Waterbury evening Democrat., 1892-03-18
ARdED PEACE.
waot It Costs to Preserve Order
in Elropo.
Twenty VTillion Men Trained Co Fight
Every City a Citadel in ItseIF-A Spec
taclO Without Parallel in the
Worlds History.

IN Europe to-day threc m11l1On men,
the physical flower of the continent,
have been drilling, marching and coun-
ter-marching, practicing ut targets,
learning the use Of bayonet and saber
and performing as nearly as is possible
in sham fights the evolutions of actual
war. It was so yesterday, and last
year, and through all the yesterdays OF
twenty years. Seven times during this
period has the personnel of this vast
host been renewed; consequently there
are now about twenty million Euro
peans not yet beyond middle life who
have been trained to the fighters pro-
fession and who could at briefest no.
tice take their places in tho active
army or in the reserve.
Every city has its barracks and
parade ground, says writer in the
Forum; every frontier frowns with q
double row Of Notifications. At tho
! end of the nineteenth century Europe,
: from the Douro to the Don, is n camp
wherein ten times three hundred thou
sand of her able-bodied men are
bivouacking, ready at sign to spring
to arms and Stay each other. The
spectacle is without parallel in the his
! tory of the world. Even in the bolster
| Gus days of antiquity, when wars were
frequent, fighting was the business of
| comparatively few. Alexander's pha-
, lanx and Caesar's legions were composed
! of picked men, who adopted the SOL
| dier's career and followed it until they
, were retired or killed.
. So, too, the armies of Charles V. and
) Philip IL, of GustaYus Adolphus and
Turenne, varied in numbers from year
=; to year. Tho majority Of Napoleon's
old guard and of many Of his regiments
of the line fought through dozen cam
! paigns, and he regulated the quota Of
/ each years CONSUMPTION according to
: each years needs. But our generation
has witnessed the expansion in Europe
! of military system as severe in time
| of peace as the old systems were in
war time, sort of perpetual levy en-
masse.
Measures which once have been
deemed unjustifable, except in the
most threatening emergency, are now
employed every day, and what was the
standard of war has been fixed as the
standard of peace. Under the new sys-
tenn every eligible man is, at a given
age, Withdrawn from his trade or occu-
patton and converted for three or four
or five years into soldier, till he be-
comes proficient in firing a breech-
loader and in the appropriately-named
goose-step, after which he may go back
to his civilian calling, but with the
liability of being summoned to fight at
any time until he is forty-fve or fifty
years old.
The economic waste which is due to
this system needs no comment. To
estimate the sum we must reckon in not
only the money actually spent on food,
clothes, lodging, arms and ammunition,
the salaries of officers and the stipend
of common soldiers, besides the build.
ing and repairing of Notifications, but
also the wealth which these idle multi
tudes could produce were they profit
ably employed. Thus computing
Europe is poorer by not less than one
billion year. Her armed peace during
the last twenty years has cost her as
much as she paid for all Napoleon's ter
rife campaigns from Lodi to, Waterloo
J, LIKE THE FREDA WARD CASE.
Addie Phillips Wants to Marry Her Girl
Friend.
MEMPHIS, Tenn, March 18.-An other
case of infatuation similar to that of
Alica Mitchell for Prada Ward has been