The total American casualties are 264,000.

The total British casualties--among them from 700,000 to 800,000 dead--are 2,228,000 out of a total white population for the Empire of not much more than two-thirds of the population of the United States.

There is small room for "belittling" here.

A silent clasp of the hands between our two nations would seem to be the natural gesture in face of such facts as these.
II.
Such thoughts, however, belong to the emotional or tragic elements in the British war-consciousness.

Let me turn to others of a different kind--the intellectual and reflective elements--and the changing estimates which they bring about.
Take for instance what we have been accustomed to call the "March retreat" of last year.