THE WAR’S TOLL OF LIVES.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5361, 19 February 1916, Page 7

THE WAR’S TOLL OF LIVES.

“The lists of casualties give some measure of the saddest part of the cost of war. In the Western area alone up to October 9th last the total Britih casualties' were 365,046, of whom 67,460 were killed. If to these losses in the main campaign are added the losses in other fields of ODerations there is obtained a total of 493,294 casualties, of whom 01,652 were killed and lie rest wounded or prisoners. “That,” says an English writer, “is the price our soldiers have had to pay in life and limb aad liberty during 14 months of the war. Judging from the point of view of normal death-rate or sickness-rate of the whole nation, the figures are small. But that comparison 1together misleading. In time of oeace death is busiest with the very young, whod do not yet know what life means, or with the old, who have often learnt too much of its meaning. In time of war those’ who go under are young men in the prime of life, full of joy of living, and linking the world by ties of love and vork. Their loss cannot he measured by mere figures, and for the generation that has known them it can never be made good. Yet war has been with j us since the world began, and with brief intervals of sanity among the nations wars will be repeated till the wotrld ends. Our business is iot to repine, but to prepare. We have to build up without delay fresh rrmies to replace the half million men who have been permanently or temponly lost to the nation. To do less than this would be wrong to those who remain. We and onr Allies can only wear Germany down by teadily maintaining, and in maqv directions increasing, the forces we have put into the field against her. Already, in spite of her recent successes in the Balkans, there are signs that the strain is becoming greater than she can long bear. Tt is our business to press harder and even harder upon her in order to secure that complete destruction of her power which alone can guarantee to the world even a moderate iftter val of peace.”