injured for life. The total American casualties are 264,000. The total
British casualties--among them from 700,000 to 800,000 dead--are
2,228,000 out of a total white population for the Empire of not much
more than two-thirds of the population of the United States. There is
small room for "belittling" here. A silent clasp of the hands between
our two nations would seem to be the natural gesture in face of such
facts as these.




II.


Such thoughts, however, belong to the emotional or tragic elements in
the British war-consciousness. Let me turn to others of a different
kind--the intellectual and reflective elements--and the changing
estimates which they bring about.

Take for instance what we have been accustomed to call the "March
retreat" of last year. The dispatch of Sir Douglas Haig describing the
actions of March and April last year was so headed in the _Times_,
though nothing of the kind appears in the official publication. And we
can all remember in England the gnawing anxiety of every day and every
hour from March 21st up to the end of April, when the German offensive
had beaten itself out, on the British front at least, and the rushing
over of the British reinforcements, together with the rapid incoming
of the Americans, had given the British Army the breathing space of
which three months later it made the use we know.