On the other hand, the Germans have had to pay a fearful price for the death-toll they have exacted of us and our Allies, seeing that, according to their own official admission, their casualties to the end of September amounted to over 500,000 for the Prussian army alone, while the corresponding figures for Bavaria, Wuertemberg, Baden, and other States have to be added; so that the estimate of Mr. Hilaire Belloc that the total losses of the Germans up to date must be somewhere near a million and three-quarters men would appear to be not very far out.

Well now, supposing that the war were to last for two years, it follows that, at the same rate of loss, the German casualties would amount to 12,250,000, which is almost unthinkable.  Its very destructiveness should tend to shorten the duration of this terrible war.  As Mr. Asquith said at the opening of Parliament, in a curiously cryptic and significant passage:  “The war may last long.  I doubt myself if it will last as long as many people originally predicted.”  God grant that this may be so!

But in the meantime there are no signs of any abatement of fury on the part of the Imperial Hun of Berlin, who stamps, and struts, and rages like Pistol on the field of Agincourt; and “Bid him prepare, for I will cut his throat!” is ever the burden of his objurgations.  How different from the calm, serene, dignified utterances of our own gracious Sovereign and the despatches of his Generals are the minatory rantings of the Kaiser, his von Klucks, and his Crown Princes of Bavaria, with their vicious appeals to the worst passions of their soldiers against the English as the most bitterly hated of all their foes!

[Continued overleaf.

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The illustrated war news, Nov. 18, 1914—­5

[Illustration:  He was A man:  Field-Marshall Earl Roberts, the world-famous soldier, who died at sir John French’s headquarters.]

Full of years and honours, Lord Roberts has met death upon the Field of Honour as surely as though he had died fighting at the head of the brave soldiers whom he loved so well.  To enumerate his qualities:  indomitable courage, keen intelligence, broad humanity, is to gild refined gold.  At the call of duty he visited the Army and the Indian soldiers in France, despite his eighty-two years; there he caught a chill and passed peacefully away.  The message to Lady Roberts by Field-Marshall Sir John French will find universal echo:  “...Your grief is shared by us who mourn the loss of a much-loved chief ...  It seems a fitter ending to the life of so great a soldier that he should have passed away in the midst of the troops he loved so well and within the sound of the guns.”