Aug.
To-pay's anniversary is one of which people need no reminding and probably will not for many. years, if not centuries, ahead; and although there has been, and fs, much talk and much writing of the likely horrors and extent of future wars, it is not unreasonable to expect that unless humanity is altogether to lose control of its powers of reasoning, no future conflict will be on so enormous a scale, entail so great a sacrifice, produce so vastly negative a result, and have 60 far! reaching an effect on the inhabitants of the world—combatant and non-combatant. Now, ten years after its commencement, when one is able to consider the war from a more detached spee to view more accurately its vast news and to realize more fully its effects, one is given to wonder whether even those who orisinally were responsible would have fired the train that led to the con-flag ration, and whether those who afterwards entered would have Joined issue, had they any remote conception of what it was going to entail in. wealth, in lives and in anguish, and in' the shatter ing of almost every national fabric of victor and vanquished.
It was to be a "war to end war." But has it done so? Are the great nations of the world now, in the year 1924, any more peacefully inclined than they were! in 1914? Is there now any more! pronounced evidence of the comity of nations than there was then?
Ts international distrust any less apparent, international hatred any Jess rampant, than before? Does the thought of millions of dead, the sight of millions of maimed, the existence of millions of widows and orphans, the thought of the disintegration of. millions of families, convey any message of the horrible futility of it all, to nations and those responsible for their destinies? Has the-war, which proved beyond all doubt and cavil the futility of, war on @ vast scale, done anything to establish that universal brotherhood. among—mankind which, we are told, is possible of achievement? The war was an all destroying force; its only eveative productions were those whose this sion was to destroy'; it toppled over a civilization, which, though not the perfect one, represented the result of mankind's best! effort for centuries; it turned more than half the mankind of Europe from peaceful occupations to those of slaughter and destruction; and it drew men from all corners of the earth to join the general effort and accomplishment of extermination of mankind and his works. If the loss of lives resultant upon the war is colossal, the loss and destruction of wealth is 80 vast as to be in calculable; and none can foretell when its effects will cease to be felt, if ever they are. session and expression regarding the responsibility "for the war can do no good at_present—it is a matter which istory will record and posterity Judge upon, probably much more clearly than we are able to do now. Mankind's greatest need at Present is to palliate (they can stashed, the best clements on children coming into theft stricken countries of Europe. women must have struggled with Of that structure of civilization Mills and factories. Their efforts Yet nowhere is there such a|their ideals. and their own which the war so completely' shattered. Whether this is possible.rests largely with what the present generation accomplishes! in the next decade; and this rebuilding of a sundered. and lacerated civilization will rely for its accomplishment more—ineal-_ cularly more—on international ethics and goodwill than international ratios of martial power. The surfeit of ravage and destruction has left an ineradicable_ sear on the world, and there never was a period in' history where general international comity was 80 necessary, and international bickering and hatred so fraught with grave consequences, as at! present. The war is still so near' to us that men and nations cannot forget it; on the world' statesmen rests an awful responsibility at the present time, and on what they accomplish rests the destiny of nations and the peace of the world. Let us hope that! their endeavours will result such a peace and such an abfogation of the present feelings of hatred and ambition as will make the late war—the most terrible of all—the first and last of its kind,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.