The Dominion SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 1919. THE GREATEST COST OF ALL

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 170, 12 April 1919, Page 6

The Dominion SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 1919. THE GREATEST COST OF ALL

Ist some aspects tlic bill of costs of tho war that tho Peace Congress ' is trying to draw up must prove a.n impossible task. Public justice must bo sacredly guarded, and.reparation and restitution must be demanded to the fullest possible extent. But anj' indemnity that Germany can bo made to' pay will cover only a small part of. the cost of her criminal destruction of treasure and of precious lives. The material loss cannot be expressed in/ terms of money, for treasures in art and in architecture have been destroyed by the vandalism of the Huns that can ncvor bo replaced. Political economists have estimated each life sacrificed in war as an industrial loss of from £400 to £1000, but although Germany could pay this compensation for the millions she_ and her partners in crime have slain in war or massacred in- cold blood, yet such money compensation would never make good tho loss. Wo cannot estimate the loss of lives thus slain or massacred by computing the number of .millions sacrificed in tho holocaust of war, for men vary in mental and moral worth. A democratic state is based on the assumption that in o'no sense men are equal, and the United State's Declaration of ■, Independence says, "that all men arc created 1 equal, and they, are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," but there is no fact more self-evi-dent than that men differ in merit, capacity and virtue. One man may have moral worth equal to that of a hundred men. One man may possess a genius for mechanics, politics, art, poetry, or literature equal to the collective genius of ten thousand other men. Goodness cannot be measured by numbers, nor can merit and capacity be set forth in statistics. The greatest wealth of a nation is the. talent, the capacity, of its original men, and tho loss of such men is the greatest loss that can cotne to a people or nation. The war has involved our Empire and the warring nations with this heaviest form of loss—a loss for which no restitution can be made. War has mado a heavy toll on talent, ' and it lias destroyed a. great army , of. men of genius. When tho war was three years old a French author in the Quarterly Review, in.an article entitled "A Chaplet of Heroes,"' sketched the lives of five French soldiers, men of letters by profession, who died for' their country in the. first months of the war, and it was on them the writer chiefly counted to renew the snirit_ of literature in France. At that time at least one hundred' and fifty brilliant young French writers had fallen in battle, but the author sketched the _ lives of only five of these. In this very admirable '"In Mcmoriam" notice, the' writer says: "And now these young men—so much younger than I who, in this dreary season of All.Souls, sit by my lonely fire and remember them— these young .men with a future, as it sce.med, aro all dead for their country, and for the faith that was in them. Their bodies lie in way--side tombs, or in the middle of fields, with a rough cross over them, and a name traced in ink that au-tiimn-rains efface. And that name which was beginning to .shine in the literary record of their nation, that name which they looked to burnish in the course of the next thirty years can now receive no further "lustre. From the personal, individual point of view, their fame is sacrificed, and these five are but a 6ign and a sample." --As it was in France so it has been in our Empire—the war toll'on our talent has been heavy. In estimating the worth of our soldiers we have no desire to discriminate, but it is specially true that in the early months of the war.when enlistment was voluntary a large proportion of our Army then was made up of men of exceptional mental and moral, worth, and these have been slain in largo numbers. Somo time ago a special study was made of tliat informing and monumental work. The National Dictionary of Bioyraphj, to find out the dlasscs, professions, and homes from which our distinguished men came, and 1 a study of the roll of our killed in battle shows that the sons of the foregoing in large numbers made tho supreme sacrifice. More than one Year Book have annually published lists of war's gifted victims, and these lists arc sad reading. We find more than one Tennyson in the lists, and we know that tile world of. poetry may be poorer. We find an Asquitk and more than . one Gladstone in the lists, and this may mean loss to the political world. An exceptionally large number of gifted young men from the hon\cs of ministers ot religion have been killed. Young men who promised to rise to greatness in journalism,'in commerce, in mechanics, found a grave in a shell-torn battlefield. Tho homes of tho nobility of Britain . have been sadly bci'eit of sons in this war, and there has been no selfish holding back by the privileged , classes. The fall of the birthrate

because of the war has meant the loss of tens of thousands of potential lives. The sacrifice in the battlefield of thousands, of gifted young men means to the Empire the lossof potential genius and goodness, and it means also a mental and moral impoverishment of the nation thai; will not he made good for many a day. While it is beyond the ability of the Peace Congress to assess' fhis highest form of loss to our Empire and to the world, yet something may be done in this direction by the

biographer and the historian, and such a pious undertaking has already commenced. Mr. E. B. Osbohn, who is reputedly an able and 1 original journalist, lias just given to fcne world the first volume of a work which shows the war toll on the lilcrary talent of Britain. The huok is entitled The A'ein Elizabethans \ A First Selection of the Young

Mm Who Have Fallen in the lF«r. I The age of Elizabeth was one of venture and of progress, and the heroes of thai; age were tints conquerors. Mr. Osbouk sees in the gifted fallen men of such a spirit. He says: "first they conquered their easier selves; secondly, they led the ancestral generations into a joyous captivity. Alas, that we veterans of peace, with the scars of easy living upon us, should have the greater need of so precious a gift that can but once be given !" Not a few who died on the field of battle were offered, appointments on the staff or diplomatic service, but they preferred tho greater danger and the greater sacrifice. Sir. AVii-liam Robertson Nicob, iu reviewing Mr. Osborn's book, which he highly praises, singles out three of the fallen for special mention—Dixon Scott, who was just coming to his own in journalism when he heard the call of his country; C. H. Son- ■ ley, a man of high poetic genius; and the two Grenfells, who were "born leaders, athletes, scholars, men of letters, and adopts in courtesy." About forty of fallen heroes from the world of literature are thus commemorated in this volume, bub the story of another group will be told in another volume. Our young fallen students in arms number a great host, and their early death is one of the perplexities of life; It was said of old: "Whom the gods love die young." Maurice Baring writes to tho mother of the brothers Guenfell: "To make up the harmony of the world 1 , to make an inheritance glorious and worth having, the youthful death of tho very bright and tho very brave is, I have always felt, not only a necessary but a precious clement. Glorious sorrow is as necessary, is as pricelissj as the nightingale or tho evening 1 star." It needs vision to see things in this, wayand yet the situation of our Empire to-day is such as to need, as it never needed before, the type of gifted, brave men that have died. There is tho great work of reconstruction and of social betterment to be done. But had it not been for their sacrifices wo would have had no Empire to reconstruct, for the Huns, "with their "blood and iron" methods, would have dominated us and our Allies. Thus ■ the greatest cost of all was not paid in vain.