Land & Water 
May 9, 191 8 
was drawn on very early, did not show an acceleration over Class 
1918. At the beginning of this year. Class 1920 was warned. 
That warning, again, showed no new acceleration in the 
rate of exhaustion. This step would have normally meant 
no more than the calling up of the main portions, at least, 
of Class 1920 for examination in .\pril, 1918 ; four months 
training would normally have followed, and the appearance 
of the hrst batches of Class 1920 in the fighting line as recruits 
would have been seen in July and thenceforward tliroughout 
the summer ; the bulk of them certainly would not have 
been incorporated in the units suffering heavy expenditure 
until the end of the summer, if the German calculation 
before the offensive had made good. A Gennan immature 
class is under half a million available lads — say, 450,000. 
That was what one meant when one said that the enemy 
could reckon on an income or recruitment of rather less than 
half a million later on in this year. Now, the significance 
of the news to hand is that he has been compelled, for some 
reason or other (and much most probably by the unexpected 
rate of liis loss in action since March 2ist), to bring the first 
batches of this new recruitment in not in July, but before 
the last days of April. In other words, he had anticipated 
even his own schedule of anticipation in the case of some 
elements of this new recruitment by as much as three months. 
Significant as the detail is, we must not exaggerate it. 
The exact evidence gathered and published should be re- 
tained and no more built upon it than it warrants. That 
exact evidence testifies to the presence in the fighting zone 
(but not yet incorporated in any regiment used for shock) 
of a full company — 250 strong — of the new class which 
normally should not have appeared until the late summer. 
This single unit has been discovered attached to the 13th 
Reserve Division, and is now in the field depots of that 
division. Its personnel, the average age of whom is probably 
just about 18 (though some of them probably a httle under) 
has only had eight weeks' training, and yet here they are 
present immediately behind the lines with the obvious task 
of filling gaps in quite the near future. Small as is the indica- 
tion it clearly cannot be a mere unique exception. For news 
of a single unit thus to have reached French headquarters, 
there must be some considerable fraction of the whole recruit- 
ment already thus distributed. 
The next step of interest will be to note the moment when 
the Allied forces first begin to take prisoners from this 1920 
class. From that moment we shall know that this immature 
recruitment is being regularly fed in to the mill which has 
already sucked up from 136 to 140 of the German divisions, 
and, counting those who have been in twice, and even three 
times, njust have used the equivalent of something over 182. 
The Enemy Losses 
Very various estimates have been made of the enemy 
losses, and these must still be hopelessly vague until better 
and more detailed evidence is available. The nearest thing 
to an official pronouncement — but it is not official — is con- 
tained in the message of a correspondent in touch with the 
French who puts down a minimum of 350,000 up to about 
ten days ago. I cannot but regard this as an insufficient 
estimate, though, of course, anything with official backing 
to it (if we could get such a pronouncement) would have to be 
accepted at once because only at the Intelligence Department 
of Headquarters is there a proper collation of all evidence. 
But I remark the following points in the problem : — 
(i) The number of German divisions actually identified 
as appearing in action since the great offensive began is more 
than 136 and less than 140. To put it at the lowest figure, 
and allowing only just over 7,000 bayonets to the division, 
and you have a million men. As a matter of fact, tlie divi- 
sions used for shock have been brought up to strength, and 
if the full 9,000 bayonets have not appeared in each, at any 
rate, 7,000 is too low an estimate, and 8,000 not too high. 
(2) Something like 40 divisions have by this time appeared 
twice, and at least 6 have appeared three times. Now, this 
makes a total equivalent to 182 divisions, at least — more 
probably nearer 190 — for a division when it is taken out, and 
rested and recruited, and sent in again loses again the second 
or the third time just as it did in the first. We are really 
dealing, then, with a mass in infantry alone of nearer one 
million and a half men than a million, and though the infantry 
Jjear the mass of the casualties, there is very heavy loss in all 
the other branches, particularly in the artillery. There is 
loss also in the depots from bombing, and there is the ordinary 
loss froiji sickness and fatigue, apart from known losses in brittle. 
(3) Although a division is not kept in as it was during 
the Gennan defensive on the Somme, until it has lost 40 to 50 
per cent, of its effectives, yet it would be foolish to retire it 
before it had lost, say, 25. There are cases, of course, when 
it is retired, or where the action ceases with much smaller 
loss ; but I am talking of the a\-erage. Now, that average 
is built up by the exceedingly heavy losses actually demon- 
strable in case after case. The 4tli Erzatz Division, for 
instance, which attacked at Givenchy, has been pretty well 
wiped out. One regiment had an average of only fifteen men 
to each company left. The ist Guards Reserve Division, in 
the same locality, showed in one regiment the loss of one- 
tiiird of its officers in one day alone. We have from twenty 
to thirty units analysed fully on this scale. True, they have 
been units which have suffered quite exceptionally and from 
which prisoners have been taken in our counter-attacks 
after such suffering ; but, still, they are numerous, and the 
losses have proved invariably exceedingly heavy. 
(4) We know perfectly well by experience on the Allied 
side during our own offensives how exceedingly heavy the 
casualties of an attack can be, and certainly the average Ger- 
man tactic is no less expensive than the average Allied tactic. 
(5) We know that Class 1920 has already appeared in 
the field depots just behind the fighting line. 
There is in all these statements, semi-official and even 
unofficial, a perhaps necessary political element. It is 
necessary to prevent the public from making wild judgments 
in its own favour. Opinion Was to be tuned. But I confess 
myself to a preference for mere truth or, as- the enemy called 
it in the dear old days of peace, "objective reality," and I 
cannot but believe that the lowest of the estimates published 
is below the truth on the plain evidence before us. 
rOStSCnpt Tuesday Morning, May yth. 
Since writing the above, we have the news of two more 
days in dispatches from the front : the news of Sunday and 
Monday, May 5th and 6th. It is remarkable that both days 
continued tlie long halt imposed upon the enemy by his 
severe defeat upon April 29th. In all, seven full days have 
passed without his renewing the attack on the hills or striking 
elsewhere. It is far the longest interval he has permitted 
or suffered since March 21st. There seem to have been 
indications of a renewed concentration for attack on the 
fourth day, and its failure to develop is ascribed by the 
public correspondents to the increasing vigour of the Allied 
artillery on this front. 
So considerable an interval has also been ascribed to the 
large re-arrangement and concentration necessary for the 
inception of a third phase to the battle in the shape of another 
great blow with all available force on the model of the first 
great action on March 2ist-22nd. It may be so. 
On the front between Albert and Arras there has been a 
little local movement to the advantage of the AustraUan 
troops, and the French left at Hangard has also been slightly 
advanced. 
Every newspaper in Europe almost has spoken of impend- 
ing action against the Italians. That is pure conjecture, 
but the main elements are well enough known. The snows 
have melted enough to permit movement in the latter part 
of May in the mountains. On the other end, the Piave line 
is stronger then and in June from the rise of the water. 
A menace to either party here, during the freshets, is the 
shelling and breaking of the high banks, between which the 
river sometimes runs as much as 10 or iz feet above the 
plain. The number of Austrian divisions believed to be 
present between the Swiss frontier and the sea is 55, with 
special concentration in the Trentino on the Italian left. 
There is no reason, if the united enemv command chose to 
alter the direction of attack, why these should not be 
strengthened by the addition of German divisions. Beyond 
those bare elements in the situation we know nothing. 
The Rural Labourer 
To the Editor, Land & Water. 
Sir,- — -In your issue of the 25th, " Jason," in his article on "The 
History of the Rural Labourer," speaks of a boy "who was 
hanged at Winchester for striking a country gentleman." Will 
you allow a collateral descendant of the man who was struck, 
and who is himself a Hampshire farmer and much in sympathy 
with the agricultural labourer, and who, further, lives close to 
where the incident occurred, to say that the facts of the case 
are hardly as quoted by your correspondent. 
What really happened was that the youth in question hit the 
gentleman twice on the head with a sledge-hammer, and his 
life was merely saved by his wearing at the time a hard box -hat. 
I may incidentally mention that the greatest possible efiorts 
were made by the man assaulted, who had considerable political 
influence, to prevent the execution. 
Woodlands Farm, Bramdean, Hants. Arthur Baring. 
P.S. — I should perhaps add that at the time the incident 
occurred the gentleman in question was merely trying to prevent 
his n--^ hinery being des'-- •• A by the rioters. 1 
