We have not in this calculation reckoned on the economic value of the lives destroyed.  That would average about $3,000 for each man.  Five million men killed means an economic loss to the countries concerned of $15,000,000,000.  But the economic value of the lives destroyed represents only a small fraction 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 miserable.  It was not until eighteen weary hours afterward that they got the meal they missed.  The need will continue to be great for many months after peace is declared.  Factories have been stripped of their machinery.  There is a complete stagnation of industry.  It will take months to rehabilitate these industries and to start the wheels again.”