Nevertheless, when I spoke with a very prominent American, now in a responsible position abroad, he said: "The Germans have food and supplies, and they have an idea; and the only way to overcome that idea is by their destruction. The South had no resources for a three-year or four-year war, but it had an institution, an idea, and a determination. If you will recall it, at the close of the war there were practically no men left in the South. This war will be over when the fighting men of Germany have been killed off." I have so much respect for the business, mathematical, and scientific mind of Germany, that I cannot believe she will prefer the destruction of the German people, individually or collectively, to the destruction of the German war-machine which set on this war. I make the following estimate of the casualties--killed, wounded, missing, and prisoners--of the warring powers, omitting Turkey and Japan, up to February 1, 1915:-- German........ 1,800,000 French........ 1,200,000 Russian....... 1,600,000 Austrian...... 1,300,000 Belgian....... 200,000 Servian....... 150,000 Montenegrin... 20,000 English....... 110,000 Total....... 6,280,000 Not in a hundred years, or since the Napoleonic wars of 1793 to 1815, has there been any war approaching these casualties now reaching in six months to six millions. A remarkable statistical fact concerning the war, which I ran across in London, was a computation that the deaths in the navy were substantially equal to those in the army, from the beginning of the war up into November. Of casualties in the army, only about 10 per cent are deaths. There are few wounded to be returned home from a naval disaster. When the English army had suffered about 60,000 casualties, making about 6000 men killed, at the same time from the naval service 6000 boys in blue had gone down to watery graves. CHAPTER XIV IS IT THE PEOPLE'S WAR? German Socialism--German Unity--A Reverse Political System--Business Men without Political Influence--A Voice from the People--The German War Lord. In America there is no greater conflict of opinion than over the question of the relations of the German people to the present war. There are those who declare most emphatically that when the German people once understand this war there will be revolution in Germany, uprising of the socialists, and the sure overthrow of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Such opinions are not well based, and their authors do not understand the German temperament, the principles of German government, German organization, or German Socialism.