LXII THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



conflicts of interests in the future. For many generation to come 

 there will obtrude in the minds of all who will look back on this great 

 war the memory of a nation which, nursed and participating in a 

 civilization at least a thousand years old and boasting of a culture 

 higher than that of its environment, developed after a few weeks 

 of the stress of war a condition of mind and ethical standards that 

 must have characterized the human race in the long night that 

 preceded the dawn of our civilization. This will chasten all high 

 hopes and beliefs as to the permanence of the forces that make for 

 human progress which we so fondly held in the past. 



This change in the "climate of the mind" is not to be the only 

 result of the war. At its close Europe will be impoverished, and, 

 with the United States, will have an enormous debt. Already this 

 debt exceeds one hundred billions of dollars, and there are those who 

 estimate it at one hundred and fifty billions. How much more it 

 may be cannot be foretold because the time during which the war 

 is to continue is uncertain. The burden is already a collossal one, 

 far in excess of the wealth of any single nation engaged in the 

 struggle before the United States began to participate, and it will 

 tax the energies of all involved for the next two hundred years. 

 Their financial resources, as one now estimates them, will be but 

 sufficient to meet the annual interest on it, which already in the case of 

 Germany, equals its total annual expenditure before the war. 



There is also the waste and ruin which will continue as the war 

 goes on. How much wealth, apart from that expended in muni- 

 tions, has been destroyed cannot be determined, but that it is en- 

 ormous seems to be indicated by the credited reports that come 

 from Belgium, Northeastern France, Poland, Roumania and Serbia, 

 and the loss of mercantile shipping through submarine activity 

 threatens to involve many years in its replacement. All this loss, 

 however, is as nothing compared to the waste of life amongst the 

 choicest of the race. The toll exacted may be estimated only ap- 

 proximately, but it cannot, however, be now less than five million 

 men killed or dead of wounds. The total in the permanently maimed 

 is probably larger, while the incidence of disease, which a great war 

 always enhances, is extraordinary, and it will have results extending 

 beyond this and the next generation all over Europe. 



It is, indeed, a very sombre picture of the world situation as 

 it is now and as it will be in the future. I have not, however, 

 applied the darker pigments too freely, for in the original there are 

 many fewer high lights and the shadows abound. I purposely 

 refrain from using the dark colours as they might justifiably be 

 employed, more than is required to show that with the new "climate 



