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About The commoner. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-1923 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 1917)
The Commoner 0L. 17, NOi lr 10 Kf & 'iff k f av Pte '.' fc?s H pr ,r.f, m fm ISv r mi Efc 'i ', ft'" t !' a: Wastage of War Appals Hall Caine ,. Following Is a'spec'.al cablo to the Now York Times, dated London, July 31, by Hall Calne. Copyright, 1917, by tho New York Times Com pany'. Copyright in Canada. j.Whon the war began the great soldier who poic the death of a sailor in tho-stormy waters loiiho northern seas was reported to have said AX would last threo years. It has already lasted 80 long, and is still going on. When will it end, and what is to come of it? l "It Adam," said Luther, "could have seen in afiyision what horrible instruments hs children were to invent to torture and to destroy each -other ho would have died of grief." Coming f,qur centuries later, we may go further than .that. If Adam could havo foreseen what we are now seeing he would have prayed for death that h.G might never propagate his species. Threo years ago, today (July 28) one of the oldest and feeblest of men, being crowned in the name of God and exercising the vicarship of Christ in his country, signed with h's trembling hand the proclamation which plunged the world into this war. History will concern itself with the cause of hfs act, but the motive assigned for it was that a member of hs family, a worthy but quite commonplace Austrian gentleman, as I havo reason to know and say, had been foully done to death. For that crime millions have 'since died, millions havo been wounded, and millions on millions have been brought down to the depths. One wouders what mad game the world has been playing. Bloodshed is indeed the staple of h'story, and history is the story of how often and with what ' merciless brutality the children of men nave slain each other. But if we could detach our selves from all thought of the impulses with which we are prosecuting this war, all questions of the righteousness of our cause, and conceive of God walking not in the garden but in tne dceort of this "war-worn world to make a reckon ing of the good and bad in tho doings of -the last three years, what audit it would seem to be, what lesson such as history never before supplied for people who have been saying that war has a nobility and grandeur of its own, that it is productive of more good than evil, and. is a beneficial influence in the betterment of man kind. THE LOSS TO CIVILIZATION Think flrst ot the injury the war has inflicted on the ordinary conditions of civilized existence. During forty-odd years preced'ng August 2, 1914', tho chief activities of Europe in science, law, legislation, literature, art, and general in dustry were directed toward protecting and purifying human life, making it more clean and sweet and secure. There never has been a great war that has not lowered the standard of exist ence, but during the last three years, by -he new necessities of modern warfare, from five to twenty-five millions of human creatures have been living a great part of their lives in holes in the ground, exposed to uncleanness and dis ease that belong, to the condition of savage man. Think next of the loss the war has inflicted on the world's wealth, not wealth that is represent ed by title deeds or pass books or gold and sti ver coins in the strongrooms of banks, but only the wealth that is necessary to tjie well-being of the race, the natural wealth that comes from the soil at the call of the sun aid ran and chang ing seasons and tho plow in the hands of man. There hasnever been a. great war that has not diminished tho sum of this natural wealth, but .thte present war, by the very number of nations engaged in it, has probably como nearer than any previous one to starving a large part of the Jwiirian family, not to say of doom. Will the world recover from this three years' loss of its' natural wealth? Nature works no overtime, the thousand sunrises since August, 1914, can never . como again. . Then think of the loss to the world in human lafcpr.. Every great war has, in some measure paralyzed industrial enterprise, but the necessi ties, of modern warfare have gone nearly to kill ing, it by submerging nearly all industrial en terprise in one sole work of producing these munitions of war which have now to be supplied In illimitable quantities. The ordinary progress ,pt civilization in Europe has for the last three years been brought well nigh to a standstill. This, too, Is a loss that is irretrievable. It has yot to be seen if the energies of the world can ever make up for it. But the waste of human labor is the least part of the world's injury. If tho output of all the munition factories in the world since August, 1914, had been sunk to the bottom of the sea that would have been waste enough. But think of the uses their products have been put to. As man does not lfvo by. bread alone, his flrst duty after the ne cessities of food and clothing have been satis fied is to surround himself with those things of beauty and sanctity wtfich link his life with the past and carry it on to the future. But the business of war is to batter down and burn up all such sacred and historic monuments, and never before has it done its work so ruthlessly. Peace builds cities; war destroys them. The big guns and high explosives of modern warfare, thundering and pounding on the habitation of man, have left vast tracts of Europe more bare and barren than the fiery desert. Large parts of Belgium, northern France, Serbia, and Ga licia, lately so full of life and fruitfulness, now looks as if. the rake of hell had gone over them. Where there wen? home and inns and churches in which people lived and loved and laughed from generation to generation, there is only a w'ldornes3 of empty space whereon no stone stands above another. Nothing like th's has hardened before in all the mad history of war; ne'ther earthquake nor eruption ever wrought such ruin. It is irreparable, no indemnity can restore what has been wrecked. Northern Eu-r-n may be rebuilt, but then it will be another Europe. The past that was p.live in it is dead. THE MISERY OF WAR ".'''' "' .Then think of the misery which scenes likTe tbpse involve. Misery Js the camp follower of all wars. There never has been a great war without its train of suffering. But the suffer ing of the past .three. ye?ars seems to have had no parallel in human history. Whole nat'ons have ,bpen plunged into.it, and the greatest suf fering has been that of the small and the pow erless. . , , Man that is born of woman must needs feel the ties of blood and brotherhood. Hence he gathers his children together into groups that have the same faUh and the same customs and speak the same d.ear tongue,, -That in the mysterious- workings of Providence is the origin of national spirit and love of motherland. It is totally undisturbed by any thought of whether she is big or little, strong or weak. My coun try Is my mother, arid, therefore, I love her and think her the' fairest spot the sun shfnes upon. But when war comes in the armor of great nations it has usually no use for such emotions. Faith custom, language, and kin dred count for nothing against momentary ml itary advantage pr when the lust of a' little earth. That was what happened three year! ago when Austria' marched over Serbia and Germany over Belgium, driving the nativVbo-n Mtt tt?f women and5 little children from their smoking homes and scattering them over the world. For this, too, there can be n possible reparation. Misery can n? L "? for Belgium will regain her severe ignty Zl material amends will be made to her butwhon peace is proclaimed the Belgians will go .bacl not to a country but to a cemetery. Every sten of their homeward way will be n tiTn , P minister finely said, atl !on of the cro to the scene of .Calvary, and if thejr resurrection is to come, as God grant it may i I ifi S" peace, not war, that will bring ?t be THE WORLD'S LOSS OF PEOPLE Then think of the injur tho n , tained during the W L World has ss population. For the ? JT1 from loss of and the happiness and generaT wVi tb race human family nature S w1"5 0f tllG strongest, bravest ami m,t e youngest, these are precisely vLlT"1' But work of bloodshed wd dSn,oSfnd,8 fr ,ts the world of the flol! u1 despoiling condemns some to en?crced ianh0(L " lifelong injury, and many tni"7, Sme to great war has committed Uhia 0at ?' Every the world and its Creator lf Crlm agaInst before the present one has done T ? war ately, so . t on so. great a scale, For iha .. . tion is possible. Gold arid silver r repara' for the loss of flesh and blood- nn Jt nl territory can atone to. us for the v,l . of ! g i tin ivnrJ nnnoYnHnna Wln "H1G1 r;; rrT: -,,, . " 1,yaue cmes after dead that lie under their n,w ' cs ' lio ono in 1?1atilni.. rrn.. . . "SSeS nlnn. secrated coast will not vo on,.,i i. . 'lat .,! ooVov. 171. . ytu "y lndemnltk. UCttU "- " uuuoi- meir wooden crno0 the sea in Flanders. The everlasting u proud if scorching tears that wash tw washes that of con- this sacrifice of lif Rh o ut b aitl the conquering sword in her hand orn?,thf11 tory will be in vain. ' r the vl- Then think of the wrong this war has ,in., the moral sense of mankind. Every vnrHl, ever its necessity or justification, is an oiS on. humanity, but war in our time a Tneve t fore in. man's history, is crime, in thPi, ages there has been much to exuese it ni ferences of language, conflicts nf fnwi, ' , ' Ir,.iT' ?' "oresln,,: ,.u, , oumuicut to create an atmmu phere of mistrust and suspicion in which Z have been bred, but modern education, travel commerce, literature, and, above all, science with its mysterious and angelic power, as in the telegraph, of bringing people in a moment imo the same place, ought to have broken down the barriers thaiTseparated the nations by showine them that they were members, one of another with the same joys and sorrows, the same weak' ness in the presence of man's relentless enemy the elements, and the same dependence on the Merciful Father who is over all. They have not done so. War has come with its insensate bru talities and in a day all the barbed wire fences of ignorance and prejudice have been set up afresh, charged with redoubled currents of hatred and malice and lust of blood. Had one tenth of alL the lfves destroyed by this three years' war been sw.allowed up by flood or earth quake, by another and more frightful, Messina, Galveston, or.' San Franc'sco, what a wave of human brotherhood would have swept over the na'tioiis making tlie. whole world kin! But man,' 'not .nature, has been the author of this tragedy.-' So, the people in Germany rejoice over the . sitikin'g of the Lusitania and illuminate the street's" of ' Berlin after ' the slaughter of little children in London; What a moral catastrophe! Can humanity ever recover from it after the bitterness of the last three years? Is any recon ciliation of peoples possible? If not, is real fleace conceivable? When the end comes, will it only be a cessation of activities? Shall we of the allied countries ever be able to 'take the hand of a German again? In look ing to the future of the civilized nations must we always think and feel as if one hundred mil lions of oir fellow creatures did not exist? Some of-frs 'Who are not visionaries used to dream of a day 'when humanity- would step out of dark ness and put oh the armor of light. Is that to be "ahbther of our day joys and buried hopes- on the road to lift? ,"'. ,; A GLIMPSE AT THE FUTURE ..Arid then th'nk 'finally of the wrong this three years' war has doie to religion. For two thousand years faith has been working for tne u,.4.i j.i u ii.'. .ii tf iin hpfin a long VUl-lSLlcllllZUllUU UJL LUC WUHU. o.i- jw - and almost hopeless labor .in the past with so many temporalities to contend aguiuoi., v . r pagan impulses to overcome. al U1CICW ,, thing certain about Jesus Christ-it is that cmei . ... ... .' x,. x p Kiicrinc war to among ins purposes was mui in ub"o i an end, of substituting for the force of arms w rorce pr- righteousness, jraimuuy w """ . -ages has religion toiled after that great wew, although again and again, it l.as been compe wo to s.ee the v'cars of Christ girding themseiw with thi semane. But in these later days we were '" f ir, i,4. 1 p oii fiirt machinations" 'military despotism the gospel of peace sweeping through the world. We held cu ences to celebrate its victorious a(lvance' t0 great German theologans nice nm . England to preach th'e doctrine of unive rsan great German theologians like HarnacK i ciicauon. uown to tne ih-bl j" -- .M, ciiurciuD . ctrine ui "" "-',., first days of August. ... ' . .1 irC Willi - 1914, we were praying in our cmu d e .-. !. i- oif hpfnrt thai""" would cLve us neace in our time, that n fervor and conviction never felt o10" woUd Dur time, w , m. grant to all nations a spirit of unuy. l ' t and JU1-' . O--.w w ,. - .m v nrll i Ihnt Un ntnnlil CSOTTO 11R IIUUI ..--- .,,- -unt'mely deaths, and' above all that His n dom might come ori earth, even as heaven. ' "'' . 1 0f And then wliat tlien?." At the first D war the gospel .of-peace was gone, iialu djnmtiMUffVlWin mwt.t1 -.WwfcwiiWj, .i.