From the sea to the Alps, as a writer has said, France is “lacerated to the bone.” Endless miles of ruins stretch away in all directions―a pitiless scene of death. But amid these ghastly scenes of desolation, there are thousands of smiling faces―the work of reconstruction has begun. The writer goes on to say, “Wounded men are filtering back from the front, reserves waiting their turn, old men and women, and their grandchildren huddled, with the remains of their possessions, on a creaking cart drawn by a lame old horse, returning, perhaps, to a heap of ruins which they may still fondly claim as home―one and all bear the stamp of trials bravely borne and of the light of triumph come at last.” And not alone in France is the havoc of war to be seen—in desolated Belgium and over most of the Continent of Europe, and across to Asia Minor, up and down the length of the Holy Land. In the old world and the new the tramp of armed millions has been heard, and the boasted civilization of today has been the means of the death of millions of the human race, and the devastation of millions of square miles of territory.
To satisfy the mad ambition of a ruler the world must almost perish. But today, he, whose shadow seemed to eclipse the world, lies trembling beneath the ruins of the collapse of that mighty structure of human pride and vain glory, which he had raised. He who sought to hold his scepter over all the world; to sit as King on Olivet, and own a greater throne than mightiest Caesar had, has now to take the crown from off his brow and pass his days and nights in terror. He has sown the wind, he will reap the whirlwind-his proud banners are trailing in the dust, his mighty armies are no more. His throne, with others linked with his, in desperate wickedness, have tottered to their fall. Write over these fallen glories, these darkened palaces, these torn robes of majesty―these discarded crowns, the words of God, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
No reconstruction of these fallen dynasties, broken down beneath the weight of intolerable guilt. What answer can they give to the widow and the fatherless? How can they face the pitiless storm of the rain of tears, and the crying of the bereaved in every land? Can they restore the manhood of the world lost to earth through them and theirs? Can they re-people the desolated homes, restore the parent to the child—the husband to the wife—refill the empty chairs? Alas, no. They pass on to their doom, and leave behind them death and desolation to mark their going.