“How much would it cost in American lives?” Lindbergh demands. Who can tell? We know only that until the Germans went into Russia the casualties in this war had been inconsiderable compared with the last war. As long as combat was confined to the air and the sea, the numbers of combatant lives lost were in the thousands compared with the hundreds of thousands of soldier lives lost in comparable periods in the land fighting of the last war. The bombardment of civilians has been ghastly, but the number of lives lost has been on the whole surprisingly small--41,900 persons killed in Britain from January 1940 to June 1941. It has even been asserted that in Britain, despite the hardships, war has so elevated the tone, the spirit of the population, that death by disease has declined until the gain has made up for the loss of life by bombardment. The relatively small number of deaths is explained by Mr. Churchill as the result of air raid precautions. After the bloodiest month of the Battle of Britain, September 1940, Mr. Churchill made a remarkable analysis. “We are told,” he said, “by the Germans that 251 tons of explosives were thrown upon London in a single night, that is to say, only a few tons less than the total dropped on the whole country throughout the last war. Now we know exactly what our casualties have been. On that particular Thursday night 180 persons were killed in London as a result of 251 tons of bombs. That is to say it took one ton of bombs to kill three-quarters of a person. We know, of course, exactly the ratio of loss in the last war, because all the facts were ascertained after it was over. In that war the small bombs of early patterns which were used killed ten persons for every ton discharged in the built-up areas. That is, the mortality is now less than one-tenth of the mortality attaching to the German bombing attacks in the last war.... “What is the explanation? There can only be one, namely the vastly improved methods of shelter which have been adopted.... Whereas when we entered this war at the call of duty and honor we expected to sustain losses which would amount to 3,000 killed in a single night and 12,000 wounded, night after night, and made hospital arrangements on the basis of a quarter of a million casualties merely as a first provision; whereas that is what we did at the beginning of the war, we have actually had since it began, up to last Saturday, as a result of air bombing, about 8,500 killed and 13,000 wounded.” This was after three months of the Blitz; today with the figure of 41,900 as the total dead, the Prime Minister’s point is all the stronger as he concluded: “This shows that things do not always turn out as badly as one expects.” Mr. Churchill might have been speaking directly to Lindbergh.