Your ShelfYour Projects

The Aftermath of War

17%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 13, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 3.

Read the full edition

The Aftermath of War

The tumult and the shouting dies. The armies disband. The soldiers return to their loved ones. Every home is a house of mourning. They try to pick up again the broken threads of peaceful industry. All is ruin.
They contemplate. Five million men killed. Ten million men crippled. Wives and daughters ravished. Children mutilated. Babies starved. Hundreds of cities burned. Thousands of farms laid waste. Thirty billion dollars of accumulated wealth consumed in smoke.
They counsel together. They cannot endure the desolation. They will not suffer the privation. Men fight harder to keep from sinking than to rise.
They go to the nobles and the rich. They ask for bread. They are given a stone. When in the annals of history has Privilege chosen to sacrifice itself for the common weal?
They turn to the governments. The governments listen. But what can the governments do? They have spent the substance of the living. They have spent the substance of those to come, even to the third and the fourth generation.