I hear of new and more powerful mortars and cannon, wonderful new rifles, now being manufactured by the million from secret plans, and new guns to bring down Zeppelins, that it is not useful to discuss here.
In the first six months of this war, the German casualties must be well up toward 2,000,000. A million of the injured may go back to the firing line.
But in killed, seriously wounded, missing, and prisoners, Germany must be losing at the rate of 2,000,000 men a year, and the forces of destruction against her will increase rather than diminish. That she can lose at this rate for three years and have anything left worth consideration as a military power is beyond reason.
Nevertheless, when I spoke with a very prominent American, now in a responsible position abroad, he said: "The Germans have food and supplies, and they have an idea; and the only way to overcome that idea is by their destruction. The South had no resources for a three-year or four-year war, but it had an institution, an idea, and a determination. If you will recall it, at the close of the war there were practically no men left in the South. This war will be over when the fighting men of Germany have been killed off."
I have so much respect for the business, mathematical, and scientific mind of Germany, that I cannot believe she will prefer the destruction of the German people, individually or collectively, to the destruction of the German war-machine which set on this war.
I make the following estimate of the casualties—killed, wounded, missing, and prisoners—of the warring powers, omitting Turkey and Japan, up to February 1, 1915:—
German…….. 1,800,000
French…….. 1,200,000
Russian……. 1,600,000
Austrian…… 1,300,000
Belgian……. 200,000
Servian……. 150,000
Montenegrin… 20,000
English……. 110,000
Total……. 6,280,000
Not in a hundred years, or since the Napoleonic wars of 1793 to 1815, has there been any war approaching these casualties now reaching in six months to six millions.
A remarkable statistical fact concerning the war, which I ran across in London, was a computation that the deaths in the navy were substantially equal to those in the army, from the beginning of the war up into November. Of casualties in the army, only about 10 per cent are deaths. There are few wounded to be returned home from a naval disaster. When the English army had suffered about 60,000 casualties, making about 6000 men killed, at the same time from the naval service 6000 boys in blue had gone down to watery graves.