Show PROBLEMS FACING STRICKEN WORLD shall chaos or reconstruction in europe follow the great world war imperative NEED FOR ACTION twelve months since the signing of the armistice practically wasted call for aid from america must be heeded article V by FRANK COMERFORD alie signing of the armistice ended the fighting the signing of the peace treaty brought peace but neither of these acts restored devastated europe the great job ahead Is the work of reconstruction and when I 1 write the word reconstruction I 1 have not in mind the mere rebuilding of the war areas of trance belgium italy poland and russia and important as this task Is feces sary as it Is it Is only a small pirt of the work of reil reconstruction diun deeds of thousands of square miles make up the actual war zone ane ground marched over the territory un der shell fire millions of acres of land that once yielded food in response to the touch of the plow have for the enst four ears been tilled by high explosives plo belgium was literally looted pillaged and almost the en tire state was violated earby one eighth of france her industrial section was crushed buildings werf destroyed factories dismantled sixty thousand square miles in poland were laid waste italy suffered terribly the ground Is filled with high explosives mines and shells avery day since the work of recovery and restoration began men working in this zone have been blown to pieces billions of fact of barbed wire and millions of tons of metal make a dan berous wilderness out of what was once i highly productive area cities and villages are jungles of twisted broken torn wood iron brick and atone I 1 have walked through these villages and have stood stunned by the completeness of the destruction the streets are uneven and lumpy with brick and stone and plas ter and glass aisles of wreckage roof less douses with walls gutted and torn heaps and piles of broken building material jagged ragged pinnacles masses of debris meet the e e had I 1 not known of the war and come upon one of these unsightly shapeless masses of material I 1 should have thought nature had entered into a mad conspiracy corn baning and concentrating all of the powers of a cyclone a tornado and an earthquake and spilled their fury on these mangled dead villages sights to wring the heart picture the refugees returning to these villages til lages coming back home bat alie sight must have meant to them I 1 have seen them their faces gray as the gray ruins standing in the midst of their destroyed homes I 1 hav e seen them picking their way ov er piles of stone and brick through great openings made in the broken walls I 1 saw in their eyes homesickness a hurt of heart I 1 never shall forget old men and old women and little barelegged children now and again a boy a worn soiled uniform some limping on crutches others wearing an empty sleeve one thought surged through my mind until it almost sickened me ar the land of the war zone must be reclaimed these acres are needed now more than they were before the w ar the world s food supply Is low hundreds of miles of trenches must be filled up trees must be planted the ground must be cleaned of shells cleared of barbed wire villages cities must be rebuilt sewer si stems must be installed the mess must be moved it Is a big job one great misfortune Is that nl though 12 months have come and gone since the signing of the armistice no general comprehensive plan of recon has been started here and there small sections of the devastated regions are being partly reconstructed temporary provision Is being made for the homeless this Is all well and good but economical etu dent and speedy reconstruction demands a general plan and an alon big enough to put it over the doing of this work requires vision and capacity for doing big things well if the physical reconstruction Is left to europe it will not be finished in 50 years here la a chanco for america we hive a faculty of doing things on a big scale and in a short period of time europe needs our help if we are to give it eventually why not now but the clearing up of the wreckage and the rebuilding Is a minor problem compared with the other greater and more important question of reconstruction the reconstruction of industry the establishment of normal life the reclamation of the devastated area Is after all only a matter of plan time and money and notwithstanding the fact that eusope Is bankrupt today the money must and will come the barbed wire will be rolled up the mines and enells will be dug from the fields the villages will be rebuilt everything that has been dc ct roved will be replaced physical re obstruction la the least of europe a lenis the bi the alon of life the war devastated and disordered the alf of the world it threw everything into contusion it left the scheme out of balance only road to prosperity we live by work prosperity means production poverty Is underproduction stripping economics of all its high sounding jargon the simple truth that everyone knows Is that the world has only the things it works to produce it may not be amis to state a few facts known by everyone which ex plain the meaning of production we live on the earth it Is land and water in the ground are minerals the land grows crops we need the aln brals that are in the ground we neel the crops but minerals in the ground as well as the fertile soil moan nothing until man by his work brings the mineral from the ground and makes the soil yield W e must have food w e must have clothing we must have shelter and the only w ay w e can get these things is by working it little work is done behare a shortage there enough food to go around there arent enough clothes enough coal and as a result the prices of all these necessaries go way up but this Is not so important as the fact that when there Is not enough to feed the world some go hungry others must starve when there isn t enough coal some are cold others freeze W hen there aren t enough clothes for everyone bome fome must be ragged and half naked everything ery thing by which we live Is the result of work stop work and poverty follows work and plenty results work Is responsible for everything that goes to imke life worth living to understand europe s condition today one must stop and roillie that the war stopped production the result Is a shortage of everything there isn t enough food there isn t enough raw material there isn t enough coal the whole story Is told in the word pov erti only cure la in work there Is a cure the prescription can be written in a single word everyone knows that nord but knowing the word and adopting the word are different matters before we can get back to normal life this word must find root in the consciousness of the people we must realize that the world will continue sacr and grow sicker un less this prescription Is taken further we must know that it we delay taking this remedy it will be a longer time before we get well the prescription Is work every effort should be made to make every man will to work every employer must not contribute to unrest and provoke idleness by refusing to negotiate with his men and into this negotiation he should go with a friendly spirit and a willingness to compromise the employer who meets labor with the thought in his mind that he Is better equipped to fight than labor because he has a surplus and can eat and be warm while labor has been living aiom hand to mouth and will starve Is shortsighted lie bad better get the idea out of his head that you can starve men into submission there was a day when that was true but tint day has passed never to come the man who depend upon his aall ity to turn a key in the factory door and go off on a vacation imposing his will on his workmen w 11 discover that these men stopped a certain gent late of Potts dam now of holland from doing this very thing to atie world he may wake up some morn ing to leam a new definition of the word fight one thing that people do not realize Is that the men who fought the worlds fight for freedom are the men who are now complaining that they are not getting a square deal who made up the fighting men of the war the rank and file of the armies that stopped the prussian push who were the great majority of the volunteers and the conscripted taen numbering millions who went to the front for the allies the teamsters the the mill workers the factory hands the coil miners these are the same men who are the center of the labor problem mr employer you are dealing with ex soldiers please don t forget it they fought for you you haive any business today it it haan hadn t been for them and when you think of the bond you bought remember the blood they give copyright wearn union |