FUTILITY OF WAR

Evening Star, Issue 19710, 10 November 1927, Page 5

FUTILITY OF WAR

PREPARATIONS DANGEROUS SOME STRIKING FIGURES. COLOSSAL COSTS OF BOMBARDMENTS. (British Official News.) Press Association— By Wireless— Copyright. RUGBY, November 9. (Received November 10, at noon.) A striking address on tho futility of war was given last night by Fieldmarshal Sir William Robertson, chief of tho Imperial General Staff from 191.5 to 1918. In an appeal to every man and woman energetically to sup* port all efforts for devising more sensible ways of composing international differences, ho declared that we no longer agree, without qualification, that tlie best way of preventing war is to prepare for it. Preparations were apt to precipitates it. Never in history wore preparations so complete or so widespread as during tho 50 or fl() years previous to 1914, and yet never were wars so frequent as in that period. Tho colossal cost of modern war in lives and wealth should act as a. deterrent, and he mentioned that tho cost of the British artillery bombardment previous to the launching of an infantry attack amounted at tho Battle of Arras to £13,000,000, m Messines to £17,500,000, and tho third Battlo of Ypres to £23,000,000, or a total of over £52,000,000 for these three operations alone. Tho weight of gun ammunition tired at Messines amounted to 85,000 tons, and in tho first nino weeks of the battle of Ypres to 48,000 tons. War has become a wholly detestable thing, almost if not quito as disastrous to the victor as to tho vanquished.