Show r THE PRICE By HERBERT KAUFMAN IT T W WAS S a wonderful mac machine line ine that we were building We We had cabled and all aU the lands Experiments had become international relay races We almost understood one another We dared to drea dream of an early day when boundary lines would fade from mens men's brains brain and the long curse of Babel be broken Then Mars fell from froni the skies and and crashed upon the earth Now Thor the Terrible is loose again his again his mighty hammer sledging the proudest human works to heaps of junk Twenty millions of the worlds world's stalwarts the stalwarts the p picked ck d trained efficient vigorous best bet of Europe are are at this moment busily occupied occupied occupied pied in destroy destroying ng- ng with the gr greatest possible exp expedition and thoroughness thoroughness thoroughness thor thor- as many of themselves and as much of their mutual resources resources resources re re- re- re sources as misguided courage courage and powerful artillery can an annihilate The combined armies of all the devastators from Pul to Timur would total en masse a h host st greater than th the myriads now engaged across the seas History r must henceforth be written in in new neY terms of compari compari- s son n. n We fumble e-fumble through our ver verbal al tool kl kits s for superlatives super with which to express t the e imm immensity of the tragedy tragedy we we search for spikes t to nal nail the Garg Gargantuan truth only to find that Experience the Word ord Maker can furnish but carpet tacks But the price we pay is marked in minds not men We can breed nimble fingers and lusty backs enough but it will take entire generations to furnish pitchblende to replace ce the precious lost radium which the twentieth century had extracted from the intellects of Europe Out of a billion loins came the handful of surpassing geniuses who made our civilization so mighty Now their disciples the heirs hers to their research the thinkers who were being tr trained to carry carryon on the great works are d devoting themselves and are b being ing devoted to wreckage Progress will wear the ghastly wound for ages We will never know how much we have lost lost learn learn how many dreams could have reached realization did not reach the note note- books Theres There's a young surgeon somewhere in France with with a half h hatched idea to save the eyes of babies oozing through his reft temple All AU that remains of a wonderful plan to irrigate the Sahara is isa isa isa a batch of burned bones in a 2 Belgian tulip field A carrion crow is picking a at the burgled safe which held the treasures of a famous chemists chemist's imagination How can such conflicts profit humanity When the books are closed and the national accountants strike their balances even the conquerors conqueror will be forced to record staggering stag stag- staggering gering deficits Human energy is the most precious form form of power and the prime source of all No cash indemnity nor grant of terri tern territory tory tan can offset the cost of its wanton dissipation For incalculable years impossible taxes will slit the pockets ets of labor and trade Governments will take their bite out of every wage wage earners earner's slice of bread sip half his cup and glass The very children in whose cause the polemists fallaciously claim they are battling will wilt only because of this war be withheld from endowments endowments endowments endow endow- ments created by peace deprived of educational opportunities denied denied denied de de- de- de nied the exercise of will and wit to the treadmills of child labor from which progress had begun to free them robbed of the guid guidance nce of parents and bastardized by millions millions' At half the cost in men and wealth and thought every nation in Europe co could ld have created for itself a new empire in the wilds Copyright 1916 by Herbert Kauf Kaufman an Great Britain and all other rights reserved |