COST OF A EUROPEAN WAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9185, 7 September 1908, Page 4

COST OF A EUROPEAN WAR.

General Blume, a military expert, recently presented a report to the German General Staff as to the probable cost of a modern European war. General Blume points out that great changes have taken place since the Franco-Prussian war thirty-eight years when the total German forces were 1,200,000. Germany would be able to put four and threequarter millions of troops into the field in the next war, and other Powers had armies of corresponding dimensions. A war fought against another European Power would cost Germany in hard cash at least £300,000,000 per annum as long as it lasted, whilst the indirect loss through financial depression, commercial stagnation, and paralysis of industry would be far greater. The Power opposed to Germany would suffer similar losses, direct and indirect; and if three, four, or more European Powers were involved in war, which was probable, in view of the existing alliances, it was evident that the drain on the resources of Europe would be appalling. Incidentally, General Blume expresses the opinion that the loss of life would be heavier than in the recent Russo-Japanese war, when 20 per cent, of the Japanese armies in the field were killed or wounded. Reckoning the same proportion, the figures in a great European war would be approximately 900,000 killed and wounded, but General Blume holds that the proportion would be still higher, and that a European war Would be a veritable orgy of blood.