on of their potentiality--socially,
morally, and spiritually. No human brain can calculate, no heart can
fathom the cost or loss of this terrible conflict.

The cost of less than one month of the present war would equal that of
the entire Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Another month would pay for
the whole Russo-Japanese War; twelve days would pay for the Boer War,
while the cost for three days would dig the Panama Canal. At the
beginning of 1918 the war debts of the warring countries will exceed
$90,000,000,000, or more than one-fifth the wealth of all the warring
nations of Europe. The daily cost of the war is equal to half the
earning power of these European nations, and the interest on their war
debts will be equal to one-half their budgets as they stood at the
beginning of the war. The wealth of more than twenty nations is being
rapidly drained, and the world's financial reserves are being consumed
in this vicious and sinful struggle which an autocratic militarism has
forced upon the world.

Although late in entering the war, America's expenditure has been out
of all proportion to that of any other nation. Upon arrival in this
country the writer finds the statement in our press that the nation
will have spent or sanctioned before the end of 1917, the enormous
total of $19,000,000,000. That is more than twenty per cent of the
entire cost of the war to date for all the European nations. That sum
is as great as Germany spent on land and sea for the conduct of the
first three years of the war. It represents more than twice our total
wealth in 1850, and one-twelfth of our present national wealth of
$328,000,000,000.

In order to estimate further the cost and realize the suffering of the
war, let us turn for a moment to the nations devastated in Europe. In
Belgium and Northern France 9,500,000 were being fed by the Commission
for Relief in Belgium until Germany forbade it. Of 7,000,000
inhabitants of Belgium, 3,000,000 were early left destitute by the war
and were drawing daily one meal consisting of the equivalent of three
thick slices of bread and a pint of soup. Mr. F. C. Wolcott writes:

"I have seen thousands of people lined up in snow or rain, soaked and
chilly, waiting for bread and soup. I have returned to the
distributing stations at the end of the day and have found men, women,
and children sometimes still standing in line, but later compelled to
go back to their pitiful homes, cold, wet, and m