A.-British casualties reported in December, 1917, reached a total of 79,527, divided as follows: Killed or died of wounds-officers, 1,045; men, 14,805. Wounded or missing-officers, 3,342; men, 60,335. Casualties reported from December 26 to 31 were 9,951, divided as follows: Killed or died of wounds-officers, 65; men, 2,059. Wounded or missing-officers, 238; men, 7,589. The total British casualties for the last six months of 1917 were 521,373, the lowest figure in any one month being 60,373 for August.

Q. What is the proportion of officers to men killed and wounded?

A. That is difficult to say, as only Great Britain gives any particulars as to how many officers are among the casualties. It is pretty certain that at the beginning of the war the losses of English officers were heavier than those of the French, Germans or Russians. All neutrals appear to agree that the British officer exposed himself too much, but that fault has been remedied, and they have learned that, after all, an officer is the part of the machinery of an army most difficult to replace. Roughly, there was one officer to every forty men in the British Army. In the early engagements there was one officer to every thirty men in the casualty lists, but sometimes the proportion was as high as one to fifteen.

The proportion of British officers to men killed ran about 1 to 15 in 1917 and 1918.

Q. What were the Russian losses

at Tannenberg?

A.-Seventy thousand men were reported to have been captured there, and some 100,000 were killed or wounded.

The vastness of the losses was due to the fact that von Hindenburg drove great masses of the Czar's soldiers into the lakes. It is said that his army was numerically much inferior to that of the Russians, but by the skilful use of the railways, on ground which he had studied for very many years, he was able to deIceive the Russians as to the size of his forces, and entangle them in the lakes.

Q. What casualties have the Canadians sustained?

A.-Up to the end of June, 1917, the casualties were as follows:

attack on Liége?

a soldier?

A.-The French General Percin has estimated that in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, it cost $21,000 each; in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, it cost $20,500. It is impossible to make even a rough estimate as to the amount it costs to kill a man in the present war. It is undoubtedly costing more to kill one now than it did in 1914. If we assume that during the first three years the total number of men killed was 3,000,000, and the total amount of cash expended by the belligerents on the war was $75,000,000,000, it would work out at $25,000 per man killed.

Q.-Is it true that the Germans use moss instead of cotton wool for dressing wounds?

A. The Germans are not alone in using it. Sphagnum moss is used by the British also. Special machinery has been set up in Scotland to prepare the moss for use. It is washed first and freed from any foreign substance. It then is wrung out and passes to the drying room. After being thoroughly dried it is weighed and compressed in powerful hydraulic presses. It is being widely used now, giving indeed much better results than cotton wool. Its healing powers were discovered quite by accident. A worker met with a serious injury in a peat moss litter works in Germany, and, no appliances being handy, his fellows laid moss litter on the wound and bandaged it up. When the man reached a hospital, the doctors were horrified at the dirty-looking litter, and declared that the limb would have to be amputated. They found, however, that far from poisoning the wound, as they had feared, the injury had been actually cleaned by the rude emergency dressing. Thus was "discovered" sphagnum moss from the surgeon's point of view.

Q. Are all soldiers vaccinated against typhoid?

A. Yes. All the British, French, German and American soldiers are inoculated against typhoid on the American plan, which proved singularly successful only recently when our troops were on the Mexican border. The Japanese used the system, or one like it, in the Russo-Japanese War with wonderful results.

Q. Are our soldiers vaccinated against anything else?

A. Yes. They get a series of inoculations. They are, of course, vaccinated

against small-pox. In addition, they are inoculated against the pneumonia germ, against measles and scarlet fever, and specialists were working in 1918 to find the germ of the dreaded "trench fever."

Q. What is tetanus?

A. It is the disorder known by the common name of lockjaw. It is caused by the bacilli tetani, a germ having its home in the earth. For this reason the grim affliction is so prevalent among wounded soldiers, who often lie for hours with open wounds, on the fields, or in trenches. In acute cases the chance of recovery is exceedingly remote.

Q. Is there no cure?

A. There is an antitoxin treatment, first used on an extensive and radical scale during the war. It is not a positive cure, but it has greatly minimized the fatalities.

Q. Are many soldiers incapaci

tated without being wounded? A. Yes. Very many. There are big groups who suffer from functional disturbances of the central nervous system. These cases present paralyses and other disturbances of locomotion, which are purely hysterical, or they show mental disorders which are also functional, but are like true insanity. One of the characteristic cases is that known as "shell shock,” due to sudden and unexpected exposure to the vibration and noise of the discharge of high explosives. Much success has been achieved by systems of nerve and muscle education, especially in French institutions devoted to this work.

Q-Has the war produced new diseases?

A.-Yes-new in the sense that Western and Central Europe had never been afflicted by them before. One is "spotted

tween two lines?

A. The wounded remain where they fall. It is impossible to remove them. Those who can do so endeavor to crawl away. Succeeding charges go over them. There is no practice in the war of allowing the enemy to remove them from the zone of fire. After the attacks have failed, all those who are severely wounded may have to remain where they are, and the majority die.

Q. How does care of wounded

compare with the Civil War? A. The wounded in the Civil War were collected at night by both armies, instead of during the conflict, each side by mutual agreement allowing the other side to carry on the work unmolested.

Little was done toward speeding up the treatment of the wounded, except in a few cases that came to the attention of the army surgeon, as he rode about the battlefield in company with mounted staff officers. He would select a few of the less serious cases, carry them to a favorable place, and give treatment. Only in the latter part of the war were anything like dressing-stations or field-hospitals established, and then only when buildings near by offered temporary shelter.

Q. Does the medical service suf

fer heavily in this war? A-During three years of war the British Medical Corps suffered 11,667 casualties, with a death-roll of 1,200.

mally found only in Southeastern Europe. Another disease is known as "trench fever," which is a short, very debilitating fever of low mortality, that incapacitates its victims for an appreciable period.

Q-Has antisepsis been developed in this war?

A.-Very much so. Dr. Samuel W. Lambert, dean of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, says:

"The greatest additions to the antiseptic treatment of wounds have come from the studies of Dr. Dakin, who has applied the properties of chlorine preparations to the disinfection of wounds. The problem which he solved was to discover strong antiseptics able to destroy microbes without damaging normal tissues. Alexis Carrel developed a method of using Dr. Dakin's antiseptics by putting into the wounded tissues a system of multiple tubes, and thus keeping the wound constantly washed with the antiseptic solution."

Dr.

Q.-Can disabled soldiers really be made self-supporting?

A. Of the men returned in Canada unfit for military service, 80 per cent return to their former occupations without vocational training or are incapable of such training, and 20 per cent require vocational training. One-half of those requiring vocational training, or 10 per cent of those returned unfit for military service, require complete vocational re-educa

tion, and one-half partial vocational reeducation.

Q. What was the first nation to

use her wounded over again?

A.-Belgium, whose depletion has been the greatest, was the first nation successfully to use her men over again. Not only has the large Belgian re-education center of Port Villez been self-supporting, but it has paid back to the Belgian Government the entire capital cost of installation. The men, meantime, have not only received 43 centimes per day, the regular pay of the Belgian soldier, but also 5 to 20 centimes an hour, according to their work. In addition, surplus profits are funded for the men. Forty-three trades are taught at Port Villez under the most competent instructors. A large part of the material for the Belgian Army is made by them.

Q. What are we going to do about

men who are disabled?

A.-Plans for the rehabilitation and reeducation of soldiers and sailors disabled in the war, so that they may actually earn higher wages than before their enlistment, have been outlined in two reports submitted to Congress by the Federal Board of Vocational Education. The reports urged an immediate appropriation for the training of teachers for the work and for establishing great schools near hospitals in all parts of the country.

Q.-Has Germany reclaimed many disabled men?

A.-The Federal Board of Vocational Education says:

"It is claimed that Germany uses 85 to 90 per cent of her disabled back of the lines, and that the majority of the remaining 10 to 15 per cent are entirely selfsupporting."

Q. What is the difference between indemnity and reparation?

A.-In many ways the terms are synonymous. A nation sufficiently victorious to lay down terms that its enemy simply must accept, would be very likely to make only very dubious technical distinction between the two.

Adhering closely to the narrow meaning of the two words, however, there is a decided difference. The payment of indemnity carries with it a confession that the nation paying it has wrongfully caused a war. No nation acknowledges such a thing as a rule. Therefore indemnity in its final essence is a payment exacted under duress from a vanquished nation.

Reparation, on the other hand, may conceivably be a voluntary payment made by a victorious nation. Such reparation would be chiefly a matter of bookkeeping, limiting itself to repayment of actual material values destroyed. It might possibly extend so far as to repay even the war-expenses of the nation getting the reparation, but that is highly unlikely.

Q. Which would involve the most money-indemnity or repara

tion?

A.-Indemnity is an arbitrarily fixed sum which the vanquished nation is expected to pay without argument. A victor might exact an indemnity which is actually less than his own material money losses that is, it might be less than actual reparation would cost. But indemnity generally is a huge sum whose basic principle would be that the vanquished must pay first of all the war-expenses of the victor. To this might be added anything that the victor may choose, or, at least, as much as he might think the vanquished can pay. Such indemnity might include both material and intangible damages-loss of life, of trade, sufferings of the nation at home, loss of trade, injury to national prestige, even injury to national dignity.

Q-What was the first pitched

battle of the war?

A. The first pitched battle of the war was in front of Metz after French forces had crossed the German frontier. It was fought while German forces still were in Belgium, before they had made their way into France. The French were defeated.

Q. How many British fought at Namur?

A.-It is estimated by British writers that French's command at that time was about 70,000 men.

Q. Why did the French fall back on Paris?

A. The original French plan called for a stand at the Belgium frontier near Namur. This point was to be held by a smaller force than was thrown against it by the enemy and was to hold out at all costs. Behind the line were to be collected the reserves and forces of maneuvering until they were so organized as to be able to strike a concentrated blow at some point.

The force at Namur did not hold out so long as was necessary and they were virtually overwhelmed and came near to being outflanked. Consequently they had to retreat or be annihilated. They retreated and the whole French line had to fall back with them. It fell back as slowly as possible so as to allow the maneuvering masses to form at its rear. These masses were in fighting trim when the Meuse was reached; here a stand was made and their strength brought into play.

Q. When did a Russian army

make a wonderful escape? A.-After the fall of Warsaw in 1915, General Hindenburg tried to smash between two parts of the Russian Army, and capture or destroy it in the Pripet Marshes. The Russian situation was so desperate that for a few days total disaster seemed inevitable. But by wonderfully brilliant tactics (among the most brilliant in the war, during which at one time they actually surrounded two German army corps even while they were surrounded themselves) they broke their way out.

The retreat, under the circumstances, could not fail to be disastrous. The Germans made 100,000 prisoners during a week; but the Russian Army, as an army, was saved.

Q.-What was the most spectacular operation of the war?

A.-Perhaps it was the sea and land attack on the Dardanelles. But the one that was clearest and most graphic to the American people was no doubt the tremendous attack on, and the marvellous defense of Verdun, the military key to the west front, which the German Crown Prince tried to take in 1916. It has been, since 1871, the most important of the French defenses on the eastern frontier between the Argonne and the Vosges.

During the German advance of 1914 Verdun held out under violent attack, although the German were able to push a deep salient to the south at St. Mihiel.

In February, 1916, the armies of the German Crown Prince began a furious and sensational assault upon Verdun. At first the German offensive proved irresistible and led to the capture of a large portion of the fortified area around Verdun and of such important forts as Douaumont and Vaux. But the German losses were terrific. Verdun was called "the grave" by German soldiers, and the final check administered to their attacks by the French marked the end of German offensive for a long period on the western front. A counter offensive, organized by General Nivelle in October, 1916, and another in August, 1917, enabled the French at small cost quickly to reclaim practically all the ground they had lost in the great German attack of 1916.

Q.-Is the Chemin des Dames a fort?

A.-No. It is simply a road, but a most important one, because it runs along a crest of hills overlooking the valley of the Ailette River in northern France. Here the Germans retained a foothold after the battle of the Aisne. The French offensive north of Rheims in the summer of 1917 included attacks on the town of Craonne and the Chemin des Dames.

The French success at the Chemin des Dames in June furnished some of the most desperate fighting of the war. German counter attacks against the ridge in