he sea, forcing the other naval powers to give way
everywhere. But the interruption of communications at sea would cause
the English such losses that a prolonged war would be impossible for
them.

Thus, in continuing to increase their fleets and to perfect their
armaments at immense cost, the European powers are striving at aims
undefined and unattainable. But the financial and social difficulties
which yearly increase may result in such dangers that governments must
be compelled after immense sacrifices to do what it would be wiser to do
to-day--namely, to abandon a fruitless competition.

Such is a brief picture of what Europe may expect from a future war. But
over and above the direct sacrifices and material losses by slaughter,
fire, hunger, and disease, a war will cause to humanity a great moral
evil in consequence of the forms which a struggle on sea will assume,
and of the examples of savagery which it will present at a moment when
the civil order will be threatened by new theories of social revolution.

What wearisome labour will be needed to repair the losses, to cure the
wounds which a war of a single year will cause! How many flourishing
countries will be turned into wildernesses and rich cities into ruins!
How many tears will be shed, how many will be left in beggary! How long
will it be before the voices of the best men, after such a terrible
example, will preach to humanity a higher principle than "might is
right"?

_IV.--The Warnings of the Economists_

The conditions of modern war are bound to be the cause of huge
expenditure. First of all, military stores must be drawn by every
country from its own resources. Artillery, rifles, and ammunition are
all far more costly than they used to be, and the amount of ammunition
consumed in a modern European campaign will be prodigious. The vastness
of armies, and the deadliness of modern weapons, will add immensely to
the requirements of the sick and wounded. The demand for provisions must
vastly increase, and the increase will be followed by a great rise in
prices. That an immense army cannot exist on the resources of an enemy's
territory is plain, especially when the slowness of advance in a
struggle for fortified positions is taken into account. Communications
by sea will be interrupted at the very outbreak of war. In this respect
England is in incomparably the worst position.

There are serious reasons for doubting the proposition that a future war
wou