THE KING’S BUSINESS 463 to say for a moment that war has this influence upon all soldiers or officers. On the contrary, some of the noblest Christians we have ever met have been officers and men in the British army, in the German army, and in the Ameri can army. But a close study of war in our own and other countries has con vinced us of the awfully demoralizing effect of war. War is a devilish thing and naturally leads to devilish results.' In the February 27th issue of the New York Evening Post, one of the most careful and respectable newspapers in America, a correspondent, Robert Dunn, writes without any seeming realization of the light in which he puts himself of having visited the Bavarian trenches near Eille and taking a rifle from a German soldier, and then shooting at two French soldiers. As he was not a soldier, but a representative of a neutral country, this, of course, was nothing more nor less than an attempt at murder, of which he is appar ently proud. Such is the effect of war. The fancied glory of it is swallowed up in the real horror of it. The awful guilt before God and man of those per- Guilt Before God sons responsible for the present European war, of Men Responsible awaits the verdict of history, for the European War We have all heard of the frightful condition of affairs in Belgium; all our hearts have been wrung with agony at the story of what the Belgians have suffered, but now we are beginning to hear of even more awful things in Russian Poland. We read: “There are 6,000,000 Poles in the portion of Russian Poland that is being- fought over. Of these, according to the Red Cross men, 1,000,000 are abso lutely destitute. They are without food or the means to buy food. . . . It is not merely that money is lacking, flour is lacking. It must be imported or starvation follows. There afe 2,000,000 others who will suffer, but may save themselves. . . . Russia struck .at Germany. The German armies invaded Poland in retaliation. They swept almost to Warsaw—and an invading army sweeps fairly clean. There were some things left when they passed over. They were driven back, and the Russian armies covered this territory—and they gleaned what was left. Then the Russians were driven back—sacking as they went—and the Germans covered the ground once more. Three times unhappy Poland has been fought over. It had little at the beginning. It has nothing now. For months Poland has been starving, not merely going hungry. That is a commonplace of war. Poles have been dying because they cannot get food. . . . Beggars follow the stranger in the Polish cities. Some of them are mute. They only look at the stranger through hollow eyes and hold out skinny hands. Others are vociferous. They cling to the garments of the passerby. They cry for aid in an uncouth dialect. They run out from dark ened doorways. The man who gives is pursued by a crew of them.” “A dispatch from Paris to the New York Sun tells that the Polish pianist Ignace Paderewski, trying to establish a committee of relief for Poland, says, ‘It is said today that 17,000,000 Poles are now suffering from the horrors of war.’ Official statistics show, according to Paderewski^ that 120 towns and 400 villages in Poland have been destroyed and the losses of the residents of these places are estimated at $1,200,000,000. Ten millions of ype°ple>he said, are without food and shelter.” This is not all. Appalling stories of suffering, sickness and death are coming from Servia; 60,000 people dying from typhus fever, nurses and doctors,- British and American, dying as a result of their own labors of love in the afflicted districts. -
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