THE WORLD AT WAR
Let us try to grasp the colossal facts of the present war. Since the
beginning of the conflict there has been a daily attrition of more than
25,000 in killed, wounded, or prisoners every twenty-four hours. At
the opening of the fourth year of the war the number killed was over
5,000,000. This does not include those who have perished in the
devastated nations. Not less than 6,000,000 men are now in the
military prisons of Europe, some of whom have undergone great
suffering, both physical and mental. More than 6,000,000 lie wounded
today in the military hospitals, not to speak of several times that
number who have been patched up and sent back into the line to face
death again, or have been rejected as unfit for further service, often
left crippled or maimed, blinded, or deformed for life.
Mere numbers or statistics cannot measure the sacrifice and suffering
of these lives. If we could know the infinite value of the unit of
personality, or compute the preciousness and potentiality of a single
life destroyed, we might then hope to multiply it by the million. If
human scales could weigh the sorrow of a widow's heart, could compute
the anguish of a mother's loss, could prophesy the deprivation of an
orphan's lot, or know the good which might have been done by even one
man who has now been killed, we would then be in a position to begin to
estimate the casualty list.
There are today nearly 40,000,000 men with the colors. If we add to
these the 5,000,000 already killed, the 6,000,000 prisoners and the
large number discharged as unfit for further service, we have a total
of far more than 50,000,000 who have been with the colors in the first
three years of the war. We can better realize the significance of this
statement if we remember that in no previous war have more than
3,000,000 men faced each other in conflict. According to Gibbon,
Rome's great standing army was not over 400,000 men. Napoleon's grand
army did not exceed 700,000, and in the Battle of Waterloo less than
200,000 men were engaged. In the American Civil War less than
3,000,000, and in the Russo-Japanese War only 2,500,000 men were
employed. Indeed, if we sum up the twenty greatest wars of the last
one hundred and twenty-five years, from the Napoleonic Wars to the
present time, less than 20,000,000 men were engaged, while in this war
nearly twice that number are now under arms. Britain alone has
enrolled over 5,000,000 for the army, with 1,000,000 more from the
overseas dominions, and about 500,000 for the navy. Germany has called
some 12,000,000 and Russia more than 12,000,000 to the colors.
By the end of 1917 nearly 6,000,000 men will have been killed. Less
than 5,500,000 were killed in the twenty greatest wars of the last
century and a quarter, all combined. In the Battle of Gettysburg only
3,000 were killed. England's casualty list during a vigorous offensive
averages over 3,000 every day. In the first ten days alone of the
battle of the Somme, the British lost 200,000 in killed or wounded.
France as a whole has lost even more heavily, while Germany's casualty
list during the great battles of the Somme and in Flanders has averaged
200,000 a month. When our own relatives are at the front, and our own
boys are in the line, we realize what these statistics mean. In
Germany alone the number of men killed now totals far over 1,000,000.
Think of the many millions of mothers and wives in the nations of
Europe scanning that crowded page of the newspaper, with several
thousand names on the casualty list every day, each looking to see if
her boy's name is there.
During that fateful day of July 1st when the great drive on the Somme
began, when the English along a front of twenty-five miles and the
French on a front of ten miles leaped out of the trenches and sprang
forward in that terrible charge, men were mowed down like ripened
grain. Regiments on both sides were cut to pieces. The writer's
brother-in-law, a young colonel, went in with 1,100 men of his
battalion--only 130 came out. Only one officer was unscathed and he
has since been killed. The young colonel was shot within an inch of
the heart and fell into a shellhole. Two of his men fell dead on top
of him. There he lay under a terrible fire for sixteen hours, and
finally at midnight gained strength to struggle from under the two
bodies that lay upon him, and crawled on his hands and knees for over a
mile back to the nearest dressing station. In the first year of the
war he lost nearly half his men with trench foot, the men's feet being
frost-bitten or frozen in the muddy trenches. In the second year he
was wounded in seven places by shrapnel, and later, after recovery, was
almost killed. He has now again returned to the service.
Another red-cheeked boy told the writer that his battalion had gone in
with 960 men and had come out with only eighty. In another battalion
all the officers were killed or wounded and the remaining handful was
left with a lance-corporal in command: the colonel, the majors,
captains, lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals had all been killed or
wounded. At Bradford the writer was told that their favorite sons in
the "Bradford Pals" had to be sacrificed, and every man that went into
action in this battalion was either killed or wounded within a few
hours. An unusual proportion of British officers have fallen. The
university students and the flower of the land who have gone into the
officers' training corps have oftentimes been among the first to fall.
Let us now turn from the numbers of killed, wounded, and prisoners and
estimate if we can the cost of the conflict. The present war, more
than any in previous history, has been a warfare of attrition, that is,
by the killing and maiming of men and the destruction of resources to
attempt to wear out the enemy.
Already the cost of the war has mounted to over $130,000,000 a day, or
more than $100,000 every minute of the twelve hours that the sun shines
upon us. Contrast, for instance, the total cost, the lives lost, and
the numbers of men called to the colors in the twenty principal wars
during the last century and a quarter, from the Napoleonic Wars of
1793, with the figures for the present war to August 4, 1917, at the
end of the third year of the conflict.[1]
Twenty previous wars Present War
Total cost $26,123,546,240 $75,000,000,000
Total killed 6,498,097 5,000,000
Called to the colors 18,562,200 40,000,000
We have said that the cost of the war has now risen to the almost
unbelievable total of over $130,000,000 a day.[2] That is more than
the total cost of the whole war between Russia and Turkey in 1828. In
a single great day in the battles on the Somme, or in Belgium, the
British have used as much ammunition as they were able to manufacture
in the entire first ten months of the war in 1914.
Even before the end of 1915 the five great powers had more than doubled
their national debts. When will these debts be paid? Great Britain,
the wealthiest of the nations of Europe, after one hundred years of
peace still owes much of the debt incurred in the American Revolution
and all of the debt incurred in the Napoleonic Wars. The whole cost of
the American Civil War was only $5,000,000,000, and of the Napoleonic
Wars $6,000,000,000, while this war will cost over six times the amount
of either during this single year.
Great Britain's war debt at the end of the third year has reached the
enormous total of more than $20,000,000,000, or twenty times the
national debt of the United States at the beginning of the war, yet
even this does not begin to exhaust her resources. At the close of the
Napoleonic Wars Great Britain's debt was one-third of her national
resources. She can almost double her present enormous war debt before
utilizing a third of her wealth.
We have not in this calculation reckoned on the economic value of the
lives destroyed. That would average about $3,000 for each man. Five
million men killed means an economic loss to the countries concerned of
$15,000,000,000. But the economic value of the lives destroyed
represents only a small fraction of their potentiality--socially,
morally, and spiritually. No human brain can calculate, no heart can
fathom the cost or loss of this terrible conflict.
The cost of less than one month of the present war would equal that of
the entire Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Another month would pay for
the whole Russo-Japanese War; twelve days would pay for the Boer War,
while the cost for three days would dig the Panama Canal. At the
beginning of 1918 the war debts of the warring countries will exceed
$90,000,000,000, or more than one-fifth the wealth of all the warring
nations of Europe. The daily cost of the war is equal to half the
earning power of these European nations, and the interest on their war
debts will be equal to one-half their budgets as they stood at the
beginning of the war. The wealth of more than twenty nations is being
rapidly drained, and the world's financial reserves are being consumed
in this vicious and sinful struggle which an autocratic militarism has
forced upon the world.
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.
"I never felt more confident or cheerful in my life before, and would
not miss the attack for anything on earth. Every officer and man is
more happy and cheerful than I have ever seen them. My idea in writing
this letter is in case I am one of the 'costs' and get killed. I have
been looking at the stars, and thinking what an immense distance they
are away. What an insignificant thing the loss of, say, forty years of
life is compared with them! It seems scarcely worth talking about.
Well, good-bye, you darlings. Try not to worry about it, and remember
that we shall meet again really quite soon. This letter is going to be
posted if . . ."
A friend of the writer, a young chaplain whom he met recently at the
front, went out to find his brother's mangled body on the battlefield.
The boy who fell was the son of the Bishop of Winchester, and one of
the finest spirits in Oxford. Canon Scott Holland writes:
"The attack had failed. There was never any hope of its succeeding,
for the machine guns of the Germans were still in full play, with their
fire unimpaired. The body had to lie where it had fallen. Only, his
brother could not endure to let it lie unhonoured. He found some
shattered Somersets, who begged him to go no further. But he heard a
voice within him bidding him risk it, and the call of the blood drove
him on. Creeping out of the far end of the trench, as dusk fell, he
crawled through the grass on hands and knees, in spite of shells and
snipers, dropping flat on the ground as the flares shot up from the
German trenches. At last he found what he sought. He could stroke
with his hand the fair young head that he knew so well; he could feel
for the pocket-book and prayer-book, the badge and the whistle. He
could breathe a prayer of benediction and then crawl back on his
perilous way in the night."
The writer has just come from visiting a group of a dozen British and
American military hospitals in one French town, with from one to four
thousand patients in each, where at this moment the trains are arriving
in almost a steady stream, bearing the wounded from the front in the
great drive in Flanders. He has stood by the operating tables and
passed down those long, unending rows of cots. Some of these tragic
hospital wards are filled with men, every one of whom is blinded for
life by poison gas or shrapnel. They, like all the other wounded, are
brave and cheerful, but it will take great courage to maintain this
cheer, groping a long lifetime in the dark. One man counted 151 trains
of twenty cars each, or 3,000 carriages, filled with German wounded
passing back in a steady stream through Belgium. Behind all the active
fronts these train loads of wounded are daily bearing their burden of
suffering humanity. The cities and towns of Europe are filled with
limping or crippled or wounded men today.
Opposite the writer at the ship's table sat a young man with the lower
part of his face carried away. His chin and jaw were gone, yet he must
live on for a lifetime deformed. Another young fellow had spent seven
long weary months in training. The moment his regiment reached the
front it was ordered immediately into action. He sprang to the top of
the trench, but never got over it. He fell back wounded. Within three
days he was back in England again, but with only one leg. Seven months
of training, five minutes in action, then crippled for life! The
writer saw one young fellow whose face was left contorted by shrapnel,
which had carried away one eye and the bridge of his nose. He was a
quiet, earnest Christian. He said, "Of course, they cannot send me
back again into the line or compel me to go with only one eye, but I am
going just the same. I am going to give all that I have left to the
country and the cause." [4]
Hear that young soldier of France, Alfred Casalis, a brilliant student
of philosophy and theology, a Student Volunteer for the African mission
field, as he writes home to his father and mother at the age of
nineteen: "I volunteered of course. I know with an unalterable
knowledge and with an unconquerable confidence that the foundation of
my faith is unshakeable, it rests upon the Rock. I shall fight with a
good conscience and without fear (I hope), certainly without hate. I
feel myself filled with an illimitable hope. You can have no idea of
the peace in which I live. On the march I sing inwardly. I listen to
the music that is slumbering inside me. The Master's call is always
ringing loudly in my ears. I am not afraid of death. I have made the
sacrifice of my life. I know that to die is to begin to live." And
the last sentence of the unfinished letter written before the charge in
which he fell, "The attack cannot but succeed. There will be some
wounded, some killed, but we shall _go forward_ and far--" In the
other pocket of his coat, at the end of his will were the words, "'I
have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the
faith.' And I would that all my friends, all those who are every
moment with me, and whose hearts beat with mine, should repeat the word
of our hope, 'Because I live, ye shall live also.'" [5]
Professor Gilbert Murray, of Oxford, writes thus of the sacrifice of
the men for us: "As for me personally, there is one thought that is
always with me--the thought that other men are dying for me, better
men, younger, with more hope in their lives, many of whom I have taught
and loved. The orthodox Christian will be familiar with the thought of
One who loved you dying for you. I would like to say that now I seem
to be familiar with the feeling that something innocent, something
great, something that loved me, is dying, and is dying daily for me.
That is the sort of community we now are--a community in which one man
dies for his brother."
Yes, these boys are making the great sacrifice for us. With 5,000,000
who have already been killed, with 10,000,000 of our own sons enrolled.
as subject to their call to the colors when needed, with hundreds of
American army camps at home and in France already crowded with men,
what sacrifice can we make for them? How can we surround their lives
with the best influences of home, that they may come back to us even
better men than when they went away?
We have seen the terrible ordeal to which they will be subjected at the
front, the temptations to which they are exposed in France, in the
training schools, and the base camps; we have seen something of the
havoc which demoralizing forces have already wrought in other armies in
the camps of the prodigals, and we have seen the deadly dangers and
perils, both physical and moral, which the soldier must face. We have
spoken of the enormous sums voted to carry on a great war of
destruction. Is there not a yet more urgent need that we should supply
the great constructive forces for fortifying the physical and moral
manhood of our nation? Two organizations have been recognized by our
own and the other allied governments in the war zone--the one bearing
the symbol of _the red cross_ for the wounded, and the other _the red
triangle_ for the fighting men.
The nation has already generously responded to the needs of the wounded
even before the first battle was fought, giving more in one week than
any other nation in a year for the same purpose. And not a dollar too
much has been given for this great cause. But we shall soon have
several millions of fighting men under arms. What are we to do for
these men? We have already seen that they present a threefold need.
There is the physical need of these millions who will soon be training,
fighting, and suffering. Only the men at the front know what it really
is. There are the mental and social requirements of men who must have
recreation, healthy amusement and occupation. There is also the moral
and spiritual need of men who will face the greatest temptations of
their lives, when they will be farthest from the help of home and
friends, while old standards seem to be submerged or swept away "for
the period of the war."
We have already seen that the building that bears the red triangle of
the Y M C A at the front is at once the soldier's club, his home, his
church where his own denomination holds its services, his school, his
place of rest, his recreation center, his bank and postoffice where he
writes his letters, his friend in need that stands by him at the last
and meets his relatives who are called to his bedside in the hospital.
If there is anything which safeguards the physical, social, and moral
health of the men who are dying for us, can we do less than provide it
for them? While billions are being spent for destruction, must we not
at least invest an infinitesimal fraction of one per cent of our
expenditure, in construction, in that which is the greatest asset of
any nation--its moral manhood? Can we not provide a home away from
home for our own sons and the other boys with them whose parents may be
too poor to do so?
Here is a unique contribution which America can also make to her hard
pressed allies who have been exhausted by three terrible years of
fighting. Britain has already set us a wonderful example and will not
need our help. But there is France to which we owe so much and whose
war weary soldiers sorely need just such centers for recreation and
rebuilding. General Petain, the Commander in Chief, and the French
authorities have asked for the help of our Movement in their camps.
General Pershing, after surveying the field, has declared that the
greatest service which America can _immediately_ render France, even
before our own men can reach the trenches in large numbers, is to
extend the welfare work of the Y M C A to the entire French Army. Can
we do less than this for the nation that gave all that Washington asked
in our own hour of crisis? Then there is Italy, with all her deep need
and great possibilities. What can we do to minister to the wants of
her great army?
But let us turn to Russia, which represents the deepest need of
all--the nation which has undergone the greatest suffering, both within
and without its borders, of any of the belligerents. Think of its vast
area, greater than all North America, or one seventh of the land area
of the entire globe. Think of its population, almost twice our own,
and more than one tenth of the entire world. Think of these people,
who have the greatest capacity for suffering of any nation on earth,
suddenly released, like their own prisoners, with steps unsteady and
eyes unaccustomed to the blinding light of freedom. Think of what such
a movement of hope and cheer and re-creation may mean to troops hard
pressed or demoralized, facing another winter in the trenches.
Add to all these the suffering prisoners of war, and we have over
24,000,000 men who deeply need the ministry of this Movement, and need
it now. Here are millions who have already suffered or who are going
forward ready to make the great sacrifice for us. What sacrifice shall
we make for them?
[1] See World Almanac 1916, p. 488.
[2] The cost of the war has been calculated by various writers on both
sides of the Atlantic. Mr. Wm. Rossiter writes on "The Statistical
Side of the Economic Costs of the War," in the _American Economic
Review_ for March, 1916. Mr. Edmund Crammond's paper in _The Journal
of the Royal Statistical Society_, Sir George Paish in the various
issues of the _London Statist_, and others, have given careful
estimates of the direct cost of the war to nations and individuals.
During the first and cheapest year, according to Mr. Rossiter, the
total cost of the war, not including the economic value of the lives
lost, rose to forty billion dollars. That is equal to all the national
debts of the world.
[3] See Appendix II on "The Treatment of Armenians," by Viscount Bryce.
[4] Publishers' Note: The whole problem of the meaning of suffering and
its relation to the present war, especially for those who have suffered
bereavement, is dealt with by the author in his book, "Suffering and
the War."
[5] "For France and the Faith," Letters of Alfred Eugène Casalis,
Association Press.
APPENDIX I
EXTRACTS FROM "ETERNAL PEACE"
BY
IMMANUEL KANT
"No conclusion of peace shall be held to be valid as such when it has
been made with the secret reservation of the material for a future war.
No State having an existence by itself--whether it be small or
large--shall be acquired by another State through inheritance,
exchange, purchase, or donation. A State is not to be regarded as
property or patrimony, like the soil on which it may be settled.
Standing armies shall be entirely abolished in the course of time. For
they threaten other States incessantly with war by their appearing to
be always equipped to enter upon it. No State shall intermeddle by
force with the constitution or government of another State.
"No State at war with another shall adopt such modes of hostility as
would necessarily render mutual confidence impossible in a future
peace--such as the employment of assassins or poisoners, the violation
of a capitulation, the instigation of treason, and such like. These
are dishonorable stratagems. For there must be some trust in the habit
and disposition even of an enemy in war.
"The civil constitution in every State shall be republican. The law of
nations shall be founded on a federation of free States. People or
nations regarded as States may be judged like individual men. If it is
a duty to realize a state of public law, and if at the same time there
is a well-grounded hope of its being realized--although it may be only
by approximation to it that advances ad infinitum--then perpetual peace
is a fact that is destined historically to follow the falsely so-called
treaties of peace which have been but cessations of hostilities.
Perpetual peace is, therefore, no empty idea, but a practical thing
which, through its gradual solution, is coming always nearer its final
realization; and it may well be hoped that progress toward it will be
made at more rapid rates of advance in the times to come." [1]
[1] English Edition--Pages 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 81, 127.
APPENDIX II
EXTRACTS FROM "THE TREATMENT OF ARMENIANS"
BY
VISCOUNT BRYCE
From Four Members of the German Missions Staff in Turkey to the
Imperial German Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Berlin: "Out of 2,000 to
3,000 peasant women from the Armenian Plateau who were brought here in
good health, only forty or fifty skeletons are left. The prettier ones
are the victims of their gaolers' lust; the plain ones succumb to
blows, hunger, and thirst. Every day more than a hundred corpses are
carried out of Aleppo. All this happened under the eyes of high
Turkish officials. The German scutcheon is in danger of being smirched
for ever in the memory of the Near Eastern peoples."
Events in Armenia, published in the _Sonnenaufgang_, and in the
_Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift_, November, 1915: "Twelve hundred of
the most prominent Armenians and other Christians were arrested; 674 of
them were embarked on thirteen Tigris barges, the prisoners were
stripped of all their money and then of their clothes; after that they
were thrown into the river. Five or six priests were stripped naked
one day, smeared with tar, and dragged through the streets. For a
whole month corpses were observed floating down the River Euphrates,
hideously mutilated. The prisons at Biredjik are filled regularly
every day and emptied every night--into the Euphrates." . . .
From a German eye-witness: "In Moush there are 25,000 Armenians; in the
neighborhood there are 300 villages, each containing about 500 houses.
In all these not a single male Armenian is now to be seen, and hardly a
woman. Every officer boasted of the number he had personally
massacred. In Harpout the people have had to endure terrible tortures.
They have had their eyebrows plucked out, their breasts cut off, their
nails torn off. Their torturers hew off their feet or else hammer
nails into them just as they do in shoeing horses. When they die, the
soldiers cry: 'Now let your Christ help you.'"
Memorandum forwarded by a foreign resident at H.: "On the 1st of June,
3,000 people (mostly women, girls, and children) left H. accompanied by
seventy policemen. The policemen many times violated the women openly.
Another convoy of exiles joined the party, 18,000 in all. The journey
began, and on the way the pretty girls were carried off one by one,
while the stragglers from the convoy were invariably killed. On the
fortieth day the convoy came in sight of the Euphrates. Here they saw
the bodies of more than 200 men floating in the river. Here the Kurds
took from them everything they had, so that for five days the whole
convoy marched completely naked under the scorching sun. For another
five days they did not have a morsel of bread, nor even a drop of
water. They were scorched to death by thirst. Hundreds upon hundreds
fell dead on the way, their tongues were turned to charcoal, and when,
at the end of five days, they reached a fountain, the whole convoy
naturally rushed towards it. But here the policemen barred the way and
forbade them to take a single drop of water. At another place where
there were wells, some women threw themselves into them, as there was
no rope or pail to draw up the water. These women were drowned, the
dead bodies still remaining there stinking in the water, and yet the
rest of the people later drank from that well. On the sixty-fourth
day, they gathered together all the men and sick women and children and
burned and killed them all. On the seventieth day, when they reached
Aleppo, there were left 150 women and children altogether out of the
whole convoy of 18,000."
APPENDIX III
LINES WRITTEN BY A SOLDIER IN THE
ENGLISH ARMY ABOUT MARCH, 1916.
_Christ in Flanders_
"We had forgotten You or very nearly,
You did not seem to touch us very nearly.
Of course we thought about You now and then
Especially in any time of trouble,
We know that You were good in time of trouble
But we are very ordinary men.
And there were always other things to think of,
There's lots of things a man has got to think of,
His work, his home, his pleasure and his wife
And so we only thought of You on Sunday;
Sometimes perhaps not even on a Sunday
Because there's always lots to fill one's life.
And all the while, in street or lane or byway
In country lane in city street or byway
You walked among us, and we did not see.
Your feet were bleeding, as You walked our pavements
How did we miss Your foot-prints on our pavements;
Can there be other folk as blind as we?
Now we remember over here in Flanders
(It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders)
This hideous warfare seems to make things clear,
We never thought about You much in England
But now that we are far away from England
We have no doubts--we know that You are here.
You helped us pass the jest along the trenches
Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches,
You touched its ribaldry and made it fine.
You stood beside us in our pain and weakness.
We're glad to think You understand our weakness.
Somehow it seems to help us not to whine.
We think about You kneeling in the Garden
Ah! God, the agony of that dread Garden;
We know you prayed for us upon the Cross.
If anything could make us glad to bear it
'Twould be the knowledge, that You willed to bear it
Pain, death, the uttermost of human loss.
Tho' we forgot You, You will not forget us.
We feel so sure that You will not forget us.
But stay with us until this dream is past--
And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon,
Especially I think, we ask for pardon,
And that You'll stand beside us to the last."
APPENDIX IV
LETTER FROM LORD KITCHENER TO HIS MEN
"You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French
comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform a
task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience.
Remember that the honor of the British Army depends upon your
individual conduct. It will be your duty not only to set an example of
discipline and perfect steadiness under fire, but also to maintain the
most friendly relations with those whom you are helping in this
struggle. The operations in which you are engaged will, for the most
part, take place in a friendly country, and you can do your own country
no better service than in showing yourself, in France and Belgium, in
the true character of a British soldier.
Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. Never do anything
likely to injure or destroy property, and always look upon looting as a
disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a welcome and to be
trusted; and your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust.
Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep
constantly on your guard against any excesses. In this new experience
you may find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely
resist both temptations, and while treating all women with perfect
courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.
Do your duty bravely.
Fear God.
Honor the King."
Kitchener,
Field-Marshal.