Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1915 — War and Wealth. [ARTICLE]

War and Wealth.

Does war affect the weather? It certainly affects almost everything else; and it were strange indeed if it did not upset more of this mundane sphere than the 3,000 miles of frontier along which the nations of Europe are fighting. If you do not believe it, lookback a little to the time when the north and the south fought like tigers. After the three-day battle at Gettysburg the whole of southern Pennsylvania and of northern Maryland had drenching rains which swelled the streams- to unprecedented heights. That was the result of cannonading in which not more than 300 field pieces were in use 011 both sides. The unexampled explosion of powder in shot-and-shell fire upset Jupiter Pluvius, and he wept for the greater part of a week over the entire area in which atmospheric conditions were unsettled by this memorable combat.

From the artillery standpoint the explosions in Europe are easily 25 times more extensive and disturbing in their effects on atmospheric conditions, Firing 200,000 shells in an hour, as was reported of the AustroGerinan assault on Przemsyl, could not but result in climatic upheavals more or less extraordinary in the areas immediately affected, to say nothing of remoter portions of the globe. But no part of the atmospheric envelope that covers the earth could be so rent and sundered as that of the continent of Europe, without affecting inter-continental .changes. That may account for the prolonged screen of cloudiness that has hung over the eastern portion of North America, causing this unprecedentedly cool spring and summer, which kept our heater fires going well into the middle of June. At any rate, the sun’s progress north from the celestial equator does not seem to produce the usual rise in temparatures. And it is perfectly plausible that the clouds of war, including Germany’s asphyxiating stunts, haYe so blackened the world’s atmospheric belt as a whole as to screen Old Sol’s rays down to an April temperature in the heart of early summer.—Wall Street Journal.