The Washington herald., 1915-12-12
By JAMES MORGAN.

From every battle 'front.' comes tne
utter outcry of fallen nations trampled
beneath the heels of alien conquer
ors.
This is the cruelest injustice Of war.
Its heaviest burdens oftenest fall upon
those who had no part in starting it
and who can have no hope Of victory
TO cheer and sustain them.
Even in the American Civil War
neither the antislavery North nor the
great slave holding States of the
South provided the battle-ground, and
the border lands between bore the
brunt of the strife. The slave interests
made their first and last stand in Eir-
ginia, where there were few slaves.
and that State was laid waste for four
years in a struggle to uphold an in
stitution which was unimportant to
her The same hard fate befell the
Manchurians in the great war in the
East ten years ago, when their fields
and their homes were devastated by
the Russians and the Japanese. and
not a battle was fought on the soil
IF either of the combatants.
The Real Victims of the War.
In the present war, fire and sword
are spreading havoc over innocent
lands, but are leaving the great bel
Iigerent nations themselves almost
untouched. Except for a momentary
visit now and then from battle
cruiser or a Zeppelin, England has not
been within sound of the guns. Hardly
a foe has yet profaned the soil OF
Holy Orthodox Russia. Save for a lit
tie corner of East Prussia, no invader
has crossed the bounds Of the real
Germany. Neither has any enemy come
within striking distance of Italy nor
of Austria proper, nor of Turkey.
To be sure. the flames have at last
enveloped Serbia, one of the lesser
combatants. But among all the big
powers which are making the war, II
has been brought home to France
alone, and since the repulse of the
Germans at the Marne a year ago last
September it has been restricted to
only a fraction of the territory of the
republic.
Everywhere the people who really
have felt and suffered the full fury Of
the conflict are they who had no
choice or voice between peace and war.
Innocent Belgium was pitilessly struck
down in the west and Alsace Lorraine
is torn between two claimants. In
the eastern theater, the Poles. the
Jews. the Lithuanians and the Ruth
enians have been the hapless victims
of this savage quarrel between their
conquerors, an experience which has
lent a terrible reality to an old say
ing in those countries: when wolves
fight. the sheep lose their wool"
1t has mattered not which alien
army descended upon Poland and Ga
Iicia. One day the Russians swept by.
The next day the Teutonic allies
surged in. Neither has spared or pitiel
the helpless Inhabitants, but both have
united ii the work of devastation,
turning the little fields into deserts.
the humble villages into ruins and
casting the friendless people adrift in
a barren wilderness without food or
shelter.
As it is in the west and in the east,
SO it promises to be in the newly
opened Balkan campaign. which
threatens to burst in full force only
upon the Macedonians, another people
without a country. Already the same
cruel tragedy has been and is being
enacted on the Russo-Turkish front
around the farther end of the Black
Sea- There neither Russia nor Tur-
key, but Armenia is the battle-ground.
and the Armenian people are the worst
sufferers in this conflict between
strangers.