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Show ‘46)"?! NW" 274 275 richest nation on earth. the figures are so appalling that mortal mind cannot conceive them, and they lose their force. \\'hen we remember that three-fourths of the national revenues of the United States are spent on wars past or prospective, the matter comes closer home. \Vhen we realize that the cost of a single battleship exceeds the value of all the grounds and buildings of all the colleges and universities in lllinois, the figures have more meaning: to us. ;\nd when we retlect that the cost of a single shot from one of the great guns of that battleship would build a home for an American family. a comfortable home costing $1.70. the eomnit n man realizes that the richest nation on earth cannot afford to go to war nor prepare for war. lint mere money is one of the cheapest things in all the worl l. The price of war can never he paid in gold. Not in national treasuries can you see the payment of that price. where smug, well-groomed politicians sign bonds and bills of credit. If you would see the pannent of the price of war, you must go to the place of war. \\'ith all your senses open, step upon the battlefield, Smell the smoke of burningT powder, the reek of home, a thousandfold worse than the agony of the battlefield, then might we know more of the real cost of war. And still our idea would be inadequate, though we realized the full measure of every groan and heartache. Earth's most priceless treasures. are still more intangible things, the treasures of justice and kindliness and love. In that higher realm the cost of war is most terrible and most deadly. The spirit of war in the soldier sets aside the moral law, makes human life seem valueless, human suffering a thing to be disregarded, human slaughter an honorable profes ion. The war spirit perverts the mind of the statesman, till wrongr seems right, folly seems expediency and the death of thousands seems preferable to the life and happiness of all under terms of peace not dictated by his own will. Justice is dethroned, and Revenge takes up the iron scepter and lets fly the thunderbolt. The war spirit perverts the mind of the pub- licist, till the achievements of honorable peace sink into insignifi- cance, and the press clamors for the war that means money to the publisher but death to innocent thousands who can have no possible interest in the conflict. The war spirit takes possession of the pulpit, and the minister called to preach the loving mes~ sage of the Prince of Peace stirs up the spirit of contention and charging horses. the breath of fresh. red human blood. Feel the warmth of that blood as you seek to stanch the wound in the breast of one of the worlds bravest. dying for he knows not what. Near the screams of the shells. the booming roar of the cannonade. the clash of the onslaught, the shrieks of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the last gasp of him whose life has reached its end. Such is the infernal music of war. See the victim of the conflict reel in the saddle and fall headlong. Cast your eyes on the mangled forms of godlike men, fallen in the midst of fullest life. Come in the night after the battle, and look upon the ghastly faces upturned in the moonlight. Gaze on the windrows of the dead, Marsls awful harvest, that impov- erisht-s all and enriches none-and you know something of the Not of \tar. And )et we have seen but little. Could we but enter the wasted homes. and see the broken hearts that war has made; could we go to the ahnshonsw and soldiers' orphans‘ homes. and see widows and children by the thousands suffering the doledout Charity of state or nation. because war has robbed them of their rightful prt-ttt‘tors: could we but realize the agony of the broken animosity, of hate and murder, Could we but draw aside the curtain, and back of the tinsel and gold braid see the crime, the hate, the moral degradation that war always brings and leaves, never again would a friend of humanity ask for war. The eyes of the world are opening to the fact that the cost of war is far too high in money and in men, in suffering and sacrifice, and in those higher values of justice and kindliness and love. And as the thought once grew that personal dil't'crences might be settled without personal combat, so men are lookingr toward the settlement of international difficulties without recourse to the sword. They have seen that every argument against the duel of men applies with still greater force against the duel of nations. And the world has moved farther toward world peace in the past twenty-five years than in all the centuries of lti»tory that have preceded. \Vorld peace is the task whose accomplish- ment is set for the men of this generation. One by one the obstacles to world peace are being broken down. Commerce has destroyed much of international prejudice. |