reater than progress in the arts of peace is progress in the art of
war. We have read in the American papers of a most wonderful new
French shell that in bursting paralyzes and destroys life so instantly
that all the living things within so many yards are, in a flash, set
rigid in position as though manufactured for Jarley's Wax Works, the
officer standing in position with uplifted arm, yet dead, the soldier
by the window with a cigar in his fingers, a smile on his face, stone
dead.

I was informed that the effectiveness of this shell was not due to its
poisonous gases but to the fact that, instead of being filled with
bullets, it was charged with a wonderful new explosive.

For the development of the science of war twelve months in the line of
battle is worth in new inventions ten years of peaceful military study.
A three years' warfare for which the English are planning is likely to
put Germany's thirty years of "peaceful" war preparation quite in the
shade, so far as practical results are concerned.

I hear of new and more powerful mortars and cannon, wonderful new
rifles, now being manufactured by the million from secret plans, and
new guns to bring down Zeppelins, that it is not useful to discuss here.

In the first six months of this war, the German casualties must be well
up toward 2,000,000. A million of the injured may go back to the
firing line.

But in killed, seriously wounded, missing, and prisoners, Germany must
be losing at the rate of 2,000,000 men a year, and the forces of
destruction against her will increase rather than diminish. That she
can lose at this rate for three years and have anything left worth
consideration as a military power is beyond reason.

Nevertheless, when I spoke with a very prominent American, now in a
responsible position abroad, he said: "The Germans have food and
supplies, and they have an idea; and the only way to overcome that idea
is by their destruction. The South had no resources for a three-year
or four-year war, but it had an institution, an idea, and a
determination. If you will recall it, at the close of the war there
were practically no men left in the South. This war will be over when
the fighting men of Germany have been killed off."

I have so much respect for the business, mathematical, and scientific
mind of Germany, that I cannot believe she will prefer the destruction
of the German people, individually or collectively, to the destruction
of the Ge