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battle possible?

Every soldier is connected, as all of us, by dear ties of kindred,
love, and friendship. Perhaps there is an aged mother, who fondly
hoped to lean her bending form on his more youthful arm; perhaps a
young wife, whose life is entwined inseparably with his; perchance a
sister, a brother. But as he falls on the field of battle, must not
all these suffer? His aged mother surely falls with him. His young
wife is suddenly widowed, his children orphaned. That husband's
helping hand is forever stayed. A parent's voice is stilled, and the
children's plaintive cries for their loving father fall on unheeding
ears. Tell me, friends, you who know the bitterness of parting with
dear ones whom you watched tenderly through the last hopeful moments,
can you measure your anguish? Yet, what a contrast! Your dear ones
departed soothed by kindness and love, while the dying soldier gasped
out his life on the battlefield alone.

And what a waste is war! We are just beginning to realize the
tremendous cost, the incalculable wastefulness, not only of actual war
but of the preparation for future possible wars. For the current
fiscal year ending June 30, 1914, the United States has appropriated
in round numbers $535,000,000, in preparation for future wars and
because of wars fought in the past. Sixty-seven cents out of every
dollar expended by our national government goes to feed the
present-day mania for war, present and past, leaving only thirty-three
cents out of each dollar for the combined expense of the executive,
legislative, and judicial departments of our national government. When
we realize that the cost of a single battleship exceeds the total
value of all the grounds and buildings of all the colleges and
universities in the state of Kansas, the figures indicating this
expense have more meaning to us. And when we reflect that the cost of
a single shot from one of the great guns of that battleship is $1700,
enough to send a young man through college, the common man realizes
that the United States cannot afford to go to war or even prepare for
war.

And all this suffering and cost are to no purpose. War is utterly
ineffectual to secure or advance its professed object. The
wretchedness it involves contributes to no beneficial result, helps to
establish no right, and, therefore, in no respect promotes harmony
between the contending nations.

When the Saviour was born, angels from heaven sang to the children of