"IMPOSSIBLE" WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 76, 19 August 1914, Page 4

"IMPOSSIBLE" WAR.

During the last thirty years some prominent economists, financiers and others have endeavoured to prove that, owing to the' costliness of modern warfare, and to the fact that the whole able-bod-ied manhood was enrolled in the' arm;, war was financially ami economically impossible, that at'the. outbreak of'war, ) the national industries would come to a standstill, that, owing to the complexity of modern economic relations, and to the wide ramifications of credit, the whole economic structure of a country at war would collapse like a house of cards. .Mr. Jean de Bloc.li, a very able business man, the head of timber and sugar interests and a' very | capable administrator of the Russian | State railways, published in 1887 in JSt 1 etcrsburg a work in seven volumes entitled Ms War now Possible?" of which a greatly abbreviated English translation appeared in 1890. The author proveel to his own satisfaction in his exhaustive treatise that was was now im('possible. M. Bloch's book created a scni sation at the tune, and its author won numerous disciples even in influential circles. But his theory was disproved utterly by the Balkan wars, .which prov- ! cd disastrous, too, to the arguments of tMr Norman Angel). Bulgaria, .Servia I Greece and 'Montenegro, 'which had at the tune a joint population of 10,4.10 000 or a httle more than the population of J--™ a ' Ul Rcotlan( l combined, placed 6»o.ooomen or 6% per cent, of the population in the field. How enormous that proportion is may be seen from the fact that at G'/ 2 per cent of the population . .OOO.fWl'soldiers for the United Kingdom. 4,3v,0,000 for Germany, 0,500000 ■soldiers tor the United States and 'll OOOO.H, soldiers for Russia Se Mk*n Mates ordered a general mobilisation on September 30, M 3, and the Treaty of Buchares was signed on August 10, ::,'"•, ~ , " rmios ro mai"eel on a war footing dur.ng the course of abortime p t° r," soti,itio,is ' ;ind fi »- « time after the conclusion of the n„,l W , t appears that the relative],. p"o" Balkan Sates maintained theirVnor , nous arm,,..,,, the field almost an ~ tno year. War on the largest smle MAltliv but also for impecunious nations. Now wo are being Vive-,, , ~. " onstration of the abilit/V the w, ( T, Sroatcst nat,on s to light on a sea ■ \ ' simply paralyses imagination