Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/68



Now before going further, let us pull together our argument, so far as it has gone.

Here is a projectile—the bomb-carrying aeroplane—of unprecedented size and almost unlimited range; here is a killing instrument—gas—of a power beyond the dream of a madman; here is a scheme of warfare which inevitably draws those who were hitherto regarded as non-combatants into the category of fair game. We need but combine these three factors in our imaginations, and we have a probability of “the next war” between civilized and prepared nations. It will be, in one phase, a war of aeroplanes loaded with gas shells. And professional military men in all lands are remarking among themselves that the new warfare may—some say must—strike not only at armies but at the heart of the matter—peoples.

A Prussian officer, of the old school said to his American captor in 1918, “France is the sheepfold and Germany is the wolf. The French army is the shepherd's dog. The wolf fights the dog only in order to get at the sheep. It is the sheepfold we