Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 6, 1913

The Evils of War

It is not in the direct loss of life alone that the horrors of war are manifest. We must take into account the widowed wives, the orphan children, the desolate homes. The pursuits of industry and thrift are made to pay tribute to war’s exactions. If direct famine does not result, then pinching want for many years is entailed upon thousands of homes. Of the results of the recent war in the Balkans, a recent number of the Chicago Journal presents the following dark picture:—

There will be bitter suffering in millions of families of Europe this winter. Coarse food will give place to coarser, belts will be tightened in place of meals, the rations will be shortened, and every public and private agency of relief will be taxed to capacity to keep hardship from becoming disaster; for more than a thousand million dollars of Europe’s liquid capital has been burned up in the Balkan war, or has gone into unproductive increases of armies already too great for taxpayers to support. The coming hardships will press most heavily on lands which felt the devastation of war,—Turkey, and Bulgaria, and the fought-over regions of Thrace and Macedonia. In the first-named countries defeat has added bitterness to privation, and in Turkey the inchoate character of society will increase the ills of poverty. While these lands suffer most, no part of Europe is wholly exempt. Fifty thousand men are already out of work in Berlin, and the authorities of that city are expecting a repetition of the bread riots of last year. Martial law prevails over large districts in Austria and Russia. Workers in Italy are striking for a living wage, and even in prosperous France and Holland the pinch is felt.