The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1917. INSTRUCTIVE FIGURES.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 November 1917, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1917. INSTRUCTIVE FIGURES.

Herr Ledebour, a Socialist, speaking in the Reichstag the other day, admitted that the German losses were six million, comprising a million and a half dead and four million and a half wounded, including half a million permanently crippled. These probably are conservative figures and do not represent the true position. Mr. Warner Allen, writing some time ago, stated that Germany's permanently unfit numbered two million. He estimated the total permanent losses at four million. The statistics he gave show that altogether 9,450,000 men had entered. ;'.c German army. On Herr Ledehour's figures she still has nearly four and a half million men left in the army. General de Lacroix, who writes in Le Temps and the Revue Militaire, made come calculations last June concerning Germany's reserves. He put the number pf men called to the colors from August, I!U4, to Ist .Tune, 1017, at 13,130,000, from which he deducts f1,940,000 represented as follows: Definite losses 3,600,000, rejected as unfit 2,200,000, residents (on permission) abroad and wounded under treatment 1,110,000. General Lacroix took the German effectives employed on Ist June at the front and in the interior as numbering 5,435,000, so that the reserves now available could not total more than 750,000. He concluded that the German reserves would be found insufficient if the Allies showed an activity on alt fronts equal to that displayed last summer and during the past two months. The discrepancies between the de Lacroix and the Warner Allen figures are, perhaps, less serious than they appear, because much depends upon the ages within which the calculations are made. But putting Germany's supply of men between the ages of 17 and 4i5 at the beginning of the war at fourteen million, and allowing only two million as permanently unfit—or one in seven, against one in three in New Zealand—the greatest number she can have available to-day is not much more than six million. Possibly four to five million would be nearer the mark. It is estimated she has two and a half million on the western front, the rest being on the east front, with the Austrians, or at the depots. By attacking vigorously, as they have been doing recently, the Anglo-French forces are, it is stated, accounting for two hundred thousand Germans a month. For nine months this would total a little under two million. At that rate, Germany can last another twelve months at least. But she is getting very anxious about the future, for she knows better than the Allies that so far as man supply is concerned she must go under first. If only Russia could at the same time attack the Germans on the eastern front the process of exhaustion would be greatly accelerated. The Allies appear bent on giving Germany no respite. Since August the weather conditions on the West have been very unfavorable for fighting, but, notwithstanding, the Anglp-French have been driving forward, gaining ground, perhaps slowly, but all the time eating into the enemy's vitals. After all, that

' • '•'>« '••• We ,•?.:( <y,iy ai-'iieve •";ir»k'to »ktory l«v 1 -in* (lermans out oj. UirLion, l';:u'.M l " ' 11;w ''uminaiib portions t!ic 'have recently gained they may be able to manoeuvre ill such a \v;iy us to deal u shattering l'Viw to tliu enemy, as the latter lias recently done to the Italians; but at present it would appear that the forces actually on the front are too evenly matched in'machinery and men to hope for any decisive stroke of this kind, and (hat for victory we must look more to' I,ho slower, 10-s spectacular "rindm™ down process, aiul the figures above referred to enable one to judge approximately the nature- of the work still remaining to be done before the most frightful peril that has ever threatened mankind is dissipated.