In view of the enormous numbers of men in the present war, the absolute figures of losses are appalling enough. Relatively, however, the losses are lower than in many previous wars. In no great battle of the war, probably, has the individual soldier stood so good a chance of being wounded or killed as did those--to mention a few cases only--who fought at Fredericksburg or Gettysburg, at Stone River or Chickamauga, at Waterloo, at Aspern, at Borodino, or Leipsic. At Fredericksburg, Burnside lost, in a few hours, one-tenth of his army, the loss in that portion actively engaged amounting to 16 per cent; at Gettysburg, in three days, one-fifth of the Union army and almost one-third of the Confederate army were killed or wounded; at Chickamauga and at Stone River over one-fourth of the Confederate forces engaged were lost, while the casualties sustained by Grant’s army in the seven-days’ wilderness battles amounted to the same appalling proportion. As to the Napoleonic wars, at Waterloo 40 per cent of the French army--30,000 out of 74,000--were lost in a few hours’ time; at Austerlitz, the French, although overwhelmingly victorious, lost almost one-ninth of the army in one day’s fighting, while the allies lost nearly half of theirs; at Borodino, in a single day, the victorious French suffered casualties of 22½ per cent, the defeated Russians casualties of 50 per cent of the armies engaged; at Aspern, a drawn battle, both French and Austrians lost, in killed and wounded, over one-fourth of the total armies engaged; at Albuera over one-fourth of the French and one-fifth of the allied armies were lost, but the British force, which bore the brunt of the allied fighting, lost 4,100 men out of a total of 8,000 engaged. In the present war, because of an unrescinded order, we are told, a Canadian detachment of 800 left 600 men on the field. But this is more than matched on both sides at Gettysburg, where with no mistake in orders one Confederate regiment lost 720 men out of 800, while a Union regiment lost 82 per cent of the men engaged. Sixty-two Union regiments in this war sustained losses in some single battle in excess of 50 per cent, a record equalled on the southern side by forty-three regiments. Those killed in action today are as irrevocably dead as those killed in any former war; but of those merely wounded (about four-fifths of all battle casualties) the prospect of recovering is incomparably better than in any previous war, while the prospect of death from disease incurred in service is likewise vastly diminished. BRAVERY THEN AND NOW