EUROPE'S NEXT WAR

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 14, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 40.

EUROPE'S NEXT WAR.

WHEN war comes in Europe, as it must come some time, people think it will be seen that a new era has begun in the art of destruction. The Belgian historian, Emile de Laveleye, sums up the terrible factors of the next conflict. The Civil War in the United States was but child's play in comparison. With Russia and France on one side and Germany, Austria, and Italy on the other, 7,000,000 men can be instantly put in the field, with 10,000,000 in reserve.

The facilities for concentration and the improved arms are such that more men may easily be killed in one day than have ever before been killed in a whole war. The continuous preparations for war, even when there is no thought of its immediate occurrence, are far greater and more expensive than ever before. France has surrounded her frontier and her capital with a continuous line of forts and entrenchments.

Germany has made Metz, Strasburg, Mayence, and Cologne gigantic fortresses, which seem absolutely impregnable. Italy has fortified her Alpine passes, her seaports, and even the Eternal City itself. Belgium has spent forty millions of francs in the construction of redoubts with cupolas of steel, to close the passage by the Maas Valley.

The war budgets are everywhere increasing in enormous proportions. "And it is under this continual menace of the most frightful shock of armies that our planet will ever have looked upon," writes M. de Laveleye, "that we live. And the most extraordinary thing is that we get used to it. We go about our business, our pleasures; we rush in crowds from all parts to the Exhibition, while each one says, 'It may be for to-morrow!'"—World.