People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1894 — All Europe Under Arms. [ARTICLE]

All Europe Under Arms.

From an article on "The Peace of Europe.” by M. lie Blowitz, in McClure’s-Magazine for .1 one. After the Franco-German war of 1870-1871 the principle of prolonged military service and of diminished annual contingents was given up. The monstrous principle of universal service was adopted instead. By this rule the whole nation is under arms. A country is no longer a country, a people is no longer a people; a nation is now nothing but an army, and a country is only a barrack. Everybody wears the uniform. Everybody is sur lequi vive. If war break; out to-day all professions become deserted, all functions abandoned; the life of the nation stops so that nation-' al activity may be said to begin again only with the blood that is shed. Moreover, before two hostile armies, that is, two nations which are enemies, join in combat, each of the two armies, that is, each of the two infinite hordes which traverse several countries to meet eventually on the field of battle, will leave behind it a country in famine, its factories silent and its trade parlyzed. Again enormous stocks of food supplies must be accumlated on the frontiers where the

two armies are likley to meet; but before reaching these inexhaustible magazines the armies must be fed while crossing their own territories, and that requires money, so that before even the first gun is fired, each army will have expended enormous sums and left in its train towns and villages stripped of men and beasts, the cites in famine, the country without a single tiller of the field.