a single man killed is a misfortune, a million is a statistic (maybe 1948)

[Garson O'Toole]

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
Attributed to Josef Stalin in New York Times Book Review, September
28, 1958.

Fred Shapiro gave this citation in his great column at the NYT blog on
October 29th. This quote and its suspiciously late attribution were
discussed here on ADS-L in 2004.

I think I have found an interesting earlier near-match through Google
Books that does not mention Stalin. Unfortunately, only snippets are
displayed by the search engine. The volume number specified by Google
does match the date of 1948, but the database is notorious for
providing inaccurate dates. Is this citation worth pursuing? Perhaps
someone conveniently close to a comprehensive library could check this
citation on paper?

A Frenchman has aptly remarked that "a single man killed is a
misfortune, a million is a statistic."

Unverified Citation: The Atlantic, page 106, Volume 182, Atlantic
Monthly Co., 1948.

http://books.google.com/books?id=mT8RAAAAIAAJ&q=%22a+statistic%22#search_anchor

Thanks for any help you can provide. Also, if this is an inappropriate
request for the list please let me know.

Garson O'Toole

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