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Show COMPARISON OF BATTLE FATALITIES. Statistics on the casualties suffered by the American army, as compared with the losses in our past wan. art' given as follows: The battle death-rate (killed and died of wounds) for the American expeditionary ex-peditionary army has been officially given as C.l per cent, for the whole pe- rlod of America's participation in tho war. The yearly rate is 5-7 per cent, ?nd with the disease death rate of 1.7 per cent added; the total death-ra'e averages '7.4 per cent a year, i Compared with earlier times In modern warfare these death rates f.hov an extraordinary reduction in army fatalities fftm disease and a heavy increase In the battle death-rate, But the total death-rate remains, cu-I cu-I rlously, about the same. H The official record of dcaih losses III in the British expeditionary armies-on the continent during the Napoleonic wars from 1793 to 1815 averaged almost al-most exactly 7 per cent, but more than half of that rate must have been due to disease. The batUo death-rate for the British at Waterloo in not more than two days of fighting was a little over 6 per cent, which was much more than the average battlo death-rate for a. whole year at that time Our Civil war battle death-rate on the Union side per year was 3.3 per cent, but the disease death-rate was 6.5 per cent, or a total of 9.8 per cent per year. Meade had 82.000 men at Gettysburg and lost 2834 in killed during the three days, or about 3 per cent. But this apparently does not include in-clude those who died later from wounds. On the other hand, and by way of illustration il-lustration from an extreme case, the 107th United States infantry regiraeuu 'the old New York 7th. lost in killed iand dead from wrunds in the single battle of September 29 last against the Hindenbuig line about 400 men out of almost 3000 men in acUon, or around 14 per cent. The great advance of invention In death dealing appliances thus appears to have harl only the effect of inakijq up in the batUc death-rate what had been gained over former times from a reduction in the disease death-rate Battles now are more continuous and bloody, but when the old average rate of Iobscs has been reached the fight-ling fight-ling stops for recuperation of forces as it did then. |