The Worst Year in History

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Apr 1, 1909

The Worst Year in History

THE Chicago Tribune at the beginning of the new year gave a comprehensive summary of the disasters of the year 1908, from the opening paragraph of which we take the following:—

Nineteen hundred eight—the most terrible year of disaster in the history of the modern world. That is the black record which Time has entered in his books for the year which has just closed. A quarter of a million people destroyed in awful cataclysms, billions of dollars' worth of property wiped out of existence, a sum of pain and human anguish which can never be expressed in words or figures,—such is the balance which must be carried to the debit side of the world's account-books.

The mention of the word catastrophe will, of course, bring the thoughts of every one back to the great Italian earthquake, the greatest single disaster in the world's history, a tragedy which cost one hundred twenty-five thousand lives, and wiped out of existence great and historic cities. In the shadow of that terrible holocaust the world has failed to realize that it was merely the climax of a long series of horrors which followed one on the heels of the other from the first day of January, 1908, to the first day of January, 1909.

The disasters which the journal chronicles were responsible for nearly three hundred thousand deaths. The fearfulness for the future and the almost hopelessness of better conditions are expressed in the following, the closing paragraph of that editorial summary:—

The principal question which arises in connection with this awful list is whether or not human foresight and science can obviate such a series of calamities in the future, or at least ameliorate the effects of the disaster.

Are not these conditions, and the dread of the future that is filling men's hearts, indications that the time of earth's great crisis is approaching?