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We spend more money building one battleship than in the annual maintenance of all our state universities. The financial loss resulting from destroying one another's homes in the civil war would have built 15,000,000 houses, each costing $2,000. We pray for love but prepare for hate. We preach peace but equip for war.

Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camp and court Given to redeem this world from error,

There would be no need of arsenal and fort.

War only defers a question. No issue will ever really be settled until it is settled rightly. Like rival "gun gangs" in a back alley, the nations of the world, through the bloody ages, have fought over their differences. Denver cannot fight Chicago and Iowa cannot fight Ohio. Why should Germany be permitted to fight France, or Bulgaria fight Turkey?

When mankind rises above creeds, colors and countries, when we are citizens, not of a nation, but of the world, the armies and navies of the earth will constitute an international police force to preserve the peace and the dove will take the eagle's place. Our differences will be settled by an international court with the power to enforce its mandates. In times of peace prepare for peace. The wages of war are the wages of sin, and the "wages of sin is death.”

France at the Opening of the Great War

Robert W. Chambers

This declamation is adapted from a story appearing in the Cos mopolitan for June, 1916. For a keener appreciation of its meaning, review the history of the Franco-Prussian War and of the part France played in the recent Great War. In delivery, special effort should be made to present smoothly the many shifting scenes of the war drama, the while voicing the suspense felt in France and the winsome appeal of "the far cry from beyond the Vosges."

On August 5th, 1914, in the little town of Ausone, in eastern France, there were few signs of war visible except the exodus of the young men and the crowds before the bulletins. On one of the bulletin boards was nailed the order for general mobilization; on the other, a terse paragraph announced that on Sunday, August 2nd, German soldiers had entered the city of Luxemburg, crossed the grand duchy, and were already skirmishing with Belgian cavalry around Liège and with French troops before Longwy. In other terms, the Teutonic invasion had begun; German troops were already on French soil, for Longwy is the most northern of the republic's fortifications.

Another paragraph reported that King Albert of Belgium had appealed to England, and that Sir Edward Grey, in the House of Commons, had prepared his country for an immediate ultimatum to Germany.

And Germany had not yet declared war on either France or Belgium, nor had England declared war on Germany, nor had Austria, as yet, formally declared war on Russia.

But there seemed to be no doubt, no confusion, in the minds of the inhabitants of Ausone concerning what was happening, and what fate still concealed behind a veil already growing transparent enough to see through-already lighted by the infernal flashes of German rifle-fire before Longwy.

Everybody in Ausone knew, everybody in France understood. A great stillness settled over the republic, as though the entire land had paused to kneel a moment before the long day of work began.

Amid the vast silence, as the nation rose serenely from its knees, millions of flashing eyes were turned toward Alsace and Lorraine-eyes dimmed for an instant, then instantly clear again-clear and steady as the sound and logical minds controlling them.

In London, a king, a prime minister, and a first lord of the admiralty were listening to a sirdar who was laying down the law by wireless to a president and his premier. In St. Petersburg, an emperor was whispering to a priest.

Meanwhile, the spinning world swung on around its orbit; tides rose and ebbed; the twin sentinels of the skies relieved each other as usual, and a few billion stars waited patiently for eternity.

Ausone was waiting, too, amid its still trees and ripening fields. In the summer world around, no hint of impending change disturbed the calm serenity of that August afternoon-no sense of waiting, no prophecy of gathering storms. But in men's hearts reigned the breathless stillness which heralds tempests.

Silently as a kestrel's shadow gliding over the grass, an ominous shade sped over sunny France, darkening the light in millions of smiling eyes, subduing speech, stilling all pulses, cautioning a nation's ardent heart and conjuring its ears to listen and its lips to silence.

And as France sat silent, listening, hand lightly resting on her hilt, came the far cry from beyond Vosges the voice of her lost children, the longmourned Alsace and Lorraine.

Now she had risen to her feet, loosening the blade in its scabbard. But she had not yet drawn it; she still stood listening to the distant shots from Longwy in the north, to the noise of the western wind blowing across the Channel; and always she heard, from the east, the lost voices of her best beloved, calling, calling her from beyond the Vosges.

The Woe of Belgium

Newell Dwight Hillis

This is an extract from a lecture delivered in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, shortly after the German drive through Belgium at the opening of the recent Great War. Pathos is, of course, the dominant cmotion. This gives way momentarily to other emotions in parts of the first two paragraphs, but the pathos of the whole is to be strongly felt and expressed.

OUT of a glorious past comes the woe of Belgium. Desolation has come like the whirlwind, and destruction like a tornado. But a short time ago and Belgium was a hive of industry, and in the

fields were heard the harvest songs. Suddenly, Germany struck Belgium. The whole world has but one voice, "Belgium has innocent hands." She was led like a lamb to the slaughter. When the lover of Germany is asked to explain Germany's breaking of her solemn treaty upon the neutrality of Belgium, the German stands dumb and speechless. Merchants honor their written obligations. True citizens consider their word as good as their bond; Germany gave a treaty, and in the presence of God and the civilized world, entered into a solemn convenant with Belgium. To the end of time, the German must expect this taunt, "as worthless as a German treaty." Scarcely less black are the two or three known examples of cruelty wrought upon nonresisting Belgians. In Brooklyn lives a Belgian woman. She planned to return home in late July to visit a father who had suffered paralysis, an aged mother, and a sister who nursed both. When the Germans decided to burn that village in Eastern Belgium, they did not wish to burn alive this old and helpless man, so they bayonetted to death the old man and woman, and the daughter that nursed them.

Let us judge not, that we be not judged. This is the one example of atrocity that you and I might be able personally to prove. But every loyal German in the country can make answer: "These soldiers were drunk with wine and blood. Such an atrocity misrepresents Germany and her soldiers. The breaking of Germany's treaty with Belgium represents the dishonor of a military ring, and not

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