p. 48 | AN IMPROBABLE THEORY

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Mar 15, 1887

AN IMPROBABLE THEORY.

The invention of a new French explosive, “melinite,” which has “ten times the destructive force of nitro-glycerine, and one hundred times that of gunpowder,” ought, it would seem, to give a new impetus to the predictions of a certain class of people concerning the millennium; viz., that wars will ere long cease because the nations will not dare to engage in them. If the millennium is ever to be brought about by this means, it ought not to delay very long when engines and munitions of war can be produced which will pulverize a whole city at a shot. But we could never quite see how this theory of the millennium could become a reality. The preponderance of power between the parallels of attack and defense is on the wrong side. If fortifications could be constructed of so invulnerable a nature as to bid defiance to the force of the most powerful guns and explosives known to modern military science, then the question might be easily solved by each nation’s constructing a line of such fortifications along her frontier, which would effectually bar the invasion of foreign armies. But the facts of the case do not lie on this side of the question. In the race for superiority, new and improved ordnance has left the most efficient methods of fortifications far in the rear; and the disparity in power is continually increasing. What, then, is to prevent one nation’s making aggressions on another whenever she considers the opportunity favorable? or how is a weaker nation made any more secure against the assaults of one that happens to be stronger?

It is very evident that the cessation of wars cannot be brought about through this avenue. The unceasing hum of the manufacture of death-dealing engines and infernal machines, heard over all Europe, does not have the air of being under the supervision of Heaven for the accomplishment of beneficent designs. It is much more probable that the one who, as described by Milton, first devised death-dealing military engines, is the supervisor, and finds their manufacture profitable to the furtherance of his cause to-day. Lastly, the great powers themselves do not feel in any way admonished to the preservation of peace by the discovery of new and terrible agents of destruction. All are as professedly desirous of this as the man who was “bound to have peace if he had to fight for it,” and it is this kind of peace which each evidently desires,—one which lies on the other side of increased national power. Meanwhile, the next outbreak may be expected to be characterized by some new and startling features of military warfare. One-hundred-ton guns and ponderous ironclads, improved torpedoes, submarine boats, dynamite cruisers, and shells charged with such deadly material as the new explosive, will have a chance to show what they can do. It is feared we will not have long to wait.—Review and Herald.