Although late in entering the war, America's expenditure has been out of all proportion to that of any other nation. Upon arrival in this country the writer finds the statement in our press that the nation will have spent or sanctioned before the end of 1917, the enormous total of $19,000,000,000. That is more than twenty per cent of the entire cost of the war to date for all the European nations. That sum is as great as Germany spent on land and sea for the conduct of the first three years of the war. It represents more than twice our total wealth in 1850, and one-twelfth of our present national wealth of $328,000,000,000.
In order to estimate further the cost and realize the suffering of the war, let us turn for a moment to the nations devastated in Europe. In Belgium and Northern France 9,500,000 were being fed by the Commission for Relief in Belgium until Germany forbade it. Of 7,000,000 inhabitants of Belgium, 3,000,000 were early left destitute by the war and were drawing daily one meal consisting of the equivalent of three thick slices of bread and a pint of soup. Mr. F. C. Wolcott writes:
"I have seen thousands of people lined up in snow or rain, soaked and chilly, waiting for bread and soup. I have returned to the distributing stations at the end of the day and have found men, women, and children sometimes still standing in line, but later compelled to go back to their pitiful homes, cold, wet, and miserable. It was not until eighteen weary hours afterward that they got the meal they missed. The need will continue to be great for many months after peace is declared. Factories have been stripped of their machinery. There is a complete stagnation of industry. It will take months to rehabilitate these industries and to start the wheels again."
In Serbia more than 4,000,000 people were deprived of their living by the war. In Poland the suffering has been more terrible than in either Belgium or Serbia. The population fleeing behind the retreating Russians were not able to keep up because of the women and children, the aged and the sick. They were overtaken by the German army and left in the charred remains of their burned dwellings. Some 200 cities and 15,000 towns and villages were destroyed in Poland. Already 2,000,000 have died of starvation there. In some districts all the children under six years of age have perished.
Armenia has suffered relatively more than any of the other nations. Mr. Henry Morgenthau, the American Ambassador to Turkey, said: "One million of these people have either been massacred or deported and unless succor reaches them shortly, those remaining will be lost." In all history there is no record more sad than that of the persecution and extermination of the Armenians. University professors educated in the United States have had their hair and nails torn out by the roots and have been slowly tortured to death. Women and girls were outraged and brutally killed. Little children perished of hunger. It is said that probably 1,000,000 of the 2,000,000 Armenians in Turkey have been slain, or have been driven into the country to starve, or have been forced to accept Islam.
The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief reports:
"Men in the army were the first to be brutally put to death. These and civilians, after being subjected to horrible tortures, were shot. Even priests were made victims of brutal murder. Women, children, the sick and aged, were forced at a moment's notice to start on foot on a journey of exile. Mothers, torn from their children, were compelled to leave the little ones behind. Women giving birth to children on the road were forbidden to delay, but, under the whiplash, were made to continue their march until they dropped from exhaustion to die. A United States Consul reported that he saw helpless people brained with clubs, while children were killed by beating their brains out against the rocks. Other children were thrown into rivers and those who could swim were shot down as they struggled in the water. Crimes that have been, and are being, practiced upon Armenian women are too cruel and horrible for words. The mutilated corpses of hundreds bear testimony to this inhuman reign." [3]
Who was responsible for these outrages, and how long will the world permit them to continue?
Whichever way we turn, whether we survey the number of killed, wounded, or prisoners, the cost of the conflict, or the suffering of the devastated nations, we realize that the war means sacrifice. It is difficult for us at home in America to appreciate the spirit in which the men in this great struggle in Europe are fighting, and the sacrifices they are making. In all these months in many lands, the writer has not heard from the lips of a single soldier who had actually seen service at the front, words of hatred or of boasting. Quietly and often with sadness most of these men are going forward to face death.
Here is a letter from a young officer who fell on that fatal first day of July on the Somme.