[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR4 Sin,—You have dealt in
the " News of the *Week " with the arguments of the letter from " An Italian," that appears in the Spectator of January 16th ; but inconclusive as are the arguments the figures on which they are founded are theria- selves very much open to question. " An Italian"-.gites the killed of England and Colonies as 689,246 or 614 0.16 per cent. of the population, as against 1.3 killed of the population of Italy and her Colonies. The General Annual Report on the British Army, Crnd. 1198 of 1920, gives the killed and died of the British Array between August 4th, 1914, and September 30th, 1919, as 573,307; and the missing and prisoners not repatriated to date and therefore pre- sumably dead as 49,865, total 628,372. To this should be added the killed of the Dominions given on official authority by the Times on January-2nd, 1920, as 137,639, plus their missing not repatriated, 508—a grand total of 761,519. To this should be- further added the not inconsiderable losses of the Royal Navy and of the Mercantile Marine, and some 50,000 -kfilled- abet. died of the Indian Army and " other Colonies 9 ant to mention more than 42,000 African native followers. '
Moreover- it is Great Britain that has to bear the burden of paying to the United States the interest on the money due to us by the Italians. I have not the material for ascer- taining • how much of this is under recent arrangements defrayed by-the Irish Free State, nor how many of the British Army 'casualties should be credited to Southern Ireland, but the population of the British Isles was in 1911 45,516,259, on which the 623,372 given above shows a percentage of over-1:3 per cent., again without reckoning any of our Naval losses. The -figures given on p. 238 of this year's Whitaker's Almanac -are still more unfavourable to " An Italian:"--I
RID Sir, &c.; •FonrEseun.
• castle Milli Barnstaple,- DeL4911.'
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