ENGLAND'S average expenses for the war, as reported by Premier Asquith in the House of Commons a few days ago, are $15,882,941 a day. This is an increase of about fifty per cent over what the nation was expending eleven weeks ago. The total amount voted by England for war purposes is $5,300,000,000, and the war is just about one year old.
The other nations are expending money in like proportion. How long can they continue without bankrupting the world? And what will be the awful financial and industrial chaos after this war is over? Some people are looking for times of great prosperity. There may be a few nations and places where prosperity will reign. Doubtless such will be the case; but labor troubles, rioting, and difficulties of all sorts will increase. The world is facing the greatest crisis that could possibly come to it. It is entering into the death agonies that will grip everything sinful in the near-by day of the coming Christ. Men ought to be able to see this; and seeing it, they ought to prepare for the great issue, and be ready to stand with clean hands and pure hearts in the presence of the great Judge of the universe.
Liquor, Explosives, and Crime
By Editor
A TWENTY-THREE year old murderer, in confessing his crime to the district attorney, in the presence of his parents, stated that he had gone to see the man he killed about a business matter in which they were mutually interested. To be sociable, they drank some liquor. Then they got into an argument, and the young man killed his friend. Had it not been for the liquor, his friend would still be living, and the young man would not be suffering the tortures of remorse that are worse than death. It is the thousands of incidents of this kind that testify against the liquor traffic and condemn it to a well deserved destruction.
THE French, it is claimed, have invented a new explosive bomb of greater power than anything hitherto used. We might hope that progress in the devising of more death-dealing implements had come to an end; but every day adds some new terrors to the already terrible implements that have been created for the destruction of life and property.
A DISPATCH from Los Angeles tells of a young woman who held up a merchant at the point of a revolver and took from him $125 in cash. The world is afflicted enough by men who go into the hold-up line of criminality. It is to be hoped that we may be saved from encountering women in the same field of evil activities.
THE enforcement of prohibitory laws in West Virginia has reduced the number of arrests in that state fully one half; and if the liquor interests did not insist on violating the law by running "blind tigers," the records would show a reduction in crime of almost three fourths.
Cooperation Corner in Need
By Editor
THROUGH the liberality of friends who have donated to this fund, it has been possible, for several years past, to provide our periodicals and other publications to persons who were unable to pay for them.
Strong appeals for papers and tracts continue to come. One of the most urgent is from Brother E. W. Snyder, manager of our exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. He could use thousands of pieces of literature every week.
We are especially desirous of supplying Brother Snyder's needs, and believe many of our readers will regard it as a privilege to assist in raising the necessary sum for the purpose.
All remittances should be addressed, Cooperation Corner SIGNS OF THE TIMES, Mountain View, California.
The Bright Hope Beyond
ONE of the dispatches from the war zone recently said: "The losses on both sides are fearful. The field is covered with corpses, and the odor is unbearable." Hundreds of thousands of men have been killed in this European war. Probably the figures reach up into the millions. Most of these men have been only superficially buried. Their bodies lie near the top of the ground. There are many other thousands that there has been no time as yet to bury. This condition, as the long, hot summer months drag on, is bound to add pestilence of various kinds to the awful horrors of that most barbarous war.
Little have men dreamed of the fearful conditions that would prevail in these last days, and even now we but little realize what lies just before us. But if we understand what these things mean, all fear and suspense are removed from our minds by the glorious hope of what we know will come to bring an end to this strife, destruction, and ruin.