World War I in Retrospective - 10 January 1932

New Rochelle

Jan 10 1932

The most shocking thing about the war was the fact that it was a Christian war. Christian nations brought it on and kept it going.

For centuries Christians had been sending missionaries to every part of the world occupied by backward peoples and they were sent to teach the gentle loving philosophy of the Prince of Peace. In the war these backward peoples were enlisted on both sides to kill Christians.

The more a man killed, the greater hero was he. They taught him how to lie to cheat, to spy to hate and the more energetic he was in the doing of these base things, the more patriotically loyal was he. Incredible, unbelievable men and women will ejaculate in years to come.

The Gt War came as a climax of 5,000 years of steady military advancement.

Had all the able bodied men old and young been enlisted in the armies of Gt Britain and America at the time of the Revolution, the total could not have exceeded 4 millions of men. As a matter of fact the fighting men actually enlisted was only a few thousand. In the Great War men actually enlisted.

The loss of life mostly on the battle fields was 10 millions of men and this was double the loss caused by all the wars of the preceding 120 years put together. I shall not blame you if you pronounce this a wild statement. It is, a direct quotation from Field Marshal Sir William Robertson who was the chief of the British general Staff during the World War. More he says that when the victims of army and naval blockages of revolutions, of sunken and shipwrecked boats, of bomb armaments, the dead mount to 37 millions.

Bring the dead to life says another statesman and set them in marching order, 10 men in a line and allow 2 seconds only for a line to pass. Stand opposite the first line and see them pass from dawn to sunset. Before the last line passes you 162 days will have gone by. So says a noted statesman of the League of Nations.

Do you remember that first sale of liberty bonds – 2 billions of dollars? None of us could comprehend a billion dollars. Some of us do not comprehend it yet.

She acknowledged cost of the war was 187 billions.

The gt war says the League of Nations statisticians cost $20,000 for each hour since the birth of the Prince of Peace. The four actual years of war cost over 9 millions dollars per hour. It would be possible had we the cost of the war to present every family in the U.S. Canada Australia Gt Britain France Belgium Germany and Russia with a 2500 house standing on a few acre plot and containing $1200 worth of furniture. These people could be divided into towns 20,000 families and each town could be provided with a hospital university and public schools including the salaries of doctors, nurses teachers and professors. Our Secy of War Mr. Davis said that millions rounds of artillery ammunition were used in the entire Civil War. In the Gt War 12,700,000 were used every month.

The cost of the war has been estimated as greater that all wars together since Christendom. Our share in it cost as much as all the wars of this nation including the Revolution.

The cost in lives and dollars is perhaps not the worst result of war. A so called wave of crime has invariably followed war especially robbery and murder and hand in hand with it has travelled a lowered standard of morals. A large percent of our present day literature as shown in books magazines and papers borders on the obscene and when measured by pre war standards are at least indecent. Theaters, movies, even music and the arts have yielded to the same mysterious influence and have fallen to a lower moral standard. Send a child to school and on the way it may see and hear menacing things to which no child was exposed before the war.

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