The Lost Generation

Abstract

This chapter constitutes the first full account of the social distribution of British casualties in the Great War. One reason why such a study has not been carried out before is that we have not had reliable estimates of war losses for the nation as a whole. It is a remarkable fact that the most fundamental question about the effect of the war — the number and ages of those who died in it — has never been rigorously examined. Instead, wildly varying estimates have been presented, differing by up to 100 per cent, of the total killed.