mortality of our battlefields has been mournful enough, especially among
officers--where the death percentage has been higher than in any other war
we ever waged.

On the other hand, the Germans have had to pay a fearful price for
the death-toll they have exacted of us and our Allies, seeing that,
according to their own official admission, their casualties to the end of
September amounted to over 500,000 for the Prussian army alone, while the
corresponding figures for Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and other States
have to be added; so that the estimate of Mr. Hilaire Belloc that the
total losses of the Germans up to date must be somewhere near a million
and three-quarters men would appear to be not very far out.

Well now, supposing that the war were to last for two years, it follows
that, at the same rate of loss, the German casualties would amount to
12,250,000, which is almost unthinkable. Its very destructiveness should
tend to shorten the duration of this terrible war. As Mr. Asquith said at
the opening of Parliament, in a curiously cryptic and significant passage:
"The war may last long. I doubt myself if it will last as long as many
people originally predicted." God grant that this may be so!

But in the meantime there are no signs of any abatement of fury on the
part of the Imperial Hun of Berlin, who stamps, and struts, and rages like
Pistol on the field of Agincourt; and "Bid him prepare, for I will cut his
throat!" is ever the burden of his objurgations. How different from the
calm, serene, dignified utterances of our own gracious Sovereign and the
despatches of his Generals are the minatory rantings of the Kaiser, his
von Klucks, and his Crown Princes of Bavaria, with their vicious appeals
to the worst passions of their soldiers against the English as the most
bitterly hated of all their foes!