STRENGTHENING THE ARMIES.
By T.
The following table gives the comparative strength of the armies and navies of Europe between the years 1869 and the beginning of 1898:— The much-talked-of war between Spain and the United States has also brought out the fact that men in this country have had a military drill and are ready to take the field at any time as trained soldiers. But the war spirit that has been boiling here for the last week or two leads some to make the enthusiastic and perhaps quite rash statement that 14,000,000 men could be called out in the United States on a few days’ notice. But leaving these enthusiastic and overdrawn statements to one side, the literal facts are sufficient to show that if the world is entering an era of universal peace, it is going at it in a very peculiar way. The world is not only more fully prepared for war than ever before, but it is also very evident that there is a strained relation between the various nations of earth that betokens something very different from a calm and undisturbed millennium. And not only are the armies themselves greatly increased, but the weapons with which they are now equipped are incomparably more destructive than they were thirty years ago. So when we compare the size of the armies then and now, we must not only take into account the increase of men, but also the multiplied effectiveness of their weapons and armament.