The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1918-08-03

numbers, million of first rate fight
ing men carried in British ships with
absolute safety across perilous seas.
But Britain has already lost a mil
lion in dead and grievously wounded,
while two and half millions have
been smitten by the pestilence called
Germany. | have not exaggerated
these figures. They are official. We
know some of the details with a
mournful exactitude. During one
month in France in 1917 we had e..
600 men killed. In the first twelve
months Of the war we had $3.50 Of
ficers and $4,000 men killed. During
the month Of April of this year Us
the result of the great battles which
began on March 81, 1918, we had over
10000 casualties among officers
alone. Of course we have killed and
wounded many Germans. But what
does that matter? What does it
matter how many of the brutes are
killed? 1t is our duty, duty put on
us by the laws we live under, obey
and swear by to keep on killing
them till they cease to plague man.
kind. have no concern for Ger
mans. You Americans have a prov.
! erb "a good Injun is a dead Injun!"
Until Germany casts out the devil Of
Kaiserism and goes back a hundred
years to the race which produced
some decent and useful members of
the body corporate | shall believe
most firmly that the best German is
dead German. What does grieve
me most profoundly is the knowledge
that Britain-and every word | have
written would be stultified if you did
not realize that | am proud of my
own folks-has lost the flower of her
manhood, just as you, my honored
friends in America, will lose a stock
hard to replace if the million of your
magnificent youth in France and the
other millions you will put in the
field until there are enough dead
Germans are fated ID show a cas-
ualty list comparable with that Of
Britain. But do not misunderstood
me. My faith in the destiny of our
joint cases is supreme. Are not our
dead the best warranty of the past
and the brightest hope Of the future
They are our very own, flesh of our
flesh and bone Of our bone. They
are at once our tribute and our in.
spiration. We who gave this holo.
caust must be worthy of it. We who
are left must be more resolute, more
knightly, more grandly Indifferent to
loss or suffering, than those who
have gone. How can 1t be other
wise? The cross they bore, the sac
rifce they made, is all the lighter for
us because of their example. The
blood of the martyrs is the seed of
the Church Of Christ? The blood Of
our, dead is the seed of a race which
| q
shall transcend in power and great
ness the widest dream ever dreamed
by enthusiastic Pan-German. It must
be so. It is deduction based on
the soundest theory of life, the very
essence of all that science has taught
nus either Of men or of the lower
animals. But I cannot blind my
eyes to the Immediately gaps in our
ranks. Our universities are empty.
Oxford and Cambridge gave eight
thousand of their undergraduates to
the army in the first year of the war,
and, be it remembered, no matter
what view may be held as to the
value of university education,
these young men were the future
rulers of the British Empire-its
prime ministers, its secretaries of
state, its judges, its governors of far
of lands, its parliamentarians, law
yers, professors, scientists, its un-
doubted leaders in every branch of
human thought and endeavor. That
is part of the price asked of us for
choosing to support Right as aginst
Might, and it is heavy impost in
itself Again, we have lost nearly
every officer and man of that small
but superbly efficient army which
we threw into France early In Au.
gust, 1914 =
1t has been estimated that Britain
has fought on seventeen fronts dur.
ing the past four years. One can
readily enumerate most of them, for
her troops have been to the fore in
Belgium, France, Italy, Serbia,
Greece, Russia Palestine, Mesop-
tamia, China and North, East and
West Africa, to name only the main
theaters of the war. She and her
Colonies have raised 100000 SOL
diers and of this total England's (not