RUSSIA'S LOSSES
SIR,—Mr. Sheppard's calculations are faulty. He reckons civilian losses in the total dead of the British Empire, but not in those of the Soviet Union. Does he realise that several millions of Soviet civilians have been slaughtered or starved to death by the Germans? Taking his figures of Service and Merchant Navy losses together, however, and allowing as he does for September, we arrive at roughly 600,00o for the British Empire—out of a total population of 525 millions, or I in 875.
The Soviet Service dead and missing (and Soviet prisoners of war are almost as good as dead) numbered by June 22nd, 1943, some 4,200,000. That was before the great offensive, and perhaps 5 millions is not an over-estimate now. Out of a total of 193 million people, that
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