Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/88

 few days, you will have a sick enemy, easily conquered. It takes time to discover a specific or a serum for a new disease. “The mischief would be done long before the laboratories of the enemy could find a defence for this especially romantic and valorous form of battle. As germ warfare is at present conceived, it would be directed against armies alone. But any one who followed the late war knows what human chains bind the troops in the trenches to the general population. With almost every one ministering in some capacity to the army, soldiers and civilians are inextricably mixed. Armies simply could not be quarantined. Among the possibilities of the next war is a general, blighting epidemic, like the Black Plagues of the Middle Ages—a sudden, mysterious, undiscriminating rush of death from which a man can save himself only by fleeing his fellow man.

Then—there are easily cultivated, easily spread, diseases of plants. What about a rust which will ruin your enemy's grain crop and starve him out? That method of warfare has been suggested and is now being investigated.

So much for the direct effect of the next land war upon human life, and especially upon civilian life. Before I leave the subject, however, I must go into naval operations, of which I have hitherto omitted mention. The submarine, in the hands of the