annot measure the sacrifice and suffering
of these lives. If we could know the infinite value of the unit of
personality, or compute the preciousness and potentiality of a single
life destroyed, we might then hope to multiply it by the million. If
human scales could weigh the sorrow of a widow's heart, could compute
the anguish of a mother's loss, could prophesy the deprivation of an
orphan's lot, or know the good which might have been done by even one
man who has now been killed, we would then be in a position to begin to
estimate the casualty list.

There are today nearly 40,000,000 men with the colors. If we add to
these the 5,000,000 already killed, the 6,000,000 prisoners and the
large number discharged as unfit for further service, we have a total
of far more than 50,000,000 who have been with the colors in the first
three years of the war. We can better realize the significance of this
statement if we remember that in no previous war have more than
3,000,000 men faced each other in conflict. According to Gibbon,
Rome's great standing army was not over 400,000 men. Napoleon's grand
army did not exceed 700,000, and in the Battle of Waterloo less than
200,000 men were engaged. In the American Civil War less than
3,000,000, and in the Russo-Japanese War only 2,500,000 men were
employed. Indeed, if we sum up the twenty greatest wars of the last
one hundred and twenty-five years, from the Napoleonic Wars to the
present time, less than 20,000,000 men were engaged, while in this war
nearly twice that number are now under arms. Britain alone has
enrolled over 5,000,000 for the army, with 1,000,000 more from the
overseas dominions, and about 500,000 for the navy. Germany has called
some 12,000,000 and Russia more than 12,000,000 to the colors.

By the end of 1917 nearly 6,000,000 men will have been killed. Less
than 5,500,000 were killed in the twenty greatest wars of the last
century and a quarter, all combined. In the Battle of Gettysburg only
3,000 were killed. England's casualty list during a vigorous offensive
averages over 3,000 every day. In the first ten days alone of the
battle of the Somme, the British lost 200,000 in killed or wounded.
France as a whole has lost even more heavily, while Germany's casualty
list during the great battles of the Somme and in Flanders has averaged
200,000 a month. When our own relatives are at the front, and our own
boys are in the line, we realize what these statisti