A TRUE FORECAST

New Zealand Tablet, 7 November 1918, Page 35

A TRUE FORECAST

In his Future of War , published in 1897, M. Bloch forecast that in the next war there would be ‘‘at first increased slaughter on so terrible a scale as to make it impossible to get troops to push the battle to a decisive issue. They will try to do so, thinking they are fighting under old conditions, and they will learn such a lesson that they will abandon the attempt for ever. Then instead of a war fought out to the bitter end in a series of decisive battes, we shall have as a substitute a long period of continually increasing strain upon the resources of the combatants. The war will become a kind of stalemate in which neither army will be able to get at the other. The war will be a multiplication of expenditure simultaneously accompanied by a diminution of the sources from which that expenditure can be met. This is the future of war—not fighting, but famine ; not the slaying of men, but the bankruptcy of nations and the break-up of the whole social organisation.”