The Cost of It All
What war debts mean—The devastation of farms and
villages—Diseases which travel with war—The men picked to die
first—The survivors and their children—The effect on France of
Napoleon’s wars—What Hannibal did to Rome—What happened to the
Franks—Sweden before and after the wars of Charles XII—Europe at
the close of the Great War
In the meanwhile, all the countries in the war were rapidly
rushing toward bankruptcy. England spent $30,000,000 a day;
France, Germany, and Austria nearly as much apiece. Thus in the
course of a year, a debt of $300 was piled upon every man, woman,
and child in the British kingdom. The average family consists of
five persons, so that this means a debt of $1500 per family for
each year that the war lasted. The income of the average family
in Great Britain is less than $500 in a year, and the amount of
money that they can save out of this sum is very small. Yet the
British people are obliged to add this tremendous debt to the
already very large amount that they owe, and will have to go on
paying interest on it for hundreds of years.
In the same fashion, debts piled up for the peoples of France,
Germany, Austria, Russia and all the countries in the war. In
spite of what we have said above of the average income of English
families, Great Britain is rich when compared with Austria and
Russia. What is more, Great Britain is practically unscarred,
while on the continent great tracts of land which used to be well
cultivated farms have been laid waste with reckless abandon. East
Prussia, Poland, Lithuania, Galicia, part of Hungary, Alsace,
Serbia, Bosnia, northern France, south-western Austria-Hungary,
and all of Belgium and Roumania, a territory amounting to
one-fifth of the whole of Europe, were scarred and burned and
devastated.
It will be years and years before these countries recover from
the effects of war’s invasion. For every man killed on the field
of battle, it is estimated that two people die among the
noncombatants. Children whose fathers are at the front, frail
women trying to do the work of men, aged inhabitants of destroyed
villages die by the thousands from want of food and shelter.
In the trail of war come other evils. People do not have time to
look after their health or even to keep clean. As a result,
diseases like the plagues of olden times, which civilization
thought it had killed, come to life again and destroy whole
cities. The dreadful typhus fever killed off one-fifth of the
population of Serbia during the winter of 1914. Cholera raged
among the Austrian troops in the fall of the same year. For every
soldier who is killed on the field of battle, three others die
from disease or wounds or lack of proper care.
[Illustration: Rendered Homeless by War]
In time of war, the first men picked are the very flower of the
country, the strong, the athletic, the brave, the very sort of
men who ought to be carefully saved as the fathers of the people
to come. As these are killed or disabled, governments draw on the
older men who are still vigorous and hardy. Then finally they
call out the unfit, the sickly, the weak, the aged, and the young
boys. As a general rule, the members of this last class make up
the bulk of the men who survive the war. They, instead of the
strong and healthy, become the fathers of the next generation of
children.
In the days of the Roman republic, 220 years B.C., there stood on
the coast of North Africa a city named Carthage, which, like
Rome, owned lands far and near. Carthage would have been
satisfied to “live and let live,” but Rome would not have it so.
As a result, the two cities engaged in three terrible wars which
ended in the destruction of Carthage. But before Carthage was
finally blotted off the map, her great general, Hannibal, dealt
Rome a blow which brought her to her knees, and came very near
destroying her completely. Five Roman armies, averaging 30,000
men apiece, he trapped and slaughtered. The death of these
150,000 men was a loss from which Rome never recovered. From this
time on, her citizens were made of poorer stuff, and the old
Roman courage and Roman honor and Roman free government began to
decline.
The Germanic tribes (the Goths, Franks, Lombards, etc.) who
swarmed into the Roman Empire about the year 400 A.D., although
they were barbarians, nevertheless had many excellent qualities.
They were brave, hardy men and stood for freedom from tyrants.
However, they fought so many wars that they were gradually killed
off. Take the Franks, for example; the three grandsons of
Charlemagne, who had divided up his great empire, fought a
disastrous war with one another, which ended in a great battle
that almost wiped out the Frankish nation. This happened about
840 A.D.
Sweden was once one of the great powers of Europe. However, about
1700 A.D., she had a king named Charles XII, who tried to conquer
Russia and Poland. He was finally defeated at a little town in
the southern part of Russia nearly a thousand miles away from
home, and his great army was wiped out. After his time, Sweden
sank to the level of a second class nation. The bodies of her
best men had been strewn on battlefields reaching from the Gulf
of Bothnia to the Black Sea.
[Illustration: Charles XII of Sweden]
For eighty years after the time of Napoleon, the French nation
showed a lower birth rate and produced smaller and weaker men
than it had one hundred years previously. The reason for this is
easily found. During the twenty-three years of terrible fighting
which followed the execution of the king, France left her finest
young men dead all over the face of Europe. They died by the
thousands in Spain, in Italy, in Austria, in Germany, and above
all, amidst the snows and ice of Russia. Only within the last
twenty years have the French, through their new interest in
out-of-door sports and athletics, begun once more to build up a
hardy, vigorous race of young men. And now came this terrible war
to set France back where she was one hundred years ago.
Picture Europe at the close of this great war; the flower of her
young manhood gone; the survivors laden with debts which will
keep them in poverty for years to come; trade and agriculture at
a standstill; but worst of all, the feeling of friendship between
nations, of world brotherhood, postponed one hundred years.
Hatred of nation for nation is stronger than ever.
Questions for Review
How does a nation at war increase its debts?
Why do diseases thrive in war time?
What became of the Goths and Franks?
Why was the reign of Charles XII disastrous to Sweden?
What was the effect of Napoleon’s many wars upon the strength
of the French nation?
Is war growing more humane?