FOUR YEARS OF WAR.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 244, 12 October 1918, Page 13

FOUR YEARS OF WAR.

t ■ ■■ • ■ — —* SOME STAGGERING FIGURES. JHE PRICE OF VICTORY IN MVES AND TREASURE. The fourth anniversary of the outbreak of war finds the immensity of the conflict undirainished, its intensity unabated, the resources of the combatants unexhausted, the issues etill undecided; and no immediate prospect of peace (cays a writer in the "Glasgow Herald" on August 4). Not more than fifty men 'decreed four years ago that the world Bhonld undergo the awful Wood 'bath that has followed the declaration of war. Behind all the camouflage of pretexts— those notes, conversations, offers, and ultimatums passing between the Chancelleries of Europe, which fill whole volumes —the Kaiser and his entourage of daqucrs were seeking only for a respectable motive for world war. They | knew when they pressed the .button in: Serbia they would ring the bell in Petrograd and Paris, and bring on che stage the tragedy they had prepared. An official notice circulated secretly among the German bourgeoisie apprised them of the great coup in the making: "We (hall smash France within three, weeks, then wheel about and deliver Russia a fcnoefc-out blow before ehe has time to complete her mobilisation. Belgium will offer only the resistance of sullenness, and England will not come in. The German Government has the positive assurance of leading Englishmen to that effect." Looking back to those fateful scenes in Berlin ■when the hour drew nigh for the Kaiser to eign the death sentence of millions of men, his summoning the authorities responsible for eacli depart-' jnent of naval and military preparation, and receiving the positive assurance that down to the last button on the soldiers' oniform Germany was ready, we may recall as the final determining influence the honestly confessed motive of his great ancestor, Frederick the Great, on s similar occasion decreeing war against Sileaia —"Ambition, interest, the desire of making people talk of mc carried the day, and I decided for war." . PROVIDENCE'S UNSEEN HAND. •Bismarck's sage counsel was that "Even victorious wars can only be justified when they are forced upon a nation, for we cannot foresee the cards held by Providence so nearly as to anticipate the historical development 'by personal calculation." Let us see how the unseen cards held by Providence have undone the mathematical calculations of the Kaiser for a three months' "war, with himself raised to the mastery of Europe. The war began against Serbia, with a population of 5.000,000 souls. It new extends to the limits of the earth, and has involved 20 nations. Notwithstanding the defection of Russia with her 170,000,000 people, 1,200,00,000 inhabitants of the globe have been summoned in the interests of liberty against oppression represented by 154,000,000 warmakers. Alone the enemy is outnumbered by the 160,000,000 people speaking the English tongue. For comparisons with the present war, which has pursued a course so utterly different from the enemy's "beet laid schemes," it is futile to search history. In extent, character, casualties, destructiyeness and expenditure all previous ■were pot together could not exceed it. Instead of smashing France and Russia in three months, sixty millions of men have been summoned' to arms, and of these there have been from death, and disease 40,000,000 casualties—almost the population of the Briteh Isles. Behind them are 20.000,000 munitioners. It has devastated and Mattered to the winds the lands and peoples of Poland, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro, and Northern France. The rival combatants have ibeen mulcted in an aggregate of £30,000,000.000, or almost £750 for every woman and child in Britain. THE KAISER'S BLOOD-RED HAND. Twenty-three years wars of Napoleon shed the Wood of 5,000,000 men and occasioned upon Europe a financial burden of of which Britain'B share WMi £6,000,000. In four years the fiat Of the Kaiser has slain ten times the nnmbere and occasioned twenty times Sne financial loss of Napoleon during a quarter of a century. The Kaiser informed Mr. Gerard in Berlin that he was terovworehipper of five great warriors— Alexander, Caesar, Theodorie. Frederick the Great, and Napoleon; that he would succeed where they had failed. He has the consolation of having slain more men Wan the five greatest heroes of ancient and modern tiroes. The largest army ever assembled by Britain until the beginning of this cenMry did not exceed 50,000 men. To-day ene has equipped more than one hundred 7?* * hat force, and expended times her total financial loss in the Napoleonic wars. Behmde this army again stands over ««r million munitioneere supplying it Witt shot and shell. Th c Boer War from «*39 to 1002 caused the loss of 27,0001, JSSooSS- and an expeuditare of ' ■On the naval side six Powers have combined their fleets, and hold the two ' enemy navies in check, besides closing \ •wery port of egress to the seas. No more *wn speculative figures may be given, \ jn« at a rough computation there must 5« on the two sides of belligerents 130 dreadnoughts, with innumerable smaller crart running into many thousands. A moderate estimate would give the total ■ cost of the rival navies awaiting "The »*■? at £1,000,000,000. The Armada of ' armageddon represents a collection of *areh lps which could produce a hundred irafalgars. i The largest force maintained by c w^^L^ 10, the con 1 u "C>re of Europe, « was 400,000. Germany has lost that f camber several times "in a few of her ' great Ludendorff strokes. The "Battle < « the M a tion n "-"th c greatest battle in * JU authentic wrote the his- s fc Tβ 1 ?, ° f Na P° le °n—fought at Leipzig « to 1813, witnessed the assemblage of < "Sγ 0 meu - Not mo" than 150,000 were * Peered on the field of Waterloo. Sixty * ™nes that number face eueh other daily } ♦£ a j Wcatern fr °"te from Flanders to c In * ' When the Americans arrive v B ~ e l uate volume to encoura-'e General 8 f Od ! *<> ma -k<> the final throw of the dice c i°r Victory, the fierceness of the struggle 1 XwonUr 11 the total tasualti « to l t£Hufi?L> and ' reckoning America's c 'SoSSoS 0 day a,id our own «s,UUO,OOO, it is conceivable that the war 1 fwiSS'n' 1 a final cost t0 the world of T £50,000000,000, or £3 for every human t aeing ahve on th ß globe. Taking into * "■fcount the armies and navies and muni- I won workers of the nations employed f «nee the outbreak of hostilities, it 1 » probable that 100,000,000 men and c women will have been directly engaged t a the prosecution of the Kaiser's "three ttonths' war"! «.