Here is a unique contribution which America can also make to her hard pressed allies who have been exhausted by three terrible years of fighting.  Britain has already set us a wonderful example and will not need our help.  But there is France to which we owe so much and whose war weary soldiers sorely need just such centers for recreation and rebuilding.  General Petain, the Commander in Chief, and the French authorities have asked for the help of our Movement in their camps.  General Pershing, after surveying the field, has declared that the greatest service which America can immediately render France, even before our own men can reach the trenches in large numbers, is to extend the welfare work of the Y M C A to the entire French Army.  Can we do less than this for the nation that gave all that Washington asked in our own hour of crisis?  Then there is Italy, with all her deep need and great possibilities.  What can we do to minister to the wants of her great army?

But let us turn to Russia, which represents the deepest need of all—­the nation which has undergone the greatest suffering, both within and without its borders, of any of the belligerents.  Think of its vast area, greater than all North America, or one seventh of the land area of the entire globe.  Think of its population, almost twice our own, and more than one tenth of the entire world.  Think of these people, who have the greatest capacity for suffering of any nation on earth, suddenly released, like their own prisoners, with steps unsteady and eyes unaccustomed to the blinding light of freedom.  Think of what such a movement of hope and cheer and re-creation may mean to troops hard pressed or demoralized, facing another winter in the trenches.

Add to all these the suffering prisoners of war, and we have over 24,000,000 men who deeply need the ministry of this Movement, and need it now.  Here are millions who have already suffered or who are going forward ready to make the great sacrifice for us.  What sacrifice shall we make for them?

[1] See World Almanac 1916, p. 488.

[2] The cost of the war has been calculated by various writers on both sides of the Atlantic.  Mr. Wm. Rossiter writes on “The Statistical Side of the Economic Costs of the War,” in the American Economic Review for March, 1916.  Mr. Edmund Crammond’s paper in The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Sir George Paish in the various issues of the London Statist, and others, have given careful estimates of the direct cost of the war to nations and individuals.  During the first and cheapest year, according to Mr. Rossiter, the total cost of the war, not including the economic value of the lives lost, rose to forty billion dollars.  That is equal to all the national debts of the world.

[3] See Appendix II on “The Treatment of Armenians,” by Viscount Bryce.

[4] Publishers’ Note:  The whole problem of the meaning of suffering and its relation to the present war, especially for those who have suffered bereavement, is dealt with by the author in his book, “Suffering and the War.”