People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1893 — PREPARED FOR WAR. [ARTICLE]

PREPARED FOR WAR.

How th* Nation* of Europ* Reached th* Limit of Endurance. What a wonderful spectacle it is that Europe now presents! Her population claims a sort of monopoly in civilization, yet outside of England every nation has reached the limit of its endurance in preparing for war, which nevertheless does not arrive. The surplus energy and money of the whole continent is devoted to keeping up a security which is nowhere felt to be quite sufficient, yet is nowhere overtly threatened—which, indeed, is guaranteed by profuse professions of peaceable intentions. The work of civilization goes on, every day records some advance in science or in human comfort, the toilers are daily exerting themselves to sey cure more leisure, better housing and pleasanter food, and yet the nations with one consent are converting themselves into food for powder. It is as if the professor and the merchant and the laborer, while strenuously going on with their business and eager to derive more comfort from it, were all agreed that they must sleep in plate armor. It would be almost comic, were it not so terrible, and as yet there is not a sign that we are arriving at the end of the situation. People say it must end some day, but it has gone on getting worse for twenty years; and though it cannot get worse still, because men and money are alike exhausted, there is no proof that it will not last for twenty years further yet There is not a statesman in Europe who could draw up, much less carry, a project of general disarmament. There is not a popular leader in Europe who makes of disarmament an earnest cry, though the socialists in their fear of repression would do it if they could; and we question if there is a nation in Europe which would consent to be disarmed. That is certainly not a triumph of human wisdom; and yet the nations are no more furious than usual, are not unreasonable, are not even indisposed to work through the methods of diplomacy. They are not even, in a way, unfriendly, for something “international” is arranged every week, and of congresses with all Europe represented in them there is literally no end. Still the nations lie down in armor and rise up, pistols in hand, and before they begin the day’s labor look first to see what the armed burglar may be at. What me end may be or can be we know no more than the simplest, but of this we are very sure, that no spectacle at once so unaccountable and sad has ever yet been presented to the historian with eyes.—Spectator.