The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-02-14

It Is with c eonsciousnees Of deep humility that I take up my pen to write these words about Belgium. When others have pleaded her cause so much more worthily than can ever hope to plead 1t and when l have seen even the most passionate eloquence turned to an idiots tale. signifyins nothing in its attempt 10 express nations oruciflxion. I ask myself by what right I dare intrude with those poor words of mine.
 The cities of Belgium are razed and her people are crying out for bread. Louvain is become a heap of rubbish about which women scratch aimlessly; Brussels, that once was gay princess, has been debased to the similitude of a starving crab; in Charleroi and Dem dermonde, in Maestricht and In Blank erburghe the children are whimpering for food; in Antwerp the children have clawed their victuals from the hands of the German soldiers; in the windows of Malines, windows that are now as empty as the eye-sockets of a skull little ghosts are peering, not the ghosts of the happier dead, but the ghosts made by that hunger which is death in-life.
 The world has read of the destruc- tion of cathedrals and shuddered for the loss of great monuments of art; the world has uttered paeans tor the heroism of a nation that esteemed honor above gain and laid down her life for an ideal; it is not too much to say that the world has actually been hypnotized again in the blood of bel gium. Now comes a paler story and one that is horrible with all that des- afp 1,r4, M stand shivering in the winter slush as they wait for as much bread as once upon a time they would have seen thrown away without second glance Children are kneeling to gnaw at the sodden roots of the fields. Rich and poor must behold themselves degraded from their humanity to lead tho lives of rats. Nothing that misfortune can give of uncleanliness and indiynity, of age and youth humiliated. of pain and hunger has been spared to Bel gium.
 Seven Millions Alive in a Husk
 let with all that they have endured and with all that, whatever the worlds compassion, they must still endure, seven million Begians are still alive in the husk of what was once a coun- try They may be trampled upon by the march of the conquerer; they may be denied all the news of their devoted army; they may be taxed and fined and paid for their labor with bits of paper; they may be rained upon and showed upon and frozen and thawed and frozen again: the very foundations Of their shorn houses may have van 1shed like the foundations of Babylon and Troy. the future may be more black than the blackened shells Of their churches; they may have lost mothers and sisters and daughters in that vile fnp h f1I Coll they may have lost fathers and sons and brothers. some gloriousIy on the Held of battle, some with bandaged eyes shot against the doors of their own cottages not less gloriously; and yet lGOo,0O0 are alive in Belgium
 But-and If that conjunction was fraught with a heavy alternative, it Ia fraught with 1t now--these people will Tot be alive much longer unless the sum Of $5,000.000 is found every month to pay for food and transport of food to Belgium l wish that but could be printed in letters of blood-in letters or blood, did l say? Nay, rather let 1ers or lmperishable fire that would burn the alternative into the eyesight of humanity so full with horrors as scarcely any more to be able to heed their reiteration.
 The Worlds Responsibility
 The fate of these 1000 Oo0 neonle Is the worlds responsibility. This is not the moment to try to say who is guilty or their state: the wrangling of diplo- mats and the clash of arms will not crown the moans of seven millions stary- Ing for bread. We have read before 1914 or earthquakes, of pestilence and ship wreck, of railway accidents and mining dlsasters; and yet if all the lives lost in 5o years by sudden visitation of calamity were added together, they would not nearly equal the sum of these people who are at this moment actually depedent for the breath of life upon s5,OO0 GOO a month II IS costing the powers of Europe more than s50000,000 a day and 10000 lives a day to determine the future of the land of Belglum; let us at least, 300 times as cheaply preserve the 100000 lives to whom that country belongs We read now in a small paragraph (such a shuttle cock have we made of human ufe) of losses that year ago would have occu- pied a journal for days with their har- rowing narration.
 Yet even this dreadful induration of our senses must be softened by the pros pect of 100000 starving slowly to death. How forever 1t haunts one to meet in the SWIFT or a great city's tide of hu- manlty the eyes of a starving man: but at least in city that wretched creature could he conquer his pride or his scrllples might obtain food by breaking the win dow of bakers shop These 1000 900 cannot do that Their land is empty of nourishment
 When the last scraggy cabbage stalk IS devoured, when the last hen has starved; when the last rind of cheese has been raked out of the darkest corner of the desolate house, unless they can nour- ish themselves upon the earth of the land to protect the violation of which they nave martyred themselves these 7,O0O oOO must die, and when they die, Belgium is dead.
 If the World Let Belgium Die
 What will peace bring to the world then? To what shall we ever look for ward again? If these people are allowed to die while there is food on the earth. It were better that the earth should die like the moon and humanity itself be- come not even a name among the spheres of the universe.
 For the fact that these 1000, ,000 Belgians ale stlll alive we owe an unparagoned debt of gratitude to the American com mission for relief; and because of the amazing difficulties which that commits sion has already surmounted, one is tempted to place for the future an even greater an even more strenuously exact ing faith in the American people. This commission was organized by American citizens living in London.
 Amid the blood and tears of E11rope 2 few gentlemen resolved that the ultimat, reproach of a peoples starvation should not be leveled against this time of ours It was MT. Brand Whitlock, that flns mayor of Toledo, and now the American minister in Brussels, who made the frs appeal. He saw starvation and carine nothing for the pettiness of diplomatic