The Coming War | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 1, 1875

The Coming War.

From the Watchman and Reflector we take the following:—

“There is something appalling in the spectacle which Germany and France present, to-day—two mighty nations straining every resource of which they are possessed, to be ready for the last desperate conflict between them. A conviction that such a conflict is inevitable seems to be universal. Both Germans and Frenchmen have accepted the fact as though it had been rehearsed to them from the book of fate. Victor Hugo spoke for them all in that response of his to the invitation to attend the peace conference at Geneva. He despaired of peace until the great duel between France and Germany shall have been fought. And so these two great peoples have settled down to this grim fact, and are only anxious each for itself that the storm of war shall not burst upon them unprepared. It is idle for Hugo to say that the fight is inevitable because it is a fight between great irreconcilable principles, between republicanism and imperialism. There is no principle at stake in the affair. It is a thing of passion, of fierce, relentless hatred on the one side, and of an insatiable thirst for revenge upon the other. It is this that causes the rest of the world to regard the war as certain and near at hand.

SIZE AND COST OF EUROPEAN ARMIES.—The following extracts are taken from a series of tables published in Vienna.

The Russian army comprises 862,000 men, 181,000 horses, and 2,084 cannon.

Germany has 37 divisions of infantry, 10 divisions of cavalry, 337 batteries of artillery, comprising 835,000 men, 96,000 horses, and 2,022 cannon.

Austria has 45 divisions of infantry, 5 divisions of cavalry, 215 batteries of cannon, making a total of 740,210 men, 58,125 horses, and 1,600 cannon.

English armed forces comprise 471,000 men; France 300,000 men.

The remaining States of Europe make up with the above a total of about 5,000,000 of men. If each man could earn on an average one dollar daily, here would be a total loss to the world of five millions of dollars a day. And the cost of support and wages of the men alone, including officers, will make five millions more, or ten millions a day, exclusive of the cost of arsenals, forts, ships, wagons, tents, hospitals, &c.—Sel.