IV. COST OF COAL AND EXTRAS. A big ship going at top speed burns about 1,000 tons a day at 50 francs a ton (if not more), making 50,000 francs a day. Admitting the total of the operations at top speed and under full steam to have lasted at least one day, put down two and a half million for the big ships alone. Adding the coal for the smaller boats will bring it up to three million. The wear and tear of boilers, dynamos, and machinery, other than the damage due to the actual fighting, would make this amount up to 20 million, which, added to the preceding 950 and rounding it out with things we may not have accounted for, would constitute a total of about forty million pounds sterling for the material alone. V. CAPITAL REPRESENTED BY THE OFFICERS AND CREWS. Certain ships had only one or a few men saved. The total number of dead certainly exceeds 10,000 men. There were also many wounded, some permanently disabled, others only partly crippled. Admitting a total of 20,000 persons for whom the State must pay pensions, either to them or to their dependants, and taking an average of 10,000 francs for the annual pension, we get a sum of 20 millions as a yearly charge, which at five per cent. represents a capital of 400 million francs. It is impossible to appreciate the value represented by these 10,000 killed and 10,000 wounded, all taken from among the most fit of both nations, nor the ruin brought by their death to their families. But it is not far from the truth to put 500 millions as the total of the human loss, which, added to the preceding billion, makes the cost of the few hours of the Battle of Jutland about sixty million pounds sterling. So there you have Villiers’ estimate. For the sake of appearances, Fourgues wished to quibble over every article, but Villiers could not be shaken because he had made his calculations according to some technical reviews he got in France and England and he said his figures were, if anything, below the actual losses. Ships always cost more than is officially stated and in time of war, coal, shells, and the rest go up from week to week, and, he said, it was very moderate of him to have reckoned 5 per cent. instead of 9 per cent. for the pensions. “But, skipper, it’s not worth while to wrangle over a hundred millions more or less. Take any sum between one and two billions of francs. Do you mean to tell me that it made a difference of so much as a quarter of a second to the duration of the war?” “But if they could have overwhelmed the Boches and bashed their fleet to blazes----” “That would have cost three or four or five billions because the English would have suffered as well, and what then?” “Then the English would only have to go back to port and warm their toes instead of being on tenterhooks all the time, leading a dog’s life on account of the big German ships.”