by Richard van Pelt, WWI Correspondent

For the first time since the start of the war, the lead headline did not report the course of the struggles on the two European fronts:

GREATEST OF ALL THE STATE’S FAIRS OPENS TODAY
200 Carloads of Exhibits From All Parts of the State

A smaller headline, “Total Is Half Million” related more sobering news:

London, Sept. 28. – Some idea of what the war’s losses have been thus far, military men pointed out here today, can be gathered from the German official admission that the fatherland’s killed, wounded and missing up to Sunday totaled 104,580.

The allies, it was owned, had lost approximately as many more in the fighting in France; there were also to be taken into consideration Austria’s enormous losses in Galicia and Russian Poland. Russia had suffered heavily in the same two fields, and in East Prussia and the Austrian and Servian casualties, though small as compared with those to the north and westward, were nevertheless considered severe for the smaller wars of former days.

Taking all figures together, it was said that an estimate of 500,000 killed, wounded and missing would not be excessive.