Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/78

66 of the mind which brings us out of the mud, suddenly sought for in the street. And you think, "Is man awaking suddenly to his heritage, and to the knowledge of what life may be here?" Then you say to yourself, "No, this is all due to the war."

You see young men giving up their hopes, and mature men their attainments, and women losing their sons, their husbands and their chance of husbands, and children losing their fathers and their chances of life, and you ask, what earthly endeavour can cause all this sacrifice, into what kind of a hopper is it all being fed? It is being fed into the war.

The war is spread over a tract as big as these States. In many places the tide of war has passed and repassed several times, till the dwellers in those places have died of starvation, or been carried away into slavery. In the East, you can walk for miles along roads peopled with mad, starving and dying men and women; there are heaps of little bones all along the roads. They are all little bones. They are the little bones of little children who have died of starvation there. All the bigger bones have been taken by the enemy to make artificial manure.