Part 9 (1/2)
In order to estimate further the cost and realize the suffering of the war, let us turn for a moment to the nations devastated in Europe. In Belgium and Northern France 9,500,000 were being fed by the Commission for Relief in Belgium until Germany forbade it. Of 7,000,000 inhabitants of Belgium, 3,000,000 were early left dest.i.tute by the war and were drawing daily one meal consisting of the equivalent of three thick slices of bread and a pint of soup. Mr. F. C. Wolcott writes:
”I have seen thousands of people lined up in snow or rain, soaked and chilly, waiting for bread and soup. I have returned to the distributing stations at the end of the day and have found men, women, and children sometimes still standing in line, but later compelled to go back to their pitiful homes, cold, wet, and miserable. It was not until eighteen weary hours afterward that they got the meal they missed. The need will continue to be great for many months after peace is declared. Factories have been stripped of their machinery. There is a complete stagnation of industry. It will take months to rehabilitate these industries and to start the wheels again.”
In Serbia more than 4,000,000 people were deprived of their living by the war. In Poland the suffering has been more terrible than in either Belgium or Serbia. The population fleeing behind the retreating Russians were not able to keep up because of the women and children, the aged and the sick. They were overtaken by the German army and left in the charred remains of their burned dwellings. Some 200 cities and 15,000 towns and villages were destroyed in Poland. Already 2,000,000 have died of starvation there. In some districts all the children under six years of age have perished.
Armenia has suffered relatively more than any of the other nations.
Mr. Henry Morgenthau, the American Amba.s.sador to Turkey, said: ”One million of these people have either been ma.s.sacred or deported and unless succor reaches them shortly, those remaining will be lost.” In all history there is no record more sad than that of the persecution and extermination of the Armenians. University professors educated in the United States have had their hair and nails torn out by the roots and have been slowly tortured to death. Women and girls were outraged and brutally killed. Little children perished of hunger. It is said that probably 1,000,000 of the 2,000,000 Armenians in Turkey have been slain, or have been driven into the country to starve, or have been forced to accept Islam.
The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief reports:
”Men in the army were the first to be brutally put to death. These and civilians, after being subjected to horrible tortures, were shot. Even priests were made victims of brutal murder. Women, children, the sick and aged, were forced at a moment's notice to start on foot on a journey of exile. Mothers, torn from their children, were compelled to leave the little ones behind. Women giving birth to children on the road were forbidden to delay, but, under the whiplash, were made to continue their march until they dropped from exhaustion to die. A United States Consul reported that he saw helpless people brained with clubs, while children were killed by beating their brains out against the rocks. Other children were thrown into rivers and those who could swim were shot down as they struggled in the water. Crimes that have been, and are being, practiced upon Armenian women are too cruel and horrible for words. The mutilated corpses of hundreds bear testimony to this inhuman reign.” [3]
Who was responsible for these outrages, and how long will the world permit them to continue?
Whichever way we turn, whether we survey the number of killed, wounded, or prisoners, the cost of the conflict, or the suffering of the devastated nations, we realize that _the war means sacrifice_. It is difficult for us at home in America to appreciate the spirit in which the men in this great struggle in Europe are fighting, and the sacrifices they are making. In all these months in many lands, the writer has not heard from the lips of a single soldier who had actually seen service at the front, words of hatred or of boasting. Quietly and often with sadness most of these men are going forward to face death.
Here is a letter from a young officer who fell on that fatal first day of July on the Somme.
”I never felt more confident or cheerful in my life before, and would not miss the attack for anything on earth. Every officer and man is more happy and cheerful than I have ever seen them. My idea in writing this letter is in case I am one of the 'costs' and get killed. I have been looking at the stars, and thinking what an immense distance they are away. What an insignificant thing the loss of, say, forty years of life is compared with them! It seems scarcely worth talking about.
Well, good-bye, you darlings. Try not to worry about it, and remember that we shall meet again really quite soon. This letter is going to be posted if . . .”
A friend of the writer, a young chaplain whom he met recently at the front, went out to find his brother's mangled body on the battlefield.
The boy who fell was the son of the Bishop of Winchester, and one of the finest spirits in Oxford. Canon Scott Holland writes:
”The attack had failed. There was never any hope of its succeeding, for the machine guns of the Germans were still in full play, with their fire unimpaired. The body had to lie where it had fallen. Only, his brother could not endure to let it lie unhonoured. He found some shattered Somersets, who begged him to go no further. But he heard a voice within him bidding him risk it, and the call of the blood drove him on. Creeping out of the far end of the trench, as dusk fell, he crawled through the gra.s.s on hands and knees, in spite of sh.e.l.ls and snipers, dropping flat on the ground as the flares shot up from the German trenches. At last he found what he sought. He could stroke with his hand the fair young head that he knew so well; he could feel for the pocket-book and prayer-book, the badge and the whistle. He could breathe a prayer of benediction and then crawl back on his perilous way in the night.”
The writer has just come from visiting a group of a dozen British and American military hospitals in one French town, with from one to four thousand patients in each, where at this moment the trains are arriving in almost a steady stream, bearing the wounded from the front in the great drive in Flanders. He has stood by the operating tables and pa.s.sed down those long, unending rows of cots. Some of these tragic hospital wards are filled with men, every one of whom is blinded for life by poison gas or shrapnel. They, like all the other wounded, are brave and cheerful, but it will take great courage to maintain this cheer, groping a long lifetime in the dark. One man counted 151 trains of twenty cars each, or 3,000 carriages, filled with German wounded pa.s.sing back in a steady stream through Belgium. Behind all the active fronts these train loads of wounded are daily bearing their burden of suffering humanity. The cities and towns of Europe are filled with limping or crippled or wounded men today.
Opposite the writer at the s.h.i.+p's table sat a young man with the lower part of his face carried away. His chin and jaw were gone, yet he must live on for a lifetime deformed. Another young fellow had spent seven long weary months in training. The moment his regiment reached the front it was ordered immediately into action. He sprang to the top of the trench, but never got over it. He fell back wounded. Within three days he was back in England again, but with only one leg. Seven months of training, five minutes in action, then crippled for life! The writer saw one young fellow whose face was left contorted by shrapnel, which had carried away one eye and the bridge of his nose. He was a quiet, earnest Christian. He said, ”Of course, they cannot send me back again into the line or compel me to go with only one eye, but I am going just the same. I am going to give all that I have left to the country and the cause.” [4]
Hear that young soldier of France, Alfred Casalis, a brilliant student of philosophy and theology, a Student Volunteer for the African mission field, as he writes home to his father and mother at the age of nineteen: ”I volunteered of course. I know with an unalterable knowledge and with an unconquerable confidence that the foundation of my faith is unshakeable, it rests upon the Rock. I shall fight with a good conscience and without fear (I hope), certainly without hate. I feel myself filled with an illimitable hope. You can have no idea of the peace in which I live. On the march I sing inwardly. I listen to the music that is slumbering inside me. The Master's call is always ringing loudly in my ears. I am not afraid of death. I have made the sacrifice of my life. I know that to die is to begin to live.” And the last sentence of the unfinished letter written before the charge in which he fell, ”The attack cannot but succeed. There will be some wounded, some killed, but we shall _go forward_ and far--” In the other pocket of his coat, at the end of his will were the words, ”'I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.' And I would that all my friends, all those who are every moment with me, and whose hearts beat with mine, should repeat the word of our hope, 'Because I live, ye shall live also.'” [5]
Professor Gilbert Murray, of Oxford, writes thus of the sacrifice of the men for us: ”As for me personally, there is one thought that is always with me--the thought that other men are dying for me, better men, younger, with more hope in their lives, many of whom I have taught and loved. The orthodox Christian will be familiar with the thought of One who loved you dying for you. I would like to say that now I seem to be familiar with the feeling that something innocent, something great, something that loved me, is dying, and is dying daily for me.
That is the sort of community we now are--a community in which one man dies for his brother.”
Yes, these boys are making the great sacrifice for us. With 5,000,000 who have already been killed, with 10,000,000 of our own sons enrolled.
as subject to their call to the colors when needed, with hundreds of American army camps at home and in France already crowded with men, what sacrifice can we make for them? How can we surround their lives with the best influences of home, that they may come back to us even better men than when they went away?
We have seen the terrible ordeal to which they will be subjected at the front, the temptations to which they are exposed in France, in the training schools, and the base camps; we have seen something of the havoc which demoralizing forces have already wrought in other armies in the camps of the prodigals, and we have seen the deadly dangers and perils, both physical and moral, which the soldier must face. We have spoken of the enormous sums voted to carry on a great war of destruction. Is there not a yet more urgent need that we should supply the great constructive forces for fortifying the physical and moral manhood of our nation? Two organizations have been recognized by our own and the other allied governments in the war zone--the one bearing the symbol of _the red cross_ for the wounded, and the other _the red triangle_ for the fighting men.
The nation has already generously responded to the needs of the wounded even before the first battle was fought, giving more in one week than any other nation in a year for the same purpose. And not a dollar too much has been given for this great cause. But we shall soon have several millions of fighting men under arms. What are we to do for these men? We have already seen that they present a threefold need.
There is the physical need of these millions who will soon be training, fighting, and suffering. Only the men at the front know what it really is. There are the mental and social requirements of men who must have recreation, healthy amus.e.m.e.nt and occupation. There is also the moral and spiritual need of men who will face the greatest temptations of their lives, when they will be farthest from the help of home and friends, while old standards seem to be submerged or swept away ”for the period of the war.”