Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/137

 ports, at a hundred little cities which do their part in making munitions.

In such a campaign of conflagrations, the loss of life would necessarily be less than in a killing attack with gas. But possibly not much. Imagine Paris suddenly become a superheated furnace in a hundred spots; imagine a swift rush of flame through every quarter; imagine the population struggling, piling up, shriveling with the heat; imagine the survivors ranging the open fields in the condition of starving animals.

Such a campaign could in a few weeks nearly equal the property-losses of the Great War; especially if the defenders, whom I have imagined to be the French, retaliated on the attackers—say the Germans—and burned Berlin and the Rhine towns.

So far as we can see now, gas will probably be the standard weapon of the next war. High explosive will still be used on an extensive scale; but it will be auxiliary to the new killing instrument. It is unlikely that there will be a locked trench-line and a steady bombardment lasting for years. Consequently—ignoring the possibility of great conflagrations—we may hope for a smaller loss in the item of buildings. On the other hand, the bill will probably show a larger item for destroyed fields—agricultural wealth. The struggle just finished was the first in history where any considerable area of land was ruined for cultivation. Now it is a