The Wrangell sentinel., 1920-02-26
Shall Chaos or Reconstruction in Europe Follow the Great
 World War;
NOW WEAK AND HEARTBR0KEN
In Mourning and Poverty She Counts Her Dead and Looks With Eyes of Sadness Toward the Threat
 ening Future.
Article Il.
By FRANK coMERFoRD.

August 1, 1914, was the day. on that day Germany declared war on Russia. The fire alarm rang around the world. Peasants in the field straightened their backs, listened and | looked into the sun confused wonder ing. Flags were unfurled, bands played, faces were white, tense and serious. Men left their work and talked in groups on the street corners. Women laid down their broOms, put aside their washing, and talked in whispers; sad lights were in their eyes. Children stopped playing Some thing had happened. Evil things were ahead. August 5 and found France and Great Britain mobilizing their sons. The torch was sweeping Flu rope-the fire of death had started.
 For four long years-heart-sick ing years-the world ran red. Men waded through mud and blood, fought, suffered, cursed, prayed, while back home in the manless houses women and children worked, cried, prayed and waited. The world was mad.
  people breathed.
 It is over now it is finished. A stunned, numbed, weak, heartbroken Europe is again sitting in the sun of peace. Europe is in dirty black rags. The black is mourning, the rags are poverty. Her face is deeply lined trenches made by suffering. Her eyes are dOwncast and dead. Hope fiutters weakly in her breast; faith has faded from her soul Her home is house of darkness. The fire on the hearth has turned to cold gray ashes. The kettle no longer sings, it moans. Her mind is weary, her body is wasted. Hunger has robbed her of her strength. Her stockingless, shoeless feet are blue from the cold. Her lips wear starvation color. Ice in the winters wind lashes her shivering, half-naked body. She mumbes as she stares va cantly into space-she is tired, so tired. As I beheld her it seemed to me that a face so troubled and sad must never have known smile.
 I listened to her mutterings. found that she was counting Over and over again she counted on her thin, tired, worn hands-she was counting her dead
 Thinking of Her Loss.
 She was thinking. Her eyes looked over the hundreds of thousands of square miles of war zone, slashed with trenches, pitted and pockmarked by shells. She sees where they fell. No tears are in her eyes. Long ago the hurt had reached the point where tears dry up. Row upon row, line upon line, mile upon mile, white painted wooden crosses mark their graves. For the most part they were her youngest born. her most beloved, who dug deep in the soil to sleep for ever in the dark dugouts.
 As they fell bleeding from steel and lead. choking from gas, writhing in agony from fire, they proved in the dy ing word they spoke that they were mere boys as they had shown in their fighting that they were brave men. To the pOppies they intrusted their mes- sage, and the red poppies remember the last word of Europe's dying sons. who went out into the great beyond with this last word on their lips. Mother"
 She has finished counting; an ache shudders through her bent body. She sighs and sobs, "Seven and a half mil lion of my sons are dead"
 Her thoughts turn to the living her arms open to receive them, she holds them to her heart. They have come. but how?
 Some with sightless eyes, doomed to erope through the world in never ending darkness, night without stars or moon sunless, black, hopeless days. and these, too, young men in the very morning of their day.
 Others sentenced to silence-deaf and dumb. Never again will she hear their voices nor will they hear hers.
 Still others in wheel chairs, dwarfed, legless.
 More hobbling on crutches. llmping on canes.
 Some with empty sleeves.
 Many with great scars. where once WAS a handsome face
 She sees them all, her heart bleeds: the twisted. the mangled the torn. She Is counting them, the 12.616O17, the wounded of the war.
 Wars FriehtfuI Cost
 Her voice is husky, her hands are tired but she must count on. Six and a half million of her sons were marked missing and prisoners" in the official war score. Many of these have come back to her. but she does not question thnm-she dare not. Their faces tell of the unspcakahle horrors they en. dured. She sees in their eyes depth l of pain that is unfnthomable She Is Il inother-she knows.
 The war is over. but she is not over the war. Must she never stop count ing? Is there no end to her losses? l The graveyards are crowded. Her