31/10/1918 The cold grip of influenza

The war’s end seems to be approaching both on the Western Front and in Italy, but the struggle of humanity against the influenza pandemic shows no sign of abating. The more virulent second strain of the flu is wreaking havoc across the world, taking far more people to the domain of Hades than the war. In the USA some 195,000 people have died in the last month alone, far more than the USA’s total losses to combat in France. But the pestilence is not striking everywhere equally: Germany’s soldiers and civilians, weakened through their reduced diets, appear to suffering more so than their Allied counterparts. Some 3,000 people die of the influenza in Berlin this month, with Prince Max, the Chancellor, lucky not to be one of their number.

The flu’s effect on Germany’s army is even more striking. The influenza kills only a tiny proportion of those…