LAND AND WATER 
February 24, 1916. 
be tIioroii.e;hly roprosontative. TIum. h>is (wiiich are 
j;,'ot lip by private initiative and refer to special districts 
which desired an exact record of their sacrifices and of 
tlicir patriotism to be maintained) are based, of course, 
upon the private not-ices received by the families of those 
fallen. They afford an excellent check by which to test 
the official lists, and to prove their incompleteness. For 
these local lists give us not only the dead but also the 
exact total of men mobilised in each district, so that 
we can mark upon any particular date the per- 
centage of deaths at that date, andur ctui cslabUsh exactly 
the rate at which the number of deaths iiureases. 
(b) The next category consists of lists drawn up by 
a number of great unions or associations, mainly prole- 
tarian. 
Some of these are religious, some industrial. Like 
the first category, these also are based upon the notices 
of death which the Government sends individually to 
each family, and are far more complete than the general 
official lists. They give us, of course, the total number 
of men mobilised as well, so that the percentage of deaths 
for any given moment can be exactly ascertained The 
figures to follow cover no less than 14 such lists and apply 
to a very large proportion of the ]>opulation. 
(c) The third category consists of what we call in 
this country " Rolls of Honour." The great employers 
of labour in the German Empire were in the habit, for 
some time, of publishing in continually extending lists 
the names of all those of their employees who had been 
called up as soldiers, and showing at frequent intervals 
the number who had given their lives for their country. 
l*"or the purposes of the e%'idence I am about to call, three 
such rolls of honour were specially selected upon the 
same principle as governed the first two categories : to 
wit. their universality. The first Roll of Honour is that 
issued by a great industrial enterprise which has branches 
and shops throughout the whole Empire. The two 
others are concerned, one with the grocer\- trade, the other 
with the refreshment trade ; and ])Oth are distributed 
throughout the whole Empire in hundreds of branches. 
(d) Lastly, the fourth category in this kind of evi- 
dence is that of the clubs or associations formed for the 
encouragement of various forms of sport. These lists 
also contain a very great number of names, and the five 
which have been chosen in particular for this analysis 
arc distributed more or less indifferently up and down 
the country. 
Now the first point which emerges from an analysis of 
these private lists is this : That for the first few months 
of the war, these private detailed lists do not differ very 
ap]jreciably from the official lists. H you contrast the 
results obtained from both forms of evidence, it is not 
till the beginning of the winter of 1914 that any very 
grave disparity between them clearly appears. It has, 
however, already appeared very sensibly by the month 
of January. 1915, and if we take some time about the 
middle of January for our point of departure, we shall 
arrive a few months later at a very remarkable result. 
W'c shall see the course of the death-rate established by 
the detailed private lists rising regularly and uninter- 
ruptedly, while the course of the death-rate drawn from 
the general public and official lists as regularly declines. 
After seven months from January, 191 5 — that is 
by about the middle of August, n) 15— the difference 
between the total of deaths obtainable from the average 
of the private lists and that obtainable from the public 
lists (which alone have hitherto been rjuoted in this 
country) is already well over 150.000. 
Here is another way of putting it ; the official lists, 
although the fighting is exceedingly severe up to tli(> 
autumn of the year, 1915, and particularly through the 
summer of 1915, show upon the whole a regularly declin- 
ing rate. The private lists show no such decline. 
If the selection of priAate lists were a small one this 
peculiarity might be due to the accident of some particu- 
lar occupation or some particularly heavily tried locality. 
But scores of such lists" grouped in four great categories, 
and covering great masses of the army drawn from all 
classes, from all occupations and from all regions, cannot 
possibly suffer from such a cause of error. 
I have already said that the rate of increase, month 
by month, of the dead in these private lists was singularly- 
even. How regular it is. the following statement will 
sliow. 
Taking the deaths reached by the middle of January 
as one hundred, about fifteen on the average were added 
for the month of February ; twelve more for March, 
twelve more for April, between fifteen and sixteen for 
May (when there was the first tremendous fighting in 
Galicia) ; rather more than sixteen for June (which was 
the month of the long struggle on the San) ; and about 
the same amount for July. Not all the lists carry us as 
far as August. Those that do, show, as might be ex- 
pected, no apjjreciablc diminution for that month. 
Now, the reader who is merely given these short 
results of a detailed and prolonged analysis might object 
that some particular small list thus privately drawn up 
could conceivably be exposed to influences vitiating its 
accuracy. The oflicially published lists are biassed to- 
wards reducing the number of dead. But, on the other 
hand, the private lists might not think it worth while 
to print all the names of their men mobihsed, but would 
naturally take a pride in showing how great had been the 
sacrifice of a particular corporation or district. 
An inspection of the actual lists would, of course, 
make an end of that argument, but as that is impossible, 
I can cpiotc figures which are, 1 think, equally con- 
clusive. 
It is clear that if the private lists were drawn up 
\\ithout regularity and precision they would show very 
great differences among themselves, as a fact, thej'^ agree 
in such a fashion as to compel the conviction that they 
represent a true average of wastage by death. 
If the reader will compare the numbers appearing in 
each category mf)nth by month, and see the monthly 
rate by wliich the number of deaths grows, he can hardly 
avoid the obvious conclusion that so dose an agreement 
of such independent witnesses demonstrates their 
accuracy. 
Thus if we start with the third week of January, 1915, 
and note the numbers as they increase month by month 
in each category, for the months during which this 
e\'idencc was obtainable, we disco\er the following very 
similar tables. : 
(a) Here is the growth for the first category, that of 
the village parislie-, mainly peas:intry : 
January . . . . 100 May . . . . . . 156 
I'^bruarv . . . . 115 June 171 
March .. ..128 July 187 
April . . . . 139 August . . ' . 204 
(b) Here'is the growth for the second category, the 
various reHgious and industrial unions, drawn mainly 
from the industrial proletarian; : 
January . . . . 100 May . . . . . . 155 
February .. .. 108 Juno .. .. ..172 
March .. .. 125 July 186 
April . . . . 140 August - . . . . 203 
It will be seen that the rate is very nearly the same 
as the first group ; the only difference being that the 
peasants were suffering more severely in the earlier part 
of the year, as might be expected from the fact that the 
industrial population would in some trades be called upon 
later. 
(c) The " Rolls of Honour " drawn up by great em- 
ployers of certain forms of labour mentioned above, 
give the following rate : — 
January . . . . 100 May 155 
February (not before me) June . . . . . . 172 
March .. .. 128 July 1S2 
April . . . . 142 August . , . . 198 
(d) The sporting Clubs and Societies give : 
January . . . . 100 (estimated not all give statis- 
tics so early) 
February . . . . 117 (full statistics) 
March . . 128 May 156 
April . . . . 139 Juiic 175 
me. 
The figures after June in this category are not before 
It is impossible in the face of such close agreement 
in averages clrawn from hundreds of sources and covering 
the whole country to doubt their accuracy. 
The argument put forward in this section may, then, 
be summarised thus : 
You have, in spite of continued, ceaseless violent 
• art;..'. Hv- number of deaths in the official lists declining 
