The Province tallies dreadful toll First World War took on human life
The First World War ended on Nov. 11, 1918. But it continued to dominate the front page of newspapers for months afterward.
On Dec. 5, 1918 the Province tried to put the loss of life in perspective.
“British Dead, 20 Abreast Would Take Ten Days to Pass Given Point,” said a headline.
“Estimate Based on Column Marching Past in Daylight. France Would Take Longer With Over Million Dead. Methuselah Could Not Have Counted Money Involved.”
The headline topped a story from an anonymous New York Herald writer.
“See the bank teller at his windows,” it stated.
“His cage is stacked high with bales of $10 bills. He is counting 100 bills every minute. He works 10 hours a day, seven days a week. He is trying to count the money spent on the world war. But he will never, never be able to do it — not he, nor his son, nor his son's son, nor many generations to come.
“To count in $10 bills the money spent on the war would take more than 1,000 years. Methuselah, who lived to be 969 years old, might have done it by working nights. No other mortal could.”
According to the story, the war cost “the appalling sum” of $221 billion, which it wrote out numerically (“221,000,000,000”), probably because it had a bigger impact.
The story ran with a chart titled “The Blood Shed and Treasure Spent.” It detailed the “men in arms,” “lives lost,” “total casualties” and “cost in dollars” per country or empire.
Canada was included in Great Britain, which sent an estimated 7.5 million men to war, had one million deaths and 3,049,991 casualties. It spent $40 billion in U.S. dollars.
Because the United States entered the war relatively late, it had a much smaller number of deaths (52,169) and casualties (235,117). But according to the chart, it spent $35 billion on the war, more than the $28 billion spent by France.
France had 1.1 million dead and four million casualties, a staggering 66 per cent of the six million French who fought in the war.
Despite a revolution in 1917, Russia still sent the most soldiers into the fray — 14 million. The chart said 3.5 million were killed out of a total casualty count of five million.
The Germans sent 11 million to war, and suffered 2.5 million dead and 6.9 million wounded. Germany spent an estimated $40 billion on the war.
Germany's chief ally, Austria-hungary and its empire, had 7.5 million soldiers in the war, two million deaths and 4.5 million casualties. Its costs were estimated at $25 billion, the same as Russia.
According to the Herald writer, the biggest parade in the U.S. during the war was a “preparedness parade” down Fifth Avenue in New York, which featured about 100,000 solders.
“All day long they marched, until after sunlight,” they wrote.
“Let us visualize the march of the British dead. At daybreak they start down Fifth Avenue, 20 abreast. Their fallen comrades follow a few paces behind, in close marching order. Until sundown these men who have `gone west' march down the avenue. The next day there is a similar parade, and the next and the next. For 10 days, the British dead pass in review.
“For 11 days, the French dead file down the avenue of the Allies. Three weeks of marching dead men. (It would take) two months and a half for the Allied dead to march past a given point … For the enemy dead to pass in review would require (another) six weeks.
“Throughout all the daylight hours of June, July, August and September, then, the ghastly procession would continue. It is an appalling picture to contemplate.”
As it turned out, the estimates were a bit off — according to a chart in Britannica.com, Britain's deaths were 908,371, not one million, and France's were 1,357,800, higher than the 1.1 million originally thought.
German deaths turned out to be 1,773,000, not 2.5 million. Russia's were 1.7 million, not 3.5 million. But the grand total was still 8,528,831 deaths and 37,267,904 wounded out of 65,038,810 combatants — a 57.5 per cent casualty rate.
This doesn't include the 13 million civilians who may have been killed during the war. Or the millions who died from the Spanish flu at the end of the war.