The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-08-01
BRAINS LIKELY TO TRIUMPH OVER STUPIDITY TO PREVENT A GENERAL
 WAR AMONG EUROPEAN NATIONS


 T.~ UROPE HAS warlike aspect, no doubt H. about that. Even Holland scene of so much fighting in the past, has ordered her forces to prepare for mobilization The troops continue to muster in Germany and Russia England is calling her fleets together. France is in a position of watchfuI waiting. Little Portugal remembers that under certain circuIn- stances she must furnish 10000 troops to Eng land. Japan knows that if England is threat |ened in her Eastern possessions the Mikado must come to her aid.
 The news proves the extent to which Euro pean nations are interrelated, and how easy 1t will be for war to spread, if it is once begun on Ia large scale.
 It has not yet begun on large scale and The Farmer is not yet convinced it will be. Austria will shoot few servlans, the servianss will shoot a few Austrians, and peace will be restored for the time being. That seems the most probable outlook
 Austria is the fool among nations has been since the time of the first Napoleon, and is not likely to show improved intelligence under the. leadership of an old man in his dotage.
 With the German Emperor it is another lease. He has exhibited fine wisdom during the two decades he has managed GerTnany.f Will he go to war? He can if he wants to. Hei has the power. But what for? To this question there is but sone real answer. He could make tangible of an army which has cost billions | of Germany money, and still more important, l he might give very temporary check to the
  Iup within the empire, until it's shadow obscures the throne.
 Germany in a fight mi ight make short work | of Russia. Russia is big, but inchoate. Russia got a little whipping from Japan, and would aI- most certainly get bigger tipping from Ger many.
 IN But Germany needs peace, more than any. other nation in EuropeS She has prospered by 1 the arts of peace She has reared the greatest chemists, the greatest scientists and the great lest industria technicians Her market depends upon the existence of a great and scientific civ l ilization, which such war as is now contem- plated might set back for two generations
 To whip Russia would not restore to Ger many single man lost in the comic, ,, but these losses might very well bring to the Emperor the l same fate that overlook Napoleon the Little.
 There are brains in all these countries, not fperhaps in the heads of the monarchs, but n the nations. These brains do not want war on l the grand scale, and if the intrigues of mon I Jarchs preeipitate war, then much the worse for monarehies Brains will deprive them of ftheir power so to injure civilization again.
 Yet, in considering the future,S the teach- ings of the past should not be forgotten. If the past is to be the criterion by which the present lis to be judged then there will be a great war, flor in the past, whenever monarehs, or aristoe- lraeies, felt the Impulses of ambition it was the Econmone st thing for them to plunge Europe in l to war. Some of those wars lasted a hundred years, some of them for only thirty years.
 But this was before democracy appeared, and before common men apprehended that God had. not necessarily created them to be food for powder.
 Today, in spite of the darkening aspect of levents, the best bet we believe, is that demo- lcratic brains will triumph over nlonarchial stu Ipidity, so that there will be general Euro lpean war