February 17, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER. 
Tliere is no need to elaborate the point. The average 
two months delay is perfectly clear. You do not begin 
to get the big figures of the early fighting until the Sep- 
tember lists. They are not even near completion till 
October, when the highest totals are reached and the 
full effect of the Marne, etc., is felt. 
On this first count then the calculation is worthless 
because there is not even an attempt to estimate the 
average of delay. 
II. 
Now for the second point. What is the proportion 
of those appearing in the lists who return to active 
service ? 
This article in the Times rightly says that the German 
claim to over 80 ])er cent, is false, but it goes on to say, 
"If we assume that 50 per cent, of the whole number 
of wounded return to the front " we get such and such 
a result. On what ground is 50 per cent, chosen, and in 
what time do these 50 per cent, return to the front ? 
Wh-Ai proportion of them at any one time are still in 
hospital ? How many should be added for the sick who 
return to the front ? On those questions there is no 
answer nor even any attempt at an answer. Yet they 
;ue vital to even the roughest conclusion. It has already 
lieen determined, by careful analysis of our own casualty 
lists, that the proportion of those appearing in these lists 
who subsequently return to active service is not more 
than one-fourth of the total. As we have no reason to 
suppose that the German hospitals are superior to our 
own, or that the German methods of healing the wounded 
excel our own, an estimate of 50 per cent, is obviously 
far in excess of the true figures. All that counts in war 
as a true "return " is the man who, having been wounded 
or fallen sick, actually returns to his original duties, and 
can be maintained there. 
III. 
The third necessity of the calculation is to estimate 
the unmentioned number of sick. Without some such 
estimate it is obvious that our calculations are valueless. 
A man off the strength from sickness is just as much off 
the strength as though he were a prisoner or dead. If 
he is back, but only at light work, he and others like him 
are soon absorbed, and, though hght work .may be 
made for them and their discharge refused, they are 
still no part of the true army. 
Now as the Germans do not tell us anything about 
these cases we have only two ways of making our estimate. 
The first is through the Intelhgence Department, which 
gets news from prisoners, from spies, from captured docu- 
ments, and from the putting together of evidence (printed 
or otherwise) published within the enemy's country. The 
second way is by analogy with our own figures. 
Tile results of these methods — though the first is 
accurate enough, and the second exact as far as our own 
ligures are concerned — are not communicated to the 
public. But they arc pretty widely known, and their 
effect upon a general estimate of wastage is perfectly 
well known because one of the Allied higher commands, 
the French, has had the sense to publish those general 
conclusions from time to time. 
In this article in The Times those conclusions are 
not so much as alluded to ! We have nothing but a 
personal affirmation admittedly uncertain, and based 
apparently upon nothing. We are told that the in- 
\'aUded men " may amount " to 35,000 men a month, 
or " may be more, or less." We are further told that the 
" floating population of the sick in hospitals may be 
150,000 — or, again, more or less." 
IV. 
Finally, on the fourth point, the permanent margin of 
temporary losses— which we have to add to the dead loss 
in order to get the total amount off the strength at any 
given moment — there is complete silence ! 
So much for the way in which this ''apital problem 
is attacked and treated— I will not say solved, for there 
is not even an approximate solution. 
At the end of these few lines of statement, without 
any exposition of the method of calculation, and in 
startling contradiction to the results arrived at by the 
RAEMAEKERS' CARTOON. 
It will be remembered that in Land and Water, 
January zyth, in the place of the tisual cartoon 
as the frontispiece, we published a picture by 
Raemaekers of the funeral oJNo. 16092 Private Joseph 
Walker, Bedfordshire Regiment. Private Walker's 
body li'tts cast up by the sea on the dyke at West 
Capelle, and kindly Dutchmen arranged for a 
funeral, conducted by a British Chaplain. In the 
account of the scene published in the Amsterdam 
" Telegraaf," the ivriter asked, " Where is his 
home ; ivho in loving thoughts thinks of him ?" 
A day or tieo ago a letter reached the Editor, 
from Offley, a village in Hertfordshire, written by 
Mrs. Walker, the mother of Private Joseph 
Walker. This picture was the fir'it intimation she 
had had 0} her son's death, and she is very grateful 
to those good souls in Holland, who had arranged 
for his burial with this impressive ceremony. A 
framed 2rtist's proof of Raemaekers' picture is 
being sent to Mrs. Walker by Land AND Watek as 
a memorial of her son's death. 
same writer on January 7th, we get the abrupt con- 
cluding sentence that " the nett permanent loss of the 
German army during the past eighteen months of war " 
is nearly 2,600,000. And there the matter ends — except 
for an estimate of remaining drafts, itself based upon such 
exceedingly vague and erroneous matter. 
To sum up : — - 
(a) The article begins by suddenly cutting down the 
original estimate in the The Times by a million. (6) 
It takes for the losses of eighteen months, killed, missing 
and wounded, what are really the losses of about sixteen. 
(c) It makes no allowance for the omission of names. 
(d) Its allowance for the proportion of sick (who are not 
mentioned) is based upon no analogy and no evidence. 
(e) It says nothing of permanent temporary losses. (/) It 
leaves wholly out of account all the numerous forms of 
evidence which have been supplied for the solution of this 
problem and with which the readers of this journal are 
familiar (the losses of particular corporations, the counted 
losses upon particular occasions where the Allies have 
had the opportunity to make such calculation, the analogy 
of tiie Allied losses, etc), (g) It ends by a bald un- 
supported statement reducing the enemy losses to the 
lowest possible figure. 
This illustration of numbers emphasises the need for 
clear and regular official statements which will serve as a 
guide to public opinion. Nothing is more fatal than the 
alternation between confidence and depression, which 
can readily be produced by the Press without any relation 
to the actual facts. We are all familiar with the 
alternation. 
When the Austrians suffered their defeat before 
Lemberg, we were told that their army had gone to 
pieces and no longer counted. When the Russians first 
advanced into East Prussia, that advance was magnified 
with the ridiculous metaphorical name of " The Steam 
Roller." When the Germans were approaching Paris 
we had the infamous account of panic and rout as a 
travesty of that admirable retreat which led to the Marne 
and saved Europe. When hopes were thus revived the 
Russians were to be in Berlin " in two months." When 
the guns of a corps-artillery were caught in the marshes 
of St. Gond, those pieces miraculously became " the 
artillery of a whole corps." 
Suddenly the order changed. There came months 
when the whole object to be attained was to depress public 
opinion. When the Austro-German line pursuing the 
Russian Armies halted, exhausted, short of the Dvina, 
we were assured that its advance would be continued. 
Just before this the Austro-Germans had failed signally in 
their attempt to destroy the Russian armies at Vilna. 
During those critical days everything that could lead us 
to belie\e in the coming of that disaster was emphasised 
and trumpeted abroad. 
Even as I write the one chief triuuipU of the British 
