334 THE MILITARY AND FINANCIAL 



Five Millions of Men ! all able-bodied and vigorous men, the 

 flower of the population, under arms in Europe, and when the tocsin 

 of war is sounded, when these auxiliary forces are mobilised, when 

 war is proclaimed, Nineteen Millions of armed warriors, the bread- 

 winners of Europe, the fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers amongst 

 the people, trained and disciplined to war. 



Steadily, year by year, throughout every nation in Europe, the 

 vast hosts of armed men, and the ironclads of destruction, increase 

 in numbers, and in destructive power. 



In 1880, the numbers of armed men, trained and disciplined for 

 war in Europe, stood at 12,445,871, and for the year 1890 the 

 numbers are, 18,909,608, which shows an increase of Six Millions 

 IN Ten Years. 



This tremendous increase is not only very discouraging, but it is 

 very alarming, for it is full of danger, and sooner or later, must be 

 fraught with terrible disaster, and when it does overwhelm Europe, 

 will drive back the civilisation of the continent a quarter of a 

 century. 



The next war, we might say the impending war (would that it 

 could be averted), will be, must be, an appalling catastrophe, from 

 which the mind, the conscience, and the whole nature of man, may 

 well shudder, for it will be a conflict, not of 100,000 soldiers of the 

 line, in which bravery or heroism can be displayed, but a conflict of 

 many millions of men, a conflict, in which all the resources of 

 civilisation, of science, and of infernal machinery will be 

 energetically displayed. 



The blast of the trumpets, that proclaim the beginning of the 

 war, will summon the manhood of Europe, from each village, town, 

 and city of every nation, to the horrid work of human slaughter, 

 and characterised by horrors far more colossal, and disgraced by 

 scenes far more revolting than the world has ever witnessed. 



During the past fifty years, say trom 1840 to 1890, it is generally 

 admitted that the peoples of the nations of Europe have advanced, 

 not only in numbers, and in wealth, but in the arts, in commerce, 

 in industry, in knowledge, and in much of political, civil, and 

 religious freedom, but with that civilising advance in political, 

 intellectual, and social progress, there has, unhappily, been a 

 retrograde movement in the direction of the practice of feudal times, 

 the barbarism of the middle ages, by the augmentation of vast 

 standing armies and vast floating navies, and, as an inevitable 



