A last hand-clasp, a sorrowful "Good luck to you," and they parted.

Why was this necessary? What was this irresistible force, strong
enough to separate the two friends and drag them back five thousand
miles for the purpose of killing each other? To answer these two
questions is the purpose of this little volume.

Beginning with the summer of 1914, Europe and parts of Asia and Africa
were torn and racked with the most tremendous war that the world has
ever seen. Millions of men were killed. Other millions were maimed,
blinded, or disfigured for life. Still other millions were herded into
prison camps or forced to work like convict laborers. Millions of
homes were filled with grief. Millions of women were forced to do hard
work which before the war had been considered beyond their power.
Millions of children were left fatherless. What had been the richest
and most productive farming land in Europe was made a barren waste.
Thousands of villages and towns were utterly destroyed and their
inhabitants were forced to flee, the aged, the sick, and the infants
alike.

In many cases, as victorious armies swept through Poland and Serbia,
the wretched inhabitants fled before them, literally starving, because
all food had been seized for the use of fighting men. Dreadful
diseases, which cannot exist where people have the chance to bathe and
keep themselves clean, once more appeared, sweeping away hundreds of
thousands of victims. The strongest, healthiest, bravest men of a
dozen different nations were shot down by the millions or left to drag
out a miserable existence, sick or crippled for life. Silent were the
wheels in many factories which once turned out the comforts and
luxuries of civilization. There were no men to make toys for the