February 24, 1916. 
LAND ANE WATER 
t.oco.ooo 
900,000 
aoo.ooo 
Too, 000 
boo, 000 
S60.000 
4oo,ooo 
'500,000 
200,000 
[toe.ooo 
.up " 
£^S.?!l 
10 
to 
(on the whole) from January 1915 on into the summer of 
that year. This decline in the number of deaths appears 
in public documents, quoted throughout the press of 
Europe and America. It is immensely to the advantage 
of the enemy to hide in such documents, which arc in- 
tended for general cjuotation, the real rate of his losses, 
particularly as these become really serious and approach 
the margin of his reserves. 
« On the other hand, you have a series of documents, 
suffering from no such motives, regarded as private, not 
quoted abroad and the value of which the enemy seems 
for some time to have failed to seize. These last are 
compiled from the most accurate source possible, the 
individual notices of death sent separately to each family. 
They are in some cases connected with the fmances of a 
trade union or benefit society, which must keep an accurate 
record or suffer ruin, but which on the other hand, would 
certainly not exaggerate its liabilities. These private 
lists cover many hundreds of thousands of the population. 
Though showing noe.xact mechanical agreement, they tally 
closely, precisely as good independent pieces of evidence 
dra\\-n from various and quite separate sources will 
always tally closely. Finally, the death-rate obtainable 
from this source of evidence is precisely what would be 
expected from the nature of the fighting over the time 
it covers, while the death-rate discoverable in the public 
lists is more and more incredible as time goes on. 
The conclusion is inevitable. The private lists 
gave us the true death rate, the public lists, at first care- 
fully and fully maintained, gave us as the year proceeded 
figures less and less reliable. 
Now what is the ligure we arrive at for the true num- 
ber of deaths at, say, the beginning of November ? The 
reason for taking that date, two months before the end 
of the year, will be apparent in a moment. 
In order to answer that question, we have but to 
conti^ast two curves each representing the increase in the 
number of deaths between the middle of January and the 
middle of August 1915. Tiie lower of the two curves, the 
dotted line represents the incomplete official death lists, the 
upper full curve, represents the far more complete rate 
discovered by the private lists. 
We cannot draw from known figures the latter full 
curve to the end of October, as wc can the lower dotted 
curve, because many of the private lists cease to be ob- 
tainable before that date, but we can prolong it in a Une 
of dashes at its existing rate for the remaining ten weeks. 
We have a right to regard it as continuous because fighting 
of the heaviest kind went on during those ten weeks 
which included the great offensive in the west, the end 
of the violent struggle in Poland, and the invasion of 
the Balkans. It will be seen that by this method, we 
get, even as early as the beginning of November, a ligure 
of over the million. 
Now, making the fullest possible allowance for a 
fall in the real curve after the moment in August to 
which it can be traced, and for the decline in the death 
rate during November and December, during which there 
has been little fighting, it remains absolutely certain 
that the total of deaths by the end of tlie year is well over 
the million. How much over we have not full evidence to 
1915 
guide us. It has been put by very competent authority 
at a million one hundred thousand, but admittedly only 
as an estimate. That it passes the million is mathe- 
matically certain. Even the ofhcial lists, by impUcation 
or by direct statement, come to within 19 per cent, of 
that minimum ; and that although they omit much the 
greater part of deaths from disease, shock, accident and 
exposure. The figure of at least one million, therefore, 
at which we have arrived by the calculation just given, 
for the deaths up to December 31st, 1915, regarded as a 
minimum and as a minimum certainly below the truth, is 
not to be denied. 
Other evidence of the incompleteness of the 
OflBcial Lists. 
When one presents a mathematical argument, how- 
ever cogent, it is inevitable that some fatigue should 
accompany the following of it. There are many upon 
whom detailed calculations of this sort have no hold. 
I can imagine such a one saying : " Lengthy calculations 
have never convinced me. ^^'hat I do feel is that, from 
what I know of the accuracy of the Prussian lists, a genera- 
tion ago, in the war of 1870, and from what I know of 
the whole Prussian system to-day, I have a general belief 
in the accuracy of any official Prussian document ; and 
I shall not regard the othcial lists as inaccurate unless you 
can provide some simpler and even self-evident test of 
their inaccuracy." 
It is fortunately perfectly easy to meet that kind of 
objection. Wc have to hancl, among many proofs that 
these official lists are thoroughly unsatisfactory and incom- 
plete, and wilfully so, two separate, particular, pieces of 
proof which are final. 
The first is drawn from the official German Usts of 
wounded during the great offensive in Champagne last 
September. It can be shown now beyond doubt that 
those lists are thoroughly incomplete. 
The second proof is based upon the demonstrable 
omission of prisoners from the official lists. 
I ^^•ill now gi\-e these forms of proof in their order. 
L 
Proof of the falsity of the German OflScial 
Lists by an Analysis of losses 
in Champagne. 
Two months after the great offensive in Champagne, 
it was thought by those who were occupying themselves 
with these figures that the time had come to contrast 
the official German lists with the reahties of that battle. 
The average delay in publishing the casualties upon 
these lists, is, as we have said, six weeks or a little over. 
Two months, therefore, it was imagined, would give one a 
sufficient margin of time upon which to work. No atten- 
tion was paid to the general German statement that " one 
division had fallen back a mile or two and had successfully 
stood the shock while the reserves came up." As a mili- 
tary statement that announcement was without meaning 
and was made merely for the benefit of neutral civilians. 
