Frequency of Wars

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 29, 1876

Frequency of Wars.

A curious newspaper writer has been counting up the wars in which civilized nations have been engaged during the seventy years of the present century. The record which he makes out is a melancholy one, and offers a sad commentary on the condition of mankind even in their most advanced development. The writer in question finds that no single year of the century has thus far passed which has been wholly free from war, in one part of the world or another. He also finds that wars have been most numerous among the most civilized nations, and that their wars, too, have been by far the most destructive. During the seventy years of the century, Great Britain has been engaged in forty-nine wars, France in thirty-seven wars, Russia in twenty-one, Austria in twelve, Prussia in seven, and the United States, to go no further in the list, in three, not counting our far more numerous Indian wars. Had the writer gone a little further and reckoned up the lives that have been sacrificed in all these wars, the treasure that has been squandered in them and productive industry that has been lost to the world, he might have supplied the materials for a tolerably impressive tract to be issued by the Peace Society.—Providence Journal.