Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1915 — The Cost of “Digging In.” [ARTICLE]

The Cost of “Digging In.”

It is a matter of curious interest to know that twice as much dirt has been moved on the western line of the war by the French and German soldiers in preparing for trench warfare as was taken from the Panama canal. For more than 500 miles from Switzerland to the channel, four, five and six trenches have been dug on either side of tlje dead line, each trench averaging 5% feet in depth, dug by private soldiers with little war spades, an expenditure of human effort almost without parallel ii peaceful times. But curious as this item of the record may seem, how many, as they fix their attention to it, will consider for a moment what it must mean to the permanent fertility of the richest plains of Europe which* have suffered such an enormous upturning of barren subsoils. Those who have had occasion to note the slow degrees by which our lowa clays, left in the process of surface drainage, take on a cultivated and civilized appearance, will be able to form some notion of what is ahead of France when the work of restoration begins. It will be years before the farmer will harvest even

half a crop on the acres of this trench tyarfare. If there were nothing else to con!emn the insane exhibition of folly in Europe it would be the energy that has been spent in destroying the fertility of France. If anything could be more hopelessly and criminally ridiculous than living in ditches like rats, it would be the waste of energy expended in digging the ditches.— Des Moines Register. During the year ending last July 808 persons in the United Kingdom were sentenced to penal servitude, against 881 in the previous year.