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Show AWFUL HERITAGE FROM THE PRESENT WAR Wourdcd soldiers, returning from the front in the terrible European struggle, are agreed In declaring that the shock of battle is almost beyond human endurance The heavy artillery artil-lery fire Is almost as unnerving to those who handle the guns as the men who are fired on. The heavy cetonations jar every part of the human hu-man anatomy. The attacks and counter-attacks of the infantry, accompanied by the destructive de-structive power of rapid-fire guns, are nerve destroying Days and nights spent in the wet trenches prove debilitating and open the door to disease, especially the germs of rheumatism. This breaking down of the human structures is the most lasting damage dam-age of the war. according to the medical men who are studying the effects of the mighty contest on the future of the human race Dr. Ales Hedhcka, anthropologist and curator of the National RlVJieum, says the countries engaged in war are to suffer most, not in the number killed, but through the survivors who will inflict their defects on their progeny. 'The great toll that the terrible modern war is imposing," he said, "falls upon the hundreds of thou sands of human beings in fact, the millions who must suffer untold exposure ex-posure and privation; and, In addition, addi-tion, the frightful shocks of modern explosives, which ruin, if they do not kill or niaitn or shatter or under mine in many cases, the nervous system. "Into the war there are being sent perhaps 15,000,000 of men, at least one-half of whom represent the best in the physical line that the embroiled embroil-ed nations have. Out of the war. If it to last at the present rate of mlence, even as much as nine months or a year only there will come back possibly four-fifths of sur-ivort), sur-ivort), but among those fourflfths now many will be wrecked in their i physical and mental powers7 These will be the army of the chronic Invalids, In-valids, the rheumatics, neurasthenics, ; h.. tables, and those suffering with incurable in-curable ailments of the intestinal tract. These men will constitute aione a much greater loss vital and economical than those killed. "But the injury does not stop there. These hundreds of thousands of partial par-tial wrecks will marry, in most instances, in-stances, and their weakness in one form or another is bound to tell in their progenv. This is not looking; 'at things through any dark glasses, but those are the actual conditions that confront the medical man and! the anthropologist interested in the physical welfare of humanity "Wars In olden times had no such effects, or at least not in any such proportions The battles were much shorter, the exposure and shock far less, and the medical service was so imperfect that relatively few of the more serious cases recovered. The mortality in the battle may have been just as great or even heavier, but those who were, after a few days' rest, just as sound men as they were before. "It seems surely that when the final account be made after this War of the 'human damage.' that there v'll be no victors among the nations but only sufferers And a few such wars would mean the suicide, physical, physi-cal, intellectual, and finally, doubtless, doubt-less, also, political and economic, of even the militarily strongest nation.'' General Von Bernhardl. In his great book on "Germany and the Next War," written three years ago, glorifies glori-fies war as developing the better traits of human character, pushing back the weak and putting to the front the heroic, but the anthropottc; j 1st evidently does not accept that j tribute to v ar. tr |
