War Destroying Valuable Workers
By William Henry Scoles
THERE was once a time when the wars did not call all the most useful workers from their labor for the good of humanity. For example, there were Frenchmen who made lasting names for themselves in the history of science, by investigations carried out by them during the wars of the Revolution and of Napoleon. The present military system has changed this, and we read of men eminent in all fields of learning, in music, art, and literature, being called to go to the front. Now all the history of progress stops, and that history alone is continued which is written in blood, the history of mad heroism and useless death. No consideration of the service men have done for humanity, nor of the service they yet might do, nor of the honor they are to the state, has any weight. The best of the nation, together with the most bestial yokel that ever disdained to think beyond the minimum demanded by his life, are esteemed "food for cannon" and nothing more. The true value of the humblest and of the most selfish is infinitely above any such appraisement; but what shall be said of the system that sets like valuation upon the lives of the most aspiring toward worthy honor, upon the most altruistic servants of mankind? Surely if there were any record of a genius of evil more malevolent than Satan, the devising of such a system would rightly be attributed to him. W. H. S.