Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/561

Rh Sophy wud be betther aff wid the money than wid a cranky old man on her hands, growin' blind at thot. ' 'Tis me last fight, old comrades,' says he, 'and the boys must forgive me if Oi run away. The odds is too big,' says he. Thot's all ixcipt a koind wurrd to me woman and the kids. He's been sinding little packages of things to the neighbors this day: his tools and the plants in the gardin thot some av thim loiked. He says to old Hetty, he didn't think the city'd moind: they was goin' to take his property for nothin', and these was little things. Old Hetty, she didn't take it in; she thought he was going to be sold out; and she was cryin' and distractid, but she didn't take it in, not even whin he gave her all the money he'd drawed out of the bank. And she made him the coffee he took the stuff in. He's out av it; and God forgive him; but I'll be prayin' him ivery night niver to forgive Tummus Blaize!"

HE men and women whose memories go back a third of a century, to the days when North and South were in arms against each other, have not been the most ardent to join in the clamor for war. They know the havoc it wrought, and are not eager to repeat the experience. The thousands slain in battle, the tens of thousands afflicted with wounds which often resulted in death after days of agony, the losses of relatives and friends, the anxious waiting for news, the want and distress of body and mind following in the train of warfare, all have left impressions so vivid that thirty-three years of peace have not sufficed to wear them away.

War as pursued by modern methods is fearfully expensive both of men and treasure. It has come to be a contest between war chests. The richer the treasury, the more certain is the nation of success. Even a century ago the wrecking of treasure and lives was almost beyond understanding. In the twenty-two years following 1793, Napoleon cost the British and French not less than $6,500,000,000 in money and 1,900,000 lives—the latter number equal to the entire adult male population now living in Greater London and Paris. In the one battle of Waterloo 51,000 men were lost, 29,000 of whom were British.

The Crimean war of two years cost the nations engaged in it $1,500,000,000 in wealth and over 600,000 of their citizens. The English lost 22,000 out of an army of 98,000, the French 96,000 out of 300,000 original forces; Turkey lost 45,000 men; Russia gathered a splendid army of 888,000, of whom less than half returned to their homes. Lay these 600,000 side by side in soldiers' graves, and the mounds of earth that covered them would extend in unbroken sequence for 450 miles.

Scarcely less fatal was the Franco-German war. France put into the field an army of 710,000 men, and of these 77,000 were killed or died of their wounds, and 45,000 died of sickness. A third of the entire army was either killed or disabled. The Germans sent a million troops, of whom 45,000 died on the battlefield or in the hospitals, and 89,000 were disabled. That brief war cost over 200,000 lives, and required an expenditure of $1,500,000,000. France had, in addition, to pay an indemnity of $1,000,000,000 and to give up Alsace-Lorraine, a total loss it is estimated of not less than $3,000,000,000.

During the last one hundred years the