Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 211, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1915 — GREAT NEED TO STOP WASTE [ARTICLE]

GREAT NEED TO STOP WASTE

Lesson That Should Be Impressed on America by the Frightful War In Europe. Waste is the crime of today, and it is especially the great crime of this awful war: waste in human life, in hope, in lovej and in the common savings of us all. Millions of dollars’ worth of the savings of the people of this earth, all of them our brothers and our sisters, are daily burned up, exploded, and wasted in the madness of the nations; and even that is a trifle when we compare it to the great human value of the lives that are lost. Its will not make any people rich; and we Americans, rarely fortunate in not being Involved in the awful strife, shall find our part of the burden to bear. Some time the war will be over, and then waste must stop; it must stop-if we are to advance in humanity and civilization over and beyond the yawning gap made by the lust of blood, pride of race, and the vanity of kings. The war has been in progress but a little while and already the cost of it is being borrowed from future generations; extra hard labor and sweat must come from infants now at their mothers* breasts, to make good this debauch of blood and fire. And in the very measure that we waste is the sentence at hard labor upon the rising generation prolonged. We cannot get out of it by being American: the debt is upon us, in unequal measure it is true, but the debt, the obligation to make up the leases, is upon us aIL —Atlantic.