§ 32. Mr. OUTHWAITEasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether he can give an estimate of the number of Germans killed since the outbreak of war; and how many male Germans reach the age of eighteen each year?
§ Mr. TENNANTI am afraid I can satisfy the hon. Gentleman's bloodthirsty cravings only with estimates, and not with scientifically ascertained facts. According to the German official casualty lists published up to the 31st May, 690,268 of all ranks had been killed or died of wounds. I must not be taken as doing more than giving the official German figure. Hon. Gentlemen must form their own estimate of the credibility or accuracy of these figures. Any estimate, however, in the numbers of killed and died of wounds, whose names have been omitted from these casualty lists, must be purely conjectural 1363 In answer to the second part of the question, I may inform him that it has been calculated that the number of males between seventeen and eighteen years of age on the 1st December, 1914, was 674,580, and on the 1st December, 1915, 691,274.
§ Mr. OUTHWAITEWhy does the right hon. Gentleman refer to this question as being a bloodthirsty craving on my part, when the object of it was to show how many Germans of military age are killed each year and therefore the futility of the War?