I leave this comment with a quote from pre-WWII Germany and the humorist, Kurt Tucholsky, in “Französischer Witz,” 1932. “The war? I cannot find it to be so bad! The death of one man: this is a catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of deaths: that is a statistic!”
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see here for more accurate citations:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/
In 1925 a journalist and satirist named Kurt Tucholsky wrote a piece in a German newspaper that included a statement that was similar to the quotation. Here was the original text together with an English translation:[4]
Darauf sagt ein Diplomat vom Quai d’Orsay: „Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!”
At which a diplomat from French Ministry of Foreign Affairs replies: “The war? I can’t find it too terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!”
And so, in aimbic pentameter---
When Speedy PIF's the call to arms this day,
He speeds to bring yet more to swell the fray;
See how the posts and comments come to play
As dying men five thousand miles away
Show what is truly real, bleeds out, away.
To L O L and sing and dance just may
Reduce the deaths to stats and dulled cliché.