RUSSIA'S SACRIFICE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CVII, Issue 16441, 12 January 1918, Page 2

RUSSIA'S SACRIFICE.

PROFESSOR PARES GIVES FIGURES. According to a special cable to the Now York ''Times" from London, a very definite view of Premier Kerensky's statement that "we are now worn out and have a. right to claim that the Allies sliall now take the heaviest part of the burden on their shoulders " has been given to a representative of the "Observer," by Professor Pares, who has been on war service with the Russian armies and was later in Pebrograd. He is Professor of Russian History and head of the school of Russian studies in the University of Liverpool. He regards Kerensky's statement not as an expression of policy, but as an appeal to the Allies' sympathy and an understanding of the enormous sacrifices that Russia lias made. "Korensky would never have made this statement tfiroiigh the foreign press." Professor Pares sa.id, "if ho had wished it to bo an -expression of policy. In that case he would, of course, have spoken to the Ambassadors. "The extent of the sacrifices which Russia has already made are not and cannot be realised here until the full statistics of Russia's losses are published. I may say that in July, 1910, after only one year of war, I know on th.3 authority of the Russian War Office that the Russian losses to that date amounted to 3,800,000 men. Your readers will be able to give themso'.ves a picture of the present situation when they realise what Russia has suffered since that time. "Living for two years with tho troops on the Russian front line, 1 have fonnd that it was taken for granted that when they went into action every single operation .was likely to cost them either half or'three-quarters of the ■effectives of the troops engaged. "Las* May I was in an operation (of which the news was never given to the public) in which during a month's successful fighting they losb half, and (after being brought up to strength) during an unsuccessful day's fighting throe-quarters of their men. To show that the ttest was not their successes I ■will say that in November of last year. In four days of more or less successful fighting at which I was present, they lost close to three-quarters of the men engaged, and that, lot me add, without a grumble. . "The_ explanation is simple. Russia has paid in men what she lacked in munitions, and her successes, as her failures, were at a far more terrible cost than our own."