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Show t I J Has Europe Gone Mad? WHEN a mortal is too sorely tried he is liable to lose his reason. i Why should it not be the same way with na- i tions? The nations of the old world have been preparing for war for years. They have brought to frightful perfection all the instruments of destruction; de-struction; they have been fighting on a scale never dreamed of before now for nearly" eighteen months until their soil is piled high with their I dead; their homes are desolated; the accumula tions of years have been swept away; one horror has succeeded another, and now they are in what seems to be a death-lock and the truth 13 forced home upon them that there is not victory in sight for any of them. There are evidences in sight that there is a breaking down in judgment in many places; that under the fearful shock they are losing their reasoning reas-oning powers and are in imminent danger of hav- ing their respective countries filled with lunatics. The spectacle that the homes of the old world presents is enough to unhinge the brains of strong men; the vacant chairs, the empty cradles; the mourning robes, the hungry women and children; the broken hearts and devastated fields; who can measure the cataclysm that has already broken upon them? Who can begin to estimate when there will be any surcease for the sorrow? The most sinister feature of all is the apparent effect thus far made upon the living. It seems to bo an increase in the desire for vengeance. Each U is charging the blame upon the other, and most of the peace talk, so far, has been with the condition con-dition that no peace will be accepted that does not include reparation for the losses thus far sus tained. There is not a reference to "the everlasting everlast-ing Father and Prince of Peace." Ships are falling fall-ing from the clouds with their dead, the seas are engulfing other ships with their dead, and on land along a thousand miles of battle front the chariot wheels of war are grinding their way over the hearts of men till "all the earth wears the red record lighted with cities aflame" and armies are taking on the outward look of wild beasts bent only upon destroying their kind. Europe surely begins to take on the look of having in the stress gone mad, and in such gigantic gi-gantic proportions that neutral nations will not much longer be safe, but rather will all be subject sub-ject to such a scourge as Belgium and Poland have already suffered. The war has now extended until It is raging around where the cradle of civilization was first rocked; the savage tribes that have eucceed-1 eucceed-1 ed the enlightened races that in that region began the world's regeneration, are organizing and train- ing and by nature are cruel as death itself. The I scientists trace out the eras through which at in- tervois the outer shell of the earth has been shattered shat-tered and all animal life has perished under those cataclysms which are called geological periods. It begins to look in the old world as though another an-other form of destruction had been decreed to exterminate ex-terminate men there. |