sorrow. Certain it is, be the real reason what it may, there has been a great revival in the devotion of the French people since war broke out. Of course the cynical will say, "When the devil was sick the devil a saint would be," &c. The writer has seen more deep and reverent devotion displayed by worshippers inside the walls of semi-ruined churches which had their stained glass windows shattered than ever he has seen before. Probably more fervent prayers have been poured out before broken crosses and shell-torn statues of our Saviour in France and Belgium than were ever offered in peace time before the most beautiful shrines in the whole world. Religion has been perhaps the one thing in all the world so far strengthened and built up afresh amid the horrible ravages of war. That there has been a similar result all over the world and away from the actual scene of war is also apparent. The fact is that the ruin and carnage have been so stupendous, the sacrifices have been so great, the horrors have been so widespread and have so penetrated into almost every family circle that almost every human being in the world has turned to look for hope and comfort beyond the grave. Miserable indeed is the man or woman who is not assured that that hope and comfort are so to be found, for in sooth this war has made this transitory world but a sorry place! The writer of these impressions has been with a section of the British Army in the field, which numbers very many Catholic soldiers in its ranks. The conduct of these men has undoubtedly had a good effect upon the population wherever they have been stationed. The majority of the soldiers are of Irish nationality, though of English and Scottish and overseas Catholic soldiers there are also not a few. The simple and yet deep faith exhibited by these men upon all occasions made a wonderful impression on the French and Belgian peoples. It is not at the very best a happy thing to have one's country occupied by foreign troops, even though they come to defend your soil from the invader. Masses of men overrunning villages and towns and eager for some sort of relaxation from the rigor and hardship of trench life are apt to give trouble, even though well behaved and well disposed in every way. It is always a source of anxiety to the higher command to secure that nothing, even by inadvertence, shall be done by the troops to cause annoyance to the inhabitants of occupied territory. The outstanding feature of the British occupation of France and Belgium has been the fine and chivalrous spirit displayed by the men. They have put themselves on a footing of the best and kindest sort with the people, and complaints of any kind as to their behavior are few and far between. But, in addition to the relief of the people in finding the troops kind and considerate, imagine the good impression created when the French people find that large numbers of the men are devoted to their own religion and more earnest in their practice of it. When Irish regiments are billeted in a village the church large enough for the villagers becomes at once too small. It is thronged by the soldiers, and the curé finds his congregation enormous, and has, in conjunction with the army Chaplains, to arrange for many services on Sunday. The General commanding a division composed for the most part of Irish Catholic soldiers informed the present writer that his division never left an area without the local authorities, and notably the curé, coming to him to express their appreciation of the good behavior of the troops and their admiration for their earnest devotion to their religion. There is no doubt that the scourge of war has purified the hearts of many people, and the advent of large numbers of Catholic troops into France has probably helped to bring back to some Frenchmen an appreciation of something which they may have seemed to have almost lost. Thus in one way, and a way of no little importance, the war has wrought a change for the better in France. By William A. Wood T may be said in a fair spirit that the beliefs of the best of men divide on the problem of the cost of war. It has been shown by Ward in his "Pure Sociology" that war has been a leading factor in the development of that which we call civilization. Unquestionably this is true, if we tabulate. the results; but sound reasoning requires that it be shown that there is no better way. There is a better way. Ward's deduction does not mean that he favored war as a means to an end: he simply stated the fact from the point of view of the sociologist. The problem is at once ethical as well as sociological. What has been should not necessarily be continued. The basis of the sociological aspect is human achievement; that of the ethical is the power of the mind; and in the religious field we have the mainsprings of human conduct. The A few facts need consideration: object of nature is function. The object of man is happiness. The object of society is action. Severally and jointly. man is equipped with certain potential qualities, both of mind and body, and in the exercise of these faculties he achieves whatever he sets his mind to do. The mind itself is not a force, but it is the directive agent that guides the dynamic qualities of men. In those epochs of civilization which mark the movements of man toward development and progress, that which has proved sturdiest among human qualities is the virtue of the pioneer; and as obstacles have given way before the march of human achievement, the more serviceable and permanent elements of life have been successfully set up. These are not to be lost sight of in the glamour of war. The human race is unconquerable, and in the long run man wins over nature and becomes master of nature and of nature's laws. Thus we may trace our progress, from its faint beginnings in tribal successes onward to the establishment of those substantial moral gains which connote the It is value of the human soul in its struggles with nature. Whatever nature has set up as a hindrance has been largely overcome, but the mistakes which man himself makes constitute a drag on his progress. They check what is otherwise the dominion over nature which man aims to secure, and they do it by heaping up the compound interest assessed against succeeding generations. And in this category war is the great offender. true in the laws of biology that the forces of anabolism and katabolism are pitted against each other, but in this conflict of unlike elements the forms of life are born and come to maturity. That fruition is the gift which nature provides for the sustentation of the lives of men. And it is on this basis that man successfully builds, for in the partnership of the individual with others the co-operation of the many rewards the unit with increased fruitage. Every explosion of powder is costly, if at the end of the range we have a human being, and the cost must be paid for both by the living and the unborn. Every explosion of powder is costly in any case, for the price of the marksman is the price which he pays for the securing of the game. Bows and arrows and repeating rifles cost human labor, and when men shoot arrows and bullets into the air, they must go and pick them up or else make other ones. When they explode shells, they must make new shells in their place. If they keep on firing, some one else must make the ammunition and furnish new guns, for guns wear out as well as shells. When men consume more than they produce, they must soon stop either the production or the destruction. works once a year cost labor; fireworks for nearly three years that batter forts and dismember bodies must be paid for in the only element that can produce them, namely, human labor. Fire A nation at war is keeping a ledger, and as the balance is on the debit side, redoubled efforts are necessary to re store the equilibrium. No juggling with figures can offset this inexorable law of nature. No human reasoning can compensate nature for the consumption of her resources; nothing but human labor can compensate her. Her bounties contain no values until they are carved out by specific and productive human energy; and when these values are once created in the form of wealth, they fall under the law of katabolism. If man hastens the breaking-up process by recklessness or by war, he must pay for it in continued expenditure of effort, he must pay the cost. When a man borrows anything from nature he may use it or not, as he wills; but in any instance what he borrows must be returned to her reservoirs. War quickly destroys what man produces, but the cost is paid for, not in money, but by labor augmented many times over as a price paid for the follies of men. Constructive labor yields permanent results; war uproots them. Battleships are not paid for by Governments, but by subjects of the nation. A thousand men on a warship produce nothing; the same men in action destroy both ship and enemy. The payment of taxes comes out of human labor; the payment of interest on loans is a double burden, falling on those who now live and labor, and striking hard against those who are later to become creators of the nation's wealth. We are still paying pensions on a war that ended 102 years ago. Wars are paid for in human sacrifice-in human lives; but they are also paid for in sacrifice that eats up the products of man's labor; and when these visible things are shot to pieces, an increase of human energy alone can replace them. Men who build battleships are also paying for the battleships. If the ships go to the bottom, no power on earth can replace them save human labor; and the more ships at the bottom, the greater the drain on the living labor which creates them out of earth's material. Take an illustration from our national sports, baseball and college football. Who pays the salaries of the twenty-two players on each of the sixteen teams of the major leagues? Who accounts for the cost of training the college men for their annual seasons on the gridiron? Manifestly those who pay as witnesses of the games. Suppose a quarter of all these men were killed and the same proportion injured for life. Suppose hospitals and nurses were supplied to meet these losses and that they were kept up during the entire season. Suppose fresh players were drawn from the ranks and drafted into the daily slaughter on the diamond or the gridiron in times of peace. Would any man of ordinary judgment infer that this loss constituted no drain on the nation? You cannot pay for war out of taxes. War is liquidated by the human cost, and by cost is meant that continued outgo of human labor which is the sole source of wealth. In addition to the destruction of the human element and the accompanying blasting of the material element, war makes a steady drain on the future; that is to say, the cost is passed on for many decades, through pensions and interest, and in no sense will nature let up in her demands. We borrow from nature as well as from bankers, and when nature recalls the things we have taken, her mandates are scrupulously carried out. War hastens the destruction of all these elements, speeds up the processes by which wealth is torn to pieces, and when these things are shattered and scattered they must be replaced by human toil and increased human sacrifice. Taxes laid on interest augment the national burden by increasing the tax gatherers, who must be paid out of the national revAnd in the last analysis the receiver of interest is essentially a nonproducer and as such he has to be fed along with those who do the fighting and the destroying. enues. Man pays for war. It is his creation, and as long as he keeps it up he will have to stand for the game. Governments create war debts, but subjects pay them. Kings and Congresses may declare war, but that is only bequeathing to innocent successors the obligations that must be met. It cost Russia $600,000,000 to fortify Port Arthur. It cost Japan $400,000,000 to batter it to pieces. But the cost is not in money; it is in human lives and human wealth, and such destruction ultimately rolls up what no generation can pay. Seventy cents out of every dollar received by our Federal Government was paid out for military purposes, with the nation still at peace. If the baseball players killed in the supposititious warfare above cited were to leave widows and orphans requiring pensions, who would stand for the increased expense of our national game? The cases are parallel in their economic bearing, and show the principle involved in human loss. The problem of the cost of war is sociological and must be examined in the light of the forces and resultants of human action. Fire insurance companies pay for losses, but not until after they have collected an adequate fund from the community. Life insurance premiums provide the source out of which claims are met, else what other source could pay for them? If the companies get interest on loans, that only brings other factors into the problem. The cirIcle is thus widened, but the principle remains the same; namely, that from human labor is drawn the fund that compensates for losses sustained. War raises those losses to the nth degree and leaves to posterity the burden of paying for other people's quarrels. The interest claims pile up faster than they can be discharged, and drain away from constructive labor the higher fruits of human toil. Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, Nearly 24,000,000 Men Engaged Sir William Robertson, Chief of the British General Staff, made these noteworthy statements in a dinner speech at the Mansion House, London, in May, 1917: No two wars and no two battles were ever fought under exactly the same conditions, and no war has ever differed so greatly from its predecessor as does the war in which we are now engaged. Airplanes, for instance, have entirely changed the whole strategical and tactical conduct of operations. The use of enormous masses of heavy artillery is another new factor, and has made efficient preparation for battle dependent upon the most elaborate system of communications and transport, and has demanded the highest qualities of organization in general. During the last five or six weeks, I suppose, we have expended some 200,000 tons of ammunition, which have had to be moved by road, rail, and sea from the factories in England to the guns in France and man-handled probably not less than half a dozen times. As you can imagine, this has entailed a great deal of railway work at the front as well as in England, and the skillful and determined way in which the work has been executed by the railway managers and employes who have assisted us is beyond all praise. But the greatest peculiarity of all is the colossal size of the armies engaged. In the 1870 war armies were counted by the hundred thousand, and at the battle of Gravelotte, where the heaviest losses were incurred, the total casualties were only about 33,000 men on both sides, while for the whole war the total casualties on both sides were less than half a million. In the present war the killed alone can be counted by the million, while the total number of men engaged amounts to nearly 24,000,000. In fact, this war is not, as in the past, a war merely of opposing armies, but a war of nations, and there is not today a man or woman in the empire who is not doing something either to help or to hinder the winning of the war. A man of great distinction told me the other day that he estimated the weight of purely military effort at only 25 per cent. of the whole, the remaining 75 per cent. being, strictly speaking, of a non-military nature, and made up of many elements-agriculture, food, shipping, diplomacy, &c. I think he is probably not far wrong, and when people ask me, as they sometimes do, how the war is getting on, I feel inclined to reply, "Why ask me? Why not ask yourself and the remainder of the 75 per cent.?* The Heroic Death of Dr. Clunet By Robert de Lezeau Dr. Jean Clunet, who died of typhus at Jassy, Rumania, in April, 1917, had so memorable a career that the Paris Figaro gave a leading place on its first page to the subjoined article, which has been specially translated for CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE. NE of the simplest and most inspiring of heroes has just succumbed to the terrible epidemic of spotted typhus that is ravaging Rumania. He died in the hospital which he had created from the ground up, at the bedside of the sufferers, whom he continued to aid to his last breath with all his science and all his faith: two warring sisters who had become reconciled in his great heart. We who knew him here in Jassy, at the place of his supreme sacrifice, cherish his memory as that of one of the greatest Frenchmen we have ever known. Jean Clunet was the son of a lawyer who has acquired just renown in the domain of international law. A former hospital interne, assistant in the Medical Faculty, and finally appointed to the Chair of Pathological Anatomy in the Medical College at Nancy, Jean Clunet gave himself up to science with a tireless ardor that engrossed his whole mind and heart. He always had a sort of predestination for sacrifice. Wherever he could devote himself to others, save lives, comfort souls, Clunet was there. In 1912 he visited Morocco, and one day a native servant who had become attached to him said: "Master, you must leave here quick, quick, at once! They are going to massacre all the foreigners." Though he had no duty to perform, Jean Clunet remained. The next day the revolt at Fez broke out, with all its horrors-massacres, lynchings, tortures. With two comrades he found safety in a blind alley, which the insurgents could not capture, though they besieged the entrance. Twenty-four hours later two local officials whom Clunet had cured of illness sent their escorts to rescue him. Once free, he paid no attention to the mobs that were still raging, but went everywhere that the wounded lay. The dying called him and the living threatened him. Clunet was in his element. He dressed wounds, he performed operations, he saved lives. And when this hard work was done he learned that among the Jewish population, which had taken refuge in dense masses before the Sultan's deer cages, an epidemic was breaking out. He threw himself into this new task, took all the precautionary measures, evacuated the infected cases, disinfected the whole place, and averted the epidemic. And after two months of this intense labor he returned to France feeling that he had had what he went for-a pleasure trip. The great war broke out, and Clunet was at the front from the first day. A surgeon in the 332d Regiment of the line, he was with the vanguard at the battle of Charleroi. Then came the retreat, in the course of which two orderlies were killed at his side and two horses were struck down at the moment when he was mounting into the saddle. No matter! It was a fine life-there are wounds to care for and well men to comfort. Clunet devotes himself to those around him. The 332d withdraws as far as the Aisne and Berry-au-Bac. There it is ordered to hold a precarious, untenable position. It digs in, it hangs on, in spite of the intensity of the bombardment and the violence of the rifle fire. Jean Clunet has set up his aid station at the most exposed point, because it is there that he can most quickly get at the wounded. Finally his regiment is forced to withdraw precipitately and cross the Aisne in all haste. Clunet is among the last to go. He has a third horse killed under him and crosses the river by swimming. On the other side of the Aisne the 332d establishes itself solidly in trenches. The furious fighting abates. Life be |