Belington progressive. [volume] (Belington, W. Va.) 1912-1927, 1919-03-27
THE IMPORTANCE OF CLEAN
IsSG UP THAT POISON.

L
must realize soon what all clever
people realized long ago; that the
moral cleaning up after the war is
far more important than the mater
ial reconstruction.
t"The towns that have been knocked
down mostly needed it very badly,
and will be replaced let us hope, by
better planend, healthier and happier
habitations. We shall be able to
build cathedrials as "hansome" as
the best medieval ones, stained glass
and all, as soon as we really like
them and want them.
"But the poisoning of the human
soul by hatred, the darkening of the
human mind by lies, and the harden
ing of the human heart by slaughter
and destruction and starvation are
evils that spread and tester long af
ter the guns have stopped.
"Yet, the Importance that war
gives to fools who are negligible in
peace makes them 10th to let the
war cease if thy can possibly carry
it on by mere rancor after the sol
diers have come home. To appease
such rancor offer the following
figures:
eFIRST-As to the satisfaction
we already have had of our desire to
/ be revenged' on the Germans for what
they have done to US:
"Without counting the war carnage
which has been frightful, we have
/ by our blockade caused 10000 per-
sons to die in Germany of malnu-
triton, polite name for starvation.
"By 1917 we had increased the
civilian mortality in Germany by 80
per cent above the figure for 1913,
"The next year we got that appall-
ing figure up to 81 per cent.
"This does not include influenza
cases.
"More than $4,000 children under
fifteen died in 1917, and 1900 girls
and women under thirty
"These are only the deaths. The
condition of the survivors may be i'm
agined. And this is still going on
more or less, and will go on until
the blockade is raised.
Does any Englishman want any
more revenge? Can Mr.. Havelock
Wilson president of the Information
al Seamens Union) find even five
times the torpedoed sailor or his wild
ow whose resentment will not melt
into pity and horror at so dreadful
d holocaust?
How infnitesimally little and
mean do our pretty prosecutions by
internment and expatriation seem be-
side this awful blow we have struck
at the life of the very heart of our
Europe, the common mother of the
slayers and the slain!
"The submarine campaign was a
desperate attempt to return the blow
1t failed. But what right have we
whose blow gets home, to give our
selves moral airs and remand fur
Their punishment of the losers in this
hideous starvation match?
Gwen we, the winners, are already
heavily punished for what we have
done, not only by our own losses but
by the German losses as we'll, for
every German we killed and every
German child we famed for life by
ricketts,, is loss to US just as GER
tainly as every allied soldier or civil
ian the Germans have killed is a loss
to Germany.
"There is no wealth but life said
Ruskin, truly, and we shall all, Ger
mans and allies alike, be on short
comons for years to come because
we have killed and disabled so much
of the world.
This is why Germany nursed back
to health so many allied soldiers
whom they had broken with their
shells, and why we did the same with
so many German soldiers.
This is why at Ruhleben the Ger
mans gave the English prisoners,
with scrupulous honesty, the parcels
of food we sent out to them, though
they were SO hungry themselves
that the prisoners at last became
masters of the camp because they
had store of fats to give away.
"The poor little cramped minds
that, canont understand this would
have robbed the prisoners and left the
fallen soldiers to perish on the field
or slaughtered them out of hand.''-
Bernard Shaw English Writer.)