WAR HAS CAUSED DECLINE

President David Starr Jordan, of Leland Stanford, Jr., University, Palo Alto, Cal., gave a lecture on "The Blood of Nations" in the Living Room of the Union last evening. In introducing Dr. Jordan, President Lowell said: "We are fortunate in having with us a man who knows manhood from the foundation, and he has come today to talk out of the fullness of his knowledge. I want to present David Starr Jordan, the president of Leland Stanford University."

"Perhaps the greatest movement in the world," began President Jordan, "is that to get rid of the enmity between races. We have gotten rid of wars between individual men, families and tribes. War among nations is the only kind left. In arguing against war we speak of the horrors and sorrows of war. We are answered by men who say, 'It's too bad, but war strengthens men--war has built up the Anglo-Saxon race.'

"The war debt of Europe is 26 billion dollars, and it is controlled by a body of bondholders that make up an invisible empire. In England the Rothschilds compose this empire. During the wars they bought as many bonds as possible and in this way made themselves controllers of England's war debt. In other countries there are bondholders who control the debt in the same way. The interest on the war debt of Europe amounts to one and a fifth billion dollars and this falls on the taxpayers. We see the effects of this upon the poverty stricken country people of France. But if war makes us strong and a world power, we must have it.

"Because the United States and Canada are the only countries that are not controlled by these allied bondholders, they stand well in front, while Turkey and Paraguay, countries that have suffered from war, stand far behind.

"In the northern part of Italy I saw a field where the farmers had plowed up the skulls of young men and had piled them up fifteen feet high. In the Napoleonic campaigns 3,700,000 men were killed. Now, these young men were the most fit, and the unfit that were left had to determine the future generations. The Europe of today is far from what we might have expected if the ancient Europeans had been allowed to develop without war.

"Now the point of what I have been saying is that wars are not paid for in war-time, but the bill comes later."