Town,” “Back Home in Tennessee,” “In My Old Kentucky Home,” “There’s a Long, Long Trail Awinding,” “Give Me Your Smile,” “If You Were the Only Girl in The World,” “Mother McCrae,” etc.  Then there are the songs of nationality; The “Marseillaise,” “John Brown’s Body,” “When Irish Eyes are Smiling,” “Come Back to Erin,” “Annie Laurie,” etc.

[2] See Appendix III for a typical expression of a soldier’s new experience of religion at the front.

[3] Quoted in “Hurrah and Hallelujah,” pp. 116-119.

[4] It is interesting to note in this connection some words of Immanuel Kant.  See Appendix I.

[5] London Times, June 22, 1917.

[6] “The Challenge of the Present Crisis,” Association Press.

CHAPTER VIII

THE WORLD AT WAR

Let us try to grasp the colossal facts of the present war.  Since the beginning of the conflict there has been a daily attrition of more than 25,000 in killed, wounded, or prisoners every twenty-four hours.  At the opening of the fourth year of the war the number killed was over 5,000,000.  This does not include those who have perished in the devastated nations.  Not less than 6,000,000 men are now in the military prisons of Europe, some of whom have undergone great suffering, both physical and mental.  More than 6,000,000 lie wounded today in the military hospitals, not to speak of several times that number who have been patched up and sent back into the line to face death again, or have been rejected as unfit for further service, often left crippled or maimed, blinded, or deformed for life.

Mere numbers or statistics cannot measure the sacrifice and suffering of these lives.  If we could know the infinite value of the unit of personality, or compute the preciousness and potentiality of a single life destroyed, we might then hope to multiply it by the million.  If human scales could weigh the sorrow of a widow’s heart, could compute the anguish of a mother’s loss, could prophesy the deprivation of an orphan’s lot, or know the good which might have been done by even one man who has now been killed, we would then be in a position to begin to estimate the casualty list.

There are today nearly 40,000,000 men with the colors.  If we add to these the 5,000,000 already killed, the 6,000,000 prisoners and the large number discharged as unfit for further service, we have a total of far more than 50,000,000 who have been with the colors in the first three years of the war.  We can better realize the significance of this statement if we remember that in no previous war have more than 3,000,000 men faced each other in conflict.  According to Gibbon, Rome’s great standing army was not over 400,000 men.  Napoleon’s grand army did not exceed 700,000, and in the Battle of Waterloo less than 200,000 men were engaged.  In the American Civil War less than 3,000,000, and in the Russo-Japanese