Mortality in War.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7294, 19 August 1898, Page 4

Mortality in War.

The London Diily Mail has been comparing the amount of blood shed in modern wars with the amount poured out.in-batfcles of old. ' The difference seems to depend on the distance between the combatants. In past ages the fighting was. done sword to sword and hand to hand, and generally the vanguished army was /annihilated. At Cannse 40,000 Romans oub of 80,000 were killed ; at Hastings, the victorious Normans lost 10,000 out of 60,000 ; at Crecy 30,000 Frenchmen oub of 100,000 were killed, without reckoning the wounded ; while ab Bannoekburn 135,000 men fought and 38,000 were killed. In these days of improved weapons one would expect the mortality would be somewhat greater. Yeb the mortality in the Crimean war was very 'slight when the number, of shots fired is remembered. It is estimated that the British troops fired 15,000,000 shots and killed 21,000 Russians, or 700 shots for every death. The French fired 29,000,000 shots and killed 51,000 Russians, or 590 shots for every death ; while the Russians fired 45,000,000 shots and killed 48,000 of the Allies, or 910 shots for every death. In the Italian campaign of 1859 rifles were used on both sidei, and the number of casualties ,ab Magenta and Solferino was 99 per 1000 combatants. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 was the first in which breechloaders were used, and, strange as ib may seem, their introduction only corroborated the foregoing facts that scientific war is les3 deadly than natural. Thus the invention of gunpowder reduced the proportion of killed and wounded among the troops engaged from about one-third to between one-fourth and one-fifth. Ab one time every bullet had its billet; and that may stilP be true, bub nevertheless the more modern proverb states thab ib takes a ton of shot to kill a man. Moreover, when the bullet finds a human billet, the man does not always die. In the FrancoPrussian war 116,812 Germans were wounded. Of these. 99,566 recovered, 11,023 died in hospital, and . 6223 on the field of battle. Of the case 3 treated in the German hospitals the wounds were distributed as follows : Lower extremitjes, 43,952 ; upper extremities, 33,914 chestand back, 11,595 ; head, -11,041; abdomen, 4554; neck, 1922. These figures show that comparatively few men are killed outright nowadays, and thab the wounded generally, recover. From a military .point of view, = -therefore, the methods of the good old days were cleaner,, more expeditions, and far more effective.