| OCR Text |
Show ft PR0BLEMSFAC1NG HI STRICKEN WORLD Hfl Shall Chaos or Reconstruction HH in Europe Follow the Great f J ; World War? 111 ' NOW WEAK AND HEARTBROKEN fcf S In Mourning and Poverty She Counts HM Her Dead and Looks With Eyes of HB Sadness Toward the Threat M enlng Future. , HH Article H ; By FRANK COMEnFORD, H; August 1, liM, was tliu tiny. On HIj tliut itny (Jermiiny dcchircd war on Bl lltusln. 'J'ho (Ire ularm ruiiK oroiinil BI tlit; world. IVuNnnts In tins Hold 1 straightened their hacks, listened and BSH ; looked Into tliu huh confused, wonder- H i Ing. Kings wcro unfurled, bunds Ml' played, faces wcro white, tense and VI i n-rlous. Men left their work and BftVtl ' talked In groups on (lie street corners. Women laid down their brooms, put nB utddo their washing, and talked In BHJHC whispers; oad lights were In their HbbHH ryes. Children Htopped playing. Some fl thing had liapeiied. Kvll thltiK" weru ' ahead. August u and I found France flftVK' and (I rent Urltuln mobilizing their Jpsfiffl mmis. The torch was sweeping Ku TVHh rope tlio lire of death had Marled. .wJh For four long years hciirt-sleken- BpaVi Iiik years the world ran red. Men HII waded through mud and lilood, fought, BH suffered, cursed, prayed, while hack HHH home In the innnless houses women 4 and children worked, cried, prayed ffi and waited. The world was mad. BW . Death poisoned every breath the HJ pcoplo breathed. m It Is over now, It Is finished. A Jh stunned, numbed, weak, heartbroken Hl Kuropc Is again sitting In the win of HR pence. Kuropc Is In dirty black rapt. HEf Tliu black Is mourning, the ruK arc H poverty. Her face Is deeply lined Hl trenches made by suffering. Uer eyes K arc downcast and dead. Hope flutters EJ weakly In her breast; faith has faded Hg! from her soul. Uer homo li ji house Hfj of darkness. The tiro on the hearth Hj has turned to cold gray ashes, Tho K kettle no longer sines. It intuitu. Uer E mind Is weary, her body Is wasted. B Hunger has robbed her of her strength. BBBBf Her stocklngless, shoeless feet lira BBBH bluo froln the cold. Uer lips wear ff n starvation color. Ice In tho winter's BBBBff wind lushes her shivering, half-naked BBBBA body. Sho mumbles as slip stares vu- H cantly Into space sho Is tired, so BBBBff tired. As I beheld her It seemed to BBBB mo that n face so troubled and sad H must never have known a smile. BBBJ 1 listened to her muttering-., I found BBBBfl that sho was counting. Over and over BBgBa again sho counted on her thin, tired, BBjBfl worn hands sho was counting her BBBBJL BBBjr Thinking of Her Lois. BBBJi Blie was thinking. Her eyes looked BBBfi over tho hundreds of thousands of BBBB m.uuro miles of war zone, slashed BHBB with trenches, pitted and pockmarked BBBJI by shells. She sees where they fell. BHBS is'o tears nro In her eyes. Long ago BBH tho hurt had reached the point where HH tears dry up. Itow upon row, lino BBBK upon line, mile upon mile, white- BBBB painted wooden crosses mark their BJBBV graves. For the most part they wcro HJH) lier youngest born, her most beloved, BHj xvll dug oeep "10 so" to sleep for- BBBU ever In the dark dugouts. Hl .As they fell bleeding from steel and BBHj lend, choking from gas, writhing In BBBBff agony from fire, they proved In tho dy- K lug word they spoke that they were BHf more boys, as they had shown In their BBBji lighting that they wero brave men. To BBBU tho popples they Intrusted their men- BBH sage, anil tho rel popples remember BBBH the last word of Europe's dying sons, BBBl who went out Into tho great beyond BBBf with this last word on their Up, K "Mother." BBBj She tins finished coiiMIng; nn ncbo Bj shudders through her bent body. Klin BJBV sighs ntid sobs, "Seven and u half mil- Bl Hon of my sons arc dead." BBll Her thoughts turn to the living, her BH arms open to receive them, sho holds BBBK them to her lirnrt. They have come, jjHi bow? AV Some with sltjhtlcRi eyes, doomed to BBBj grope through the world In a never- BBB ending darkness, n night without stars BBHb or moon; sunless, black, hopeless days, BBBf mid these, too, young men In tho very BKS morning of their day. BBj Others sentenced to silence denf Bfj5(( nd dumb, Never again will she hear HfJ their voices nor will they hear hen. BMfjfi Still others In wheel choirs, dwhrfed, HliW Vgless. BJlO 1 More bubbling on crutches, limping Je! j on canes. BJHJI f Some with empty sleeves. BK i Many with great senrs. where once HHJ j was a handsome face. HBJI She sees them all, her heart bleeds; BB A tho twisted, the nmugled, the torn. BU 8 She Is counting them, tho 12.010,017, BBHj 3 itio wounded of tho war. Jgj I War's Frightful Cost Hlf 1 Uer vol co Is husky, her linnds arc BB I tired, but she must count on. Six and Bit i ii half million of her sous were marked BBg "missing and prisoners" In the olllclal BB wnr score. Many of these have come BBQ back to her, but she does not question BBjg them xhe dure not. Their faes tell HPra of tho unspeakable horrors they en- BB dared. She sees In their eyes n depth jilt of pain that Is unfathomable. She Is faff o inolher she knows, Ifll Tho war Is iver, but she Is not over Hffnt the wnr. Must she never stop count- BP(lt Iug7 Is (here no end to her losses) Hujij b7bc graveyards ure crowded. Uer Ri BkM ' thoughts turn to the dead who, while they did not die In tho wnr, died ho-cnuso ho-cnuso of tho wnr. Thow who went out In battle left life In n burst of glory. Others there were who fell In their tracks exhnustlon, broken hearts sent them "west." Sho has not forgotten how tlio home Hank suffered. The stay-at-homes wero not nil slackers. They fought hunger mid cold, bent their bncks beyond tho straining point. Worst of nil, they wnlted. It Is estimated esti-mated that 20,000.000 civilians died from weakness, fatigue, strain, broken hearts Iho horror of wnltlng destroyed de-stroyed resistance. These 'vere the underfed older men and women, the scared, undernourished children. Is there any wonder that Kuropc has a death look In her oyoH7 Denth has been her morning thought, It has been her night sob, and for four years made up of months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds death has been her Nemesis. She Is now totaling.. The figures oro appalling. They stagger her Imagination. Imagina-tion. It Is easy to write them, Impossible Im-possible to understand tbejr full meaning. mean-ing. The mind can't grasp It; the world Is bewildered by the number. It Is too stupendous, too horrible for understanding. un-derstanding. Think of It, seven and n half million young men. for tho most part between the ages of eighteen and thirty, the youth, the strength, the spirit, the man power of Kuropc denil twenty million mm civil life dead, over twelyo and u half million wounded. Who enn mensure this loss7 War brought death. It did more-It more-It stopped birth. In the devastated regions re-gions of Itelglum, Franco, Hilly, I'o-land, I'o-land, parts of Ilussla and the Hnlknn countries, the birth rate fell to almost al-most nothing. In Knglnnd and Wr.les the birth rate In the Inst pnrt of 10IB was 10.B, the lowest on record. Mulled Mul-led calculated that the birth rate hud fallen 12 per cent In Knglnnd nnd Wales by 1010. The Journal of Heredity quotes Sav-orgnan Sav-orgnan as having estimated thnt It will take Kngland nt least ten yenrs, dor-many dor-many 12 years, Itnly .18 years nnd Franco !I0 years to recuperate their populations. These calculations by Suvorgnnn were mnde before tho fearful fear-ful losses of the campaign of 1018. A vlllngc In France. Illernncourt. tells whnt tho war has done to the man power of Kuropc. This village, which Is In tho Chateau Thlerry-Solssons district, dis-trict, bud a population of a thousand people before tho war. Its losses have been tabulated. Twenty-six soldiers rr.ini llilu vllliii'o wont killed In tho wnr. Nlnoty-.evcn of tho villagers died from wnr privations. The total of 123 Is the death toll of n village of a thousand. The figures I buve quoted from tho calculations of Suvorgnnn nnd Mnllctt wero mnde beforo the wnr wns finished. Slnco tlio war, estlmntes have been made, nnd these estlmntes show tho sltuntlon to bo even worse. In Franco I was told that C7 per cent of the men between twenty and forty yenrs wero listed as dead or Incnpncltiited for work. Further, that It would tako Franc over 70 yeurs to recover her normal population. It Is said that It will toko Italy CO years and Knglnnd 25 years to regain normality of population. The human wuste of the war Is more thii sod memories. The loss of mnn pjwer makes a grave problem. It has thrown out of balance the domestic scheme of the world. Ii will bo felt for yenrs. There ore a great many more young women than men. Homo llfo Is bound to suffer. There will be fewer marriages, fewer children. Statistics Sta-tistics only tell pnrt of the story. (Cowrie ht, HID. Wulrrn Ntwpipr Union) |
