The Union times. [volume] (Union, S.C.) 1894-1918, 1915-04-09
THE WAR IN EUROPE
News and Courier.)

The national Red Cross headuuar-
ters would not sound so terrible a
warning as that which it has lust is
sued in the peril which it points out
were not real. The Red Cross sees
| the possibility of such plague in
Europe as the world has never wit
messed before. It's warning is one to
make humanity shudder, to bring
palor to the cheek, to create a new
and keener realization of the horror
of this unspeakable nightmare of
war.
There is the eloquence of deep ear
nestness in its description of the
menace: with much of Continental
Europe in highly unsettled state;
with field and trenches drenched
with blood; with shallow graves of
| thousands of dead scattered through
out the war zone; with vermin and
| filth on every hand; with hundreds of
| thousands of wounded being cared
for in a pitifully inadequate way, a
vast number of them having infected
| wounds, and with the approach of
warm weather and attending flies and
mosquitoes, Europe may well be
gravely apprehensive-fearf tina,
an unappreciated plague will sweep
the Old World"
That is not mere hysteria-a ghast-
ly phantom which can have no real
| lty. The Red Cross experts are wei.
qualified to estimate the peril of
which they speak and when they say
| that it is real and imminent, there
can be no discrediting their judg-
ment. 1t is gravely doubted whether
even the most admirably scientific
sanitation methods can hold disease
in check when summer comes to the
vast charnel house into which Europe
| is being converted. Servia is an ex-
ample OF what may presently be wit
! messed on a much larger scale.
Servla is IN the grip of typhus and
OF typhoid. Already the deaths from
typhus have reached total of $4,000
and the disease is spreading rapidly
In spite of the heroic efforts of sur
geons and nurses, many of whom are
Americans who have volunteered for
this perilous service. In Servia, it is
| true, sanitation measures were at the
outset of the war comparatively
crude. incubation against typhoid,
for instance, was probably not gen
orally practiced. But the slaughter in
western Europe in the regions whc~e
the Russians are facing the Germans
and Austrians has been and will be
infinitely greater than in Servia,
| There are in these districts MANY
thousands more fostering corpses un-
buried or lying in shallow graces,
there is much vaSter accumulation
of filth which is the inevitable nrod
uct of huge bodies of men gathered
together in comparatively limited
areas; and when the warm weather
comes, with it's increase of slaughter
with its hordes of flies and mosqui-
toes and its myriads of other unclean
insects which are such efficient dis
seminators of disease, the utmost
efforts of the sanitary corps may not
suffice to prevent general infection
winch may claim more lives and
create more misery than all the
shrapnel and bullets of the armies.
The calamity which man has
brought upon himself through his
inability to live at peace with his fel-
lows is already frightful enough. 1t
may prove even more frightful than
1T now appears. 1t may be-and the
Red Cross statement is a warning OF
the danger-that we have in our fol
ly and ignorance loosed natural
forces of death and ruin that will
presently get completely beyond hu.
man control and deluge a whole con.
tinent of misery more awful than
that which pours from the muzzles OF
| the guns.