The Coconino sun., 1918-11-15
PREPARATION"

Indemnity and reparatlon. They are words that loom large in the peace terms; they sound replete with healing and solace. They conjure up visions of restored town and villages, of reconstruction, of renewed hope. And yet, with all their promise, how little they can do to repair broken lives, the shattered families, the wrecked homes, the tortured bitter ness that four years of Hun ruthless ness that four years of Hun ruthless the indemnity, no matter what the restoration" no matter what feats of rebuilding are accomplished, the homes and happiness of Frances and Belgium's, of Serbia's, Roumania's and Poland's myrtered populations can never be effectually restored for them.
 Picture them after the peace is de- clared, struggling back pitifully to the places where their homes, their ware houses, their shops and business prem ises once stood-those loved domains from which they were driven in such ghastly terror in those first months of the war. Picture their utter dis may at the dreadful wreckage of what was once their life, their world. All the lares and penates, the loved treas ures of generations gone, nothing left but poignant memories--and promises of reparation, reparation of many things that can never be repaired, that no money can buy. They will have to start life all over again, for tuneless, with all their old means of livelihood swept away, and in mil lion cases, with the former breadwin- ner missing or disabled for life. No matter what exacting terms of "repa- ration" are insisted upon, no German money can mend these broken hearts, these deep, cruel wounds of the spirit that the bitter war has engendered.
 In the dreadful executions of towns by the civilian populations thousands of families were separated, thousands of tiny babes lost to their parents, thousands of daughters deported into Germany, thousands of fathers snatched from their dear ones to work for Germany who will never find their families again. All the worldly treasures, often of such little intrinsic value, but so intimately es- sential to the making of homes, have vanished in the upheaval and, with the proclamation of peace and the excit- ing preoccupation of the war gone, there will be such ample time in which to review the despairing desolation, to count the dreadful losses and to weep for a past beyond recall.
 "All ye who have tears prepare to shed them now" Belgium and France had no time for tears in the fierce onslaught of the war; no time for anything but stern courage, indomita- bic stoicism-and fighting, fighting, with all their might. The horror of impending annihilation, the swift sue cession of appalling tragedies, the in cessant necessity for constant vigi- lenge-these left no place for tears. But now tears will be no shame. The terrible reaction must set in as the whole bitter wreckage is reviewed in the calm that follows the storm. As the vast army of sad and tired way farers make their way back to the de- vastated regions they once called home, the acute poignancy of all that they have lost and sacrificed will stand forth in bitter clarity. Repa- ration. It may hold promise for a distant future, for the next genera tion, but for the present and the i'm mediate future life holds nothing for them but vague, intangible hopes Drearily they will follow the delibera- tions of the council of Allies at the peace table; savagely they will ap- prove each term exacted of the ene- my for "reparation," but there can be no real reparation for them, whose lives have been desolated beyond re- pair. There may be palliatives, but there can be no cure for the present generation in the war-stricken coun- tries.-Los Angeles Times.