Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jun 3, 1915

An Unwelcome Spring

[This editorial from the Nashville (Tenn.) Banner of April 5, is a good commentary on Luke 21:26: “Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.”]

In a letter printed a few days ago in the New York Tribune, but written a month ago, when the first crocuses were just breaking through the turf in Kensington Park Gardens in London, Will Irwin says he supposes “spring was never before unwelcome in this world.”

For all the world knows that Lord Kitchener said a little while back that he did not know how soon the war would be over, but he knew when it would begin, and set the date on the first of May.

All England knows that her people are approaching a series of dreadful months. Before the wheat is ripe, a million fine fellows will be under ground; before the wheat is garnered, the material accumulations of centuries will be dust and ashes. With the approach of spring all Europe had begun preparation for the monumental wreckage of war.

The war went on in its ghastliness, through the cold and freezing winter months, while ice filled the trenches and mud was deep on the highways. With the moderation of the weather came the terrific onslaught of the Russians on Przemysl, the scaling of the icy heights, ready to sweep across the plains of Hungary and an offensive along the whole of their front from the Baltic Sea to the Roumanian border and in the Caucasus.

The coming of spring means a half million casualties on the Allied side alone—a hundred thousand of them dead; as many more wrecks for life. It means the death grapple in the fiercest combat the world ever has seen.

“That is why,” continues Mr. Irwin, “the sound of the pattering spring rain on the roof is like the steps of the priest and the hangman in the corridors of the death house.”

Before the sprouting leaves of Kensington Park Gardens turn brown in the autumn wind, there will be thousands of tragedies in suspense and in certainty. No wonder spring is unwelcome!