It would seem that gradually we become inured to numbers, immune to them. “Millions”, and “hundreds of thousands” lose their meaning and their ability to shock. Even the more human-scale “hundreds” – we should but can’t see them as individuals.
But the sad picture of one child’s red-jacketed body washed up on a Turkish beach, hair caked in mud, tells the latest chapter in the grim story of Syria’s desperate exodus more vividly than any statistic, more eloquently, demanding action more effectively. We need to see it, however shocking.
On Tuesday the bodies of 34 migrants, at least seven of them children and one pregnant woman, were found washed up at at two sites along Turkey's Aegean coast – a reminder, if we needed it, that this tragic trail is still with us in this new year, despite the winter, despite the well-reported dangers and difficulties they will face on the long road to a dreamed-of safe haven somewhere in Europe. The desperate are not discouraged by the dangers – their relentless flow gives the lie to those who say Europe must make it yet more difficult to come.
The International Organisation of Migration has catalogued the grim toll of migrant deaths last year. Some 3,771 died in the Mediterranean, up 400 on 2014, and of those, 805 on the Eastern route that includes Turkey’s Aegean coast and the island of Lesbos where so many head. Nearly 19 of every 1,000 who set out on this route would die.
The death toll was worst, however, on the journey from Libya where some 2,892 died – it also saw the worst individual tragedy when 800 drowned when one vessel capsized.
The organisation recorded total sea arrivals to Europe in 2015 at 1,004,356, or almost five times the previous year's total of 219,000. 106,776 migrants crossed into the Greek islands during the month of December, an average of more than 3,400 a day. Total migrant inflows by sea to Greece approached 850,000 arrivals last year.
And how does Europe respond? More borders, more guards. No room at the inn.