The progress of science has much increased the potential
destructiveness of warfare.
Thinking people in all the civilized countries are asking themselves
what the fundamental trouble with civilization is, and where to look for
means of escape from the present intolerable conditions. Christianity in
nineteen centuries has afforded no relief. The so-called mitigations of
war are comparatively trivial. The recent Balkan wars were as ferocious
as those of Alexander. The German aviators drop aimless bombs at night
into cities occupied chiefly by non-combatants. The North Sea is strewn
with floating mines which may destroy fishing, freight, or passenger
vessels of any nation, neutral or belligerent, which have business on
that sea. The ruthless destruction of the Louvain Library by German
soldiers reminds people who have read history that the destroyers of the
Alexandria Library have ever since been called fanatics and barbarians.
The German Army tries to compel unfortified Belgian cities and towns to
pay huge ransoms to save themselves from destruction--a method which the
Barbary States, indeed, were accustomed to use against their Christian
neighbors, but which has long been held to be a method appropriate only
for brigands and pirates--Greek, Sicilian, Syrian, or Chinese.
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