the Allies' western 
line. 
It is perfectly clear that the German Empire 
has long ago fallen back upon its first groups of 
inefficients for drafts and has for a fully efficient 
reserve nothing but the lads of the two new classes. 
I hope it is not superfluous to point out again 
for fear of misunderstanding that this does not 
mean that the German forces arc approacliing 
